Who was Hiram Hubbart?

Subject: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From:
Date: 25 Jul 98 - 03:07 AM

I just had a friend convert some reel-to-reel tapes to cassettes so I could listen to them for the first time in over 20 years.

One gem was Jean Ritchie singing Hiram Hubbart(d?). It proclaims that he wasn't guilty and describes how he was executed, but it doesn't say what he was alledged to have done or where he did it.

Does anyone know?

BTW I am a great Jean Ritchie fan, and she does a fine job on this one. It was supposed to have been performed at Folk City. No date given.

Thanks,

Murray

Murray

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From: Barry Finn
Date: 25 Jul 98 - 08:26 AM

I'll try & dig out something I've got from Utha Phillips (?), don't know if they'll be much there & I'm heading out, if there's nothing on him by tomorrow I'll try & post it then. Barry

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From:
Date: 25 Jul 98 - 09:50 PM

Thanks Barry,

Who is Utha Phillips?

Murray

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From: Barbara
Date: 26 Jul 98 - 03:14 AM

My guess is that's a typo - and it's Utah, not Utha.
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From: Roger Himler
Date: 26 Jul 98 - 11:32 AM

Murray,

I think if you knew of Utah Phillips, you would have guesed it was a typo. U. Utah Phillips (aka Bruce Phillips) is a folk-singer from the USA's great mid-west "out where men are men and the sheep are nervous."

Utah is in declining health, but he is a legend in his own time. He is cut from the classic pine of labor organizer, hobo, philospher, and folk-singer. He writes songs and performs some classics as well. He is neither short on opinions nor shy about letting you know what they are. A true character.

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From: Susan of DT
Date: 26 Jul 98 - 05:46 PM

The words are in the DT - Hiram Hubbard. It doesn't really say what the crime he was accused of was: I assumed murder.

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From:
Date: 26 Jul 98 - 08:38 PM

Gee! Have I forgotten him (Phillips, I mean) or is he after my time? I left the US in '75 and I don't recall such a character. However I sort-of stopped listening to folk music on the radio when they started to plug in--so he could have probably snuck onto the scene between 70 and 75 :)

Murray

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From: Barbara
Date: 26 Jul 98 - 09:51 PM

I first ran into "U.Utah Phillips, Golden Voice of the Great Southwest" as he billed himself, in the late sixties or early seventies. I don't know that he ever got much radio play. Too ferociously union and anti establishment, and outspoken.
Has a bunch of railroading and cowboy songs, wrote Goodnight Loving Trail, played small clubs, is associated with Rosalie Sorrels in my mind anyway, they sing each others songs... talks a whole bunch and sings a little. His first album that I ran across was "Good, though" and the direct antecedent to that phrase was not something you would hear on the radio. Know the story? First person that complains about the cooking on the trail becomes the new cook. To get rid of the job, the cook uses cow chips in the stew...
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From: harpgirl
Date: 26 Jul 98 - 10:03 PM

Hi Barbara, I like to sing Bruce (Utah) Phillips' "Rock Salt and Nails"...its in the DT...harpgirl

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 26 Jul 98 - 11:18 PM

Dwight Diller sings a variant of this ballad called "Hiram Herbert" which he learned from Currence Hammons of Pocahontas County, West Virginia on his album"New Plowed Ground" (1998) (Yew Pine YP-1X-4).

The Jean Ritchie recording is on "Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City" (Folkways FA2426, reissued as Smithsonian Folkways 40005 in 1990, still in print).

The Liner notes:

Hiram Hubbard
Jean Ritchie vocal
Doc Watson banjo

Jean does this rare song beautifully in time-honored classic ballad style, and hearing it one can imagine that it is two centuries earlier, when the African-American banjo was adopted by Anglo-Americans. But the song is too new for such imagining; it waves the bloody flag of the Civil War. It reminds that the Union's most fervent supporters were in the southern mountains, that the generalizing of that conflict into a north and south is simplistic. (The area of the nation that provided most soldiers for the Union, per capita, was the mountain counties of eastern Tennessee. sparsely populated area provided 31,092 "Mountain Yankees" for President Lincoln's war machine.) In the gulf South stories are told about "thieving Yankees." but atrocity stories in the mountains are often about the vengeance that the Confederate home guard or recruiters took on Union families. Jean comments:

"This ia a local murder ballad. The folks around home can't remember the details, or just where it happened. Some say it happened just after the Civil War, and the line, 'The rebels overhauled him' tends to bear this out. The one thing that everyone agrees on, though, is that Hiram Hubbard was not guilty!"

[end of quote]

--Charlie Baum

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 26 Jul 98 - 11:38 PM

A dropped word above (typo): "This sparsely populated..."

The original album was issued in 1963, and recorded back around then. The liner notes quoted above are from the 1990 reissue, which I have on cassette tape. While the CD will continue to be in print, Smithsonian/Folkways is closing out the tape, and it was on sale at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival last July 4th for $1.25! If you know anyone who can pick up a tape for you at the Smithsonian gift shop in Washington, DC, there are incredible bargains to be had on this and other tapes.

--Charlie Baum

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From: BSeed
Date: 27 Jul 98 - 01:09 AM

Utah Phillips, who gave a farewell concert last fall, is back: he has a radio show on KPFA, a membership supported radio station out of Berkeley, where his politics fit in. I don't know if other Pacifica stations carry the broadcast or not--it's the last of a series of folk music oriented shows on Sundays.

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From:
Date: 27 Jul 98 - 10:09 PM

Thanks Charlie. You make me green with envy about the tape sale. At least your information puts the story in perspective even if it doesn't specifically say what he was supposed to have done.

The tape containing it does have some Doc Watson--including a great version of the "Wabash Cannonball".

Utah Phillips sounds like an interesting character.

Murray

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From: Barry Finn
Date: 27 Jul 98 - 10:22 PM

It wasn't U Utah (don't know what the U stands for) Phillips (it was a typo) I had it from after all, sorry. I had it from Joe Hickerson who puts Jean Ritchie, Peggy Seeger & Fleming Brown as his sources, for what he claims as a civil war incident from Eastern Kentucky, but I'd venture to stay with Eastern Tenn. if that's Jean's claim. Barry.

Subject: RE: Who was Hiram Hubbart?
From:
Date: 28 Jul 98 - 08:44 PM

I'm glad you made the mistake about Phillips--else I would not have heard of him.

Murray