Lyr Add: Evolution Girl

Subject: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 03:14 PM

Evolution Girl

Once I met a fair young lady
And I learned to love her well
She believes there is no Saviour
And she says there is no Hell

Cheeks were red; her eyes do sparkle
And her hair was chestnut brown
She believes in evolution
And she lives in New York Town

And she says we came from monkeys
Many many years gone by
But I know she'll need a Saviour
When her time shall come to die

Won't you change your way of living
Won't you be a better girl
And prepare to meet the Saviour
In a bright and better world

You must walk that lonesome valley
You must cross that troubled tide
Don't you want to meet your mother
Over on the other side

Don't believe in false teaching
For the truth to you I've told
Don't believe in evolution
For the devil will get your soul

Transcribed (CB) from the recording "Evolution Girl" by the Double Decker String Band.
Their liner note:
"Evolution Girl" was recorded by the Carolina Buddies. We'd rather not talk about it. Scope it out for yourself.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 04:18 PM

*grin*

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 08:52 PM

Ah! Thanks for the 'ID Approved' song!

Any more, anyone?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 09:34 PM

It took some really intelligent design to write that song !!! ;-)

That said, I love the Double Decker guys. And this is a favorite song of mine of all the fine ones that they do. It has a great tune. It is a unique, well stated polemic that, miraculously, manages to exhibit exquisite irony in that it champions one side even while advocating the opposite position! CRAIG JOHNSON, who sang high tenor with this band for many years, is one of my favorite song makers of all time. He is one of the singer/songwriters whose written compositions sound like they could easily be actual folksongs. I think that's one main reason why I love them so much; why I gravitated to them in the first place. The other reason is that the tales told in his songs truly transport the listener to other eras and places where hard times labor scenarios shine revealing light on situations folks ought to know about. --- I do believe I was the first one to record his taumatergic songs "The Keweenaw Light" and "Fire In The Jackpines". (If I sound proud of that fact, it's because I am!) -------- Later on, I put his songs A North Country Tragedy" and "Way Down The Road" on my last CD in 1998.

Now I'm wondering who wrote this one??! Or did the song simply evolve Might it be one of Craig Johnson's ???

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: Joe Offer
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 10:01 PM

D'ya think Craig would tell you who wrote it, Art? Seems to me that if he'd tell anybody, he'd tell you (and then you could tell US).
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 11:23 PM

This song has been one of my favorites on a favorite album. The Carolina Buddies were recording in the late '20s/early '30s, so I doubt Craig Johnson wrote the song for them. :-)

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 11:45 PM

But Art's been around forever!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 03:44 AM

But, alas, I won't be!

(Around forever, that is ;-)

Joe,

I've lost his E-mail address. Last thing I recall, he is in North Carolina, with a PhD now, and teaching. But if you'd like to check out a photo of him with Cathy Fink, wearing a monkey mask and putting a hollowed out, carved-like-a-pumpkin, watermelon on his head---just go to my folk photos web site.
http://rudegnu.com/art_thieme.html

Once again: To get in to view my snapshots, when prompted, enter the lower case word, mudcat, as both the "password" AND the "user name".

In the photos there are some of Craig jamming with the fine fiddler Joe Thompson. Also, a few of him singing with Cathy and Alice Girrard and John Beam and Mike Seeger back in the 1980s. We were in Takoma Park, Maryland and had a jug of moonshine---which explains (sort of) both the watermelon and why and how the watermelon got on Mr. Johnson's head. The monkey mask Cathy was wearing was a stage thing she sometimes wore when playing a style of frailed banjo she had invented called "Monkey Music". In it, specific out-of-the-chord notes appeared at unusual, but regular, intervals a bit like what Charlie Parker did on his sax. --- As you, maybe, can see from my choice of words here, recounting that good afternoon prods me to feel the effects of that good moonshine whiskey all over again (to paraphrase Yogi Berra ;-)

Art (I can't sleep tonight!! ;-)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 11:08 AM

Becky,

I'd never heard of the Carolina Buddies before. Is there a reissue record with this song on it? (And thanks for that insight!)

