Lyr Req: Swanno Mountain (Roscoe Holcomb)

Subject: Lyr Req: Swanno Mountain?
From: GUEST,C
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 06:34 PM

I can't figure out exactly what the hell Roscoe Holcomb is saying in Swanno Mountain. Want to sing it, but I don't mumble as good as him. I tried looking online, but...no dice. Apparently the lyrics are in the liner notes to the comp "Untamed sense of control" If you have it, can you post the lyrics please?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Swanno Mountain?
From: Big Mick
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 06:39 PM

OH ..... MY ..... GAWD ......... SPAW ....... SWANNO MOUNTAIN???????? We have got to do something with this.

Mick

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Swanno Mountain?
From: nickp
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 02:20 PM

The Swannanoa Mountain range, overlooks the Swannanoa Valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina

Subject: Lyr Add: SWANNO MOUNTAIN (Roscoe Holcomb)
From: 12-stringer
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 05:23 PM

I'm going back to the Swanno Mountain
Lordy that's my home, baby, that's my home.

Got sixteen brackets on my banjo
Lord it rings like silver, baby, shines like gold.

I got a letter from my woman
Lordy she's gone blind, baby, she can't see.

repeat verse 1

I got a letter from my captain
Lordy he's in jail, baby, he's in jail.

repeat verse 1

Lyrics from the note booklet in the vinyl edition.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Swanno Mountain?
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 20 Oct 06 - 09:57 AM

Holcomb's version is a brief survival of the earlier "Swannanoa Tunnel" / "Swannanoa Town," now verging on a century old.

Check out version by Bascom Lamar Lunsford (Folkways), the first to be sung widely in the folk community. Dulcimer singer and scholar Artus Moser also did a version.

It's one of the older hammer songs. Appears in Cecil Sharp's English Folk Songs From the Southern Appalachians V2, 42-3 as "Swannanoa Town" in two versions, one from Black Mt. NC, the other from Micaville NC, both sung by women, collected in 1916 and 1918 respectively.