"Down In Old Dolores"
CD on Fellside Recordings FECD259
October 2013 See Reviews
- listen
2. The Colorado Trail
- listen
3. Bright Sunny South
4. Lonesome Roving Wolves
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5. Johnson Boys
6. Bull Doze Blues
7. Old Dolores
8. Cherry River Line
- listen
9. Belle Starr
10. The Boaster
11. Black Bear On The Mountain
12. Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie
13. The Yankee & The Unicorn
14. Merry Willow Tree
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15. Rocky Island
Musicians
Credits
1. The Ballad Of Lost John Dean
This a fragment of Lost John Through The Corn or Long John a slave field holler about the escape of a runaway slave. This version, from the singing of Bascomb Lamar Lunsford, is based on an incident about a black ‘trusty’ incarcerated in Bowling Green, KY. He was the guinea pig in a test to see if the warden’s bloodhounds could track him down if he were let out. He was released in a field by the wardens but when John Dean found out about the plot, he outwitted the hounds by escaping on a boat down the river. He was never found!
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2. The Colorado Trail
From the singing of Don Edwards, a Texas rancher. This is a love song from the late 1800s from Deluth, MN. A cowboy was hospitalised with a bad back injury and sang it to the doctor, T.J.Chapman who attended him, and wrote down the words whilst he was in the hospital.
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3. Bright Sunny South
From the singing of Doc Boggs. There are strong indications that there were versions in the northern states before moving south and has been confused with The Rebel Soldier. The stylised language suggests it was of Irish origin. Some say it is a variant of The Sweet Sunny South but I think it is an entirely different song.
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4. Lonesome Roving Wolves
Words and music by Levi W. Hancock 1803-1882. Hancock was an early member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons). He marched with the Mormon Battalion from Iowa to Mexico and California during the Spanish-American war. He was listed on the roster as ‘Official Company E Musician’ and he wrote this ballad on the long trek.
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5. Johnson Boys
There are only two recordings of the Johnson Boys – The Grant Brothers and Al Hopkins & His Buckle Busters. In the latter, a rewrite, the Johnson Boys turn from ‘men of valor’ in the civil war to ‘buffoons’. What apparently happened here is that the ‘boys of honour’ version was the original, up to the Civil War. The song was popular with Southern troops, so the Northern troops started to satirize it.
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6. Bull Doze Blues
I learned this wonderful blues recently from Eleanor Ellis, a great blues singer and guitarist from Maryland. She told me that the term Bulldozers was used for racist ruffians who harassed Black people. The song is from Henry Thomas. Thomas was born into a family of freed slaves in Big Sandy, Texas in 1874. He began travelling the Texas rail lines as a hobo in his teens eventually earning his way as an itinerant musician. He had a brief recording career in the late 1920s and died in 1930. He is credited with providing the basis for what became known as Texas Blues guitar.
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7. Old Dolores
This sweetheart of a song written by James Grafton Rogers of Colorado in 1912 (including a verse by George Fraser of Denver), the inspiration coming from a deserted town in the Orteiz Mountains in New Mexico. It was a well known cattle drive point in the 1860s and 70s. Katie Lee, in her book ‘Ten Thousand God Damn Cattle’ believed the ‘Dolores’ in the song was actually in southern Colarado. I learned this lovely western song from Harry Tuft, who used to run the Denver Folklore Center.
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8. Cherry River Line
This is a West Virginia tune. The Cherry River Line was a railroad line build to haul wood out of the mountains to support the lumbering industry in the area. I learned it from a six-string banjo player, Jimmy McCown, of Hardy, KY
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9. Belle Starr
A song written by Woody Guthrie. Born in Carthage, MO 1848 Belle grew up in an affluent family who harboured outlaws and she continued to do the same when she married. In her teens during the Civil War, she reported the positions of the Union troops to the Confederacy. She had an affair with Cole Younger and they had a daughter, Pearl. Subsequently she married Jim Reed and fled to Texas in hiding. She had a son, Ed, who was killed in a bar room brawl. She married Sam Starr, a part Cherokee, in 1880. She was killed by her neighbour in a land dispute in 1889. The only man she feared was Bass Reaves the first African American lawman west of the Mississippi. Guthrie deals with eight of Belle Starr’s outlaw lovers in this amazing song.
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10. The Boaster
From the singing of Leonard Coulson of Salt Lake City. From the ‘Cowboy Poetry Collection’ – Elko Nevada. This song is sung from the cowboy’s perspective – talk told around the camp fire. It took me two months to memorise this crazy song, I bet it’s one I’ll never forget!
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11. Black Bear On The Mountain - tune
This tune has several alternative titles. I learned this lovely tune from my friend, Fred Coon, who lives in Arizona but comes from Virginia, who learned it from J.P.Fraley of Rush, Kentucky.
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12. Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie
From Bess Hawes, Alan Lomax’s sister. This is a reworking of the old song The Ocean Burial. This version from West Virginia, is a cowboy version and borrows a line which refers to a sea grave not a prairie one. Field Ward had an old unaccompanied version. In 1885 on the Ellison Ranch in Texas, Edmund Seymour, grandfather of my good friend John Patterson of Burlington, Vermont, rode twenty five miles for a coffin for the cook who had died. He described the funeral and then mentions that afterwards he heard one of the cowboys sing this song.
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13.The Yankee And The Unicorn
From Lena Borne Fish. On the surface of the song is the boxing match between Thomas Sayers the heavyweight champion of England, against John C Heenan ‘The Benicia Boy’ at Farnborough in Hampshire on 17 April 1860. The match lasted 37 rounds and came to an end when police intervened. The match was declared a draw. The fight was one of the most brutal in prize fighting history, putting to an end bare-fist fighting in England. On another level the song is a wonderful international rivalry between America and England. Ironically the combatants became good friends and went around fairgrounds doing demonstration matches. Heenan went on to fight Morrisey and Morrisey fought Heenan once and then got his henchmen to gang up on Heenan and beat him up. Perry, mentioned in verse 6 is Oliver Perry who in 1813 was supposed to command a fleet of ships to ward off the British for the control of Lake Erie and Ontario, but it never happened.
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14. The Merry Willow Tree
Also known as The Sweet Trinity, The Lowlands Low and The Golden Vanity. Recorded by John Quincy Wolf, Jr. and is in the John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection, Lyon College, Batesville, Arkansas. This is one of my favourite versions from the singing of Almeda Riddle of Timbo, AR.
A broadside of 1682-85 in which Sir Walter Raleigh plays the ungrateful captain, seems to have been the ultimate ancestor of the abundant traditional copies of this ballad found in the British Isles and America. Sir Walter has dropped out entirely; the ship’s name now appears variously as Golden Tree, Golden China Tree, Golden Willow Tree, Golden Erilee. Most traditional versions persist with the melancholy ending in which the cabin boy is cheated of his earned reward, but many American singers sentimentalise the conclusion, bestowing the captain’s daughter, wealth and other honours on the hero.
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15. Rocky Island
I learned this great old time song from Joe Newberry of Raleigh, NC. He sings and plays it like a dream!
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Credits
Recorded by Paul Adams and George Hunter-Brown
Produced by Paul Adams
Cover concept by Sara & Dave MacLurg
Photograph by Charles Mühle
Layout by Mary Blood
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Musicians
Sara Grey Banjo, Vocals
Kieron Means Guitar, Vocals
Ben Paley Fiddle
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