Art

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 01:09 PM

You might also check out:
The Bible's True
The Big Band Theory
It's a Long Way From Amphioxus
The Darwinian Theory
The Scopes Trial
and
That's All

They're all in the DT.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 02:08 PM

Here's the story of one of their "hits", Otto Wood as told in The Old Time Herald. Sound file included. It's the sort of thing you'll like, Art.

http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-9/9-6/otto-wood.html

Actually, though the lineup changed every now and then, the lineup on this page was a common one. Odell Smith and Norman Woodlieff who played with Charlie Poole at opposite ends of his career and Walter "Kid" Smith.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 02:17 PM

http://www.honkingduck.com/BAZ/baz_one.php?req=ARTIST&pg=2&auid=1060

Carolina Buddies at Honking Duck. Broken Hearted Lover, Otto Wood The Bandit,The Murder Of The Lawson Family. No Evolution Girl, though.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 02:57 PM

I remember the Stanley Brothers (Carter Stanley vocalizing)doing "The Murder Of The Lawson Family" at the first or second (maybe the third) University Of Chicago Folk Festival--1961--or '62 (maybe '63). A fine old song -- carried on...

I've got that old Old Time Herald issue with the Otto Wood article. Thanks for reminding me! That good magazine is one of the indispensable ones for me.

I probably must've heard the Carolina Biddies before after all.

Art

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 06:16 PM

Foolestroupe: What's this term "ID approved" I keep seeing?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 07:37 PM

'Intelligent Design Approved'

;-)

(It's all about a Religious argument with followers of Darwin!)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: frogprince
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 08:00 PM

But, when you consider the age of the song, was it really written essentially as irony? To a certain extent, yeah; it's too light-hearted, with the narrator loving the rosy-cheeked gal despite her beliefs, to be a straight-faced diatribe. But, if this came out of the southland (did it?)of the '20s, don't bet that the writer really believed in that citified, Satanic, Yankee doctrine.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 08:05 PM

I have no doubt it was written in utter seriousness. I do doubt that most late 20th cent./ early 21st cent. performers sing it without irony. :-)

~ Becky in Tucson
(Double Decker cited the Carolina Buddies; I Googled 'em. Beyond that, others have replied better than I could.)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 08:59 AM

The Carolina Buddies' recording of MY EVOLUTION GIRL appears on "Walter Smith and Friends, Vol. 2 (1930-1931)," Document CD 8063, 2003. (Walter Smith was a member of The Carolina Buddies.) Allmusic.com lists the composer as "Smith."

Among the other songs on that album are WHEN HE DIED HE GOT A HOME IN HELL performed by Kid Williams and the Texas Mud Splashers, and GOD'S GETTING WORRIED by the Virginia Dandies.

Subject: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GUEST,Wally Macnow
Date: 08 Jan 24 - 12:57 PM

As recorded by The Double Decker String Band. To me, it sounds like it could have been written by Craig Johnson but I never asked any of the band members. I've never heard anyone else play it. If anyone knows anything about the source, I'd sure be interested.

EVOLUTION GIRL
Songwriter?

Once I met a fair young lady
And I learned to love her well
She believed there is no saviour
And she said there is no hell.

Cheeks were red. Her eyes did sparkle
And here hair was chestnut brown
She believed in evolution
And she lived in New York town

And she said we came from monkeys
Many, many years gone by
But I know she'll need a saviour
When her time shall come to die

Won't you change your way of living
Won't you be a better girl
And prepare to meet the saviour
In a bright and better world

You must walk that lonesome valley
You must cross that troubled tide
Don't you want to meet your mother
Over on the other side

Don't believe in false teachings
For the truth to you I've told
Don't believe in evolution
For the devil will get your soul

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GUEST,Wally Macnow
Date: 08 Jan 24 - 01:02 PM

Just found this from the Liner notes posted by Brenda VanLunen.
“Evolution Girl was recorded by the Carolina Buddies. We’d rather not talk about it. Scope it out for yourself.”

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: cnd
Date: 08 Jan 24 - 01:29 PM

Thanks for sharing, Wally. Looks like we have an earlier thread on it: link

The Carolina Buddies were a 1920s/30s string band based out of North Carolina. Most known for their song Otto Wood the Bandit, several of the members of the Buddies were the same as those of Charlie Poole's North Carolina Ramblers. This particular song was written by the group's guitarist and vocalist, Walter "Kid" Smith.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: cnd
Date: 07 Mar 24 - 08:08 AM

I was looking through old posts of mine recently in an effort to contribute to another thread and realized that I failed to actually include the link: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=86805

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 08 Mar 24 - 04:47 AM

Evolution Girl - Double Decker String Band        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_3fXc7_nQg

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Evolution Girl
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 08 Mar 24 - 05:46 AM

The Carolina Buddies-My Evolution Girl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SroCAqw8Q4