Unaccompanied ballads

[Dusty Merritt]

Was the singing of unaccompanied vocal ballads common during the Civil War?

I've been listening lately to the ballads of Dillard Chandler, Roscoe Holcomb, and Dellie Norton, among others. They often learned their songs through oral tradition. Some of the ballads, like "Mathie Grove," date back as far as the 17th century. I know these songs were around during the war; I just don't recall ever encountering any references to the style in anything I've read. Does anyone know how common it was, how the style might have been different from its 20th century counterparts, and if there are any contemporary singers performing ballads in an accurate CW-era manner?

[Old Cremona]

Albert Baur, of the 102nd NY Infantry Regiment, wrote a series of articles after the war in which he described the music that was played by him and his comrades while in the field. He stressed that while the instrumental part of their music was rather weak, owing to the difficulties of maintaining instruments in the field, the vocal music they had was the equal of any professional company he ever heard after the war. When you get thousands and thousands of men together, you are going to find some amazing singers and vocal combo's.

I would encourage all the unaccompanied singing one could muster.

[ElizabethClark]

Go unaccompanied. The human voice is a versatile, portable instrument. The social institution of "singing schools" is a fun one for citizen life, and those and other social singing experiences, as well as singing for personal enjoyment, are fairly common in daily life according to my own reading.

[Danny]

Was the singing of unaccompanied vocal ballads common during the Civil War?... how the style might have been different from its 20th century counterparts, and if there are any contemporary singers performing ballads in an accurate CW-era manner?

Brendan -

Check out the sound track of "Songcatchers" for an introduction to authentic, unaccompanied, ballad singing. The movie itself was based on the story of actual academic research into this very aspect of early music in the U.S. Featured are contemporary singers performing ballads in a manner directly lifted from the earliest field recordings of certain singers in the Appalachians who retained a pure vocal style through 18th and 19th century generations, in that isolated setting.

From there, you will find that the original field recordings themselves are available on CD through the Folkways catalog.

Dan Wykes

“ I do not read music but can spell it out painfully, note by note. In the long ago, when I was a fair manipulator of the ‘gourd shell,’ I remember only three banjoists who read notes. They were Dan Emmett, G. Swayne Buckley and Frank B. Converse, who, by the way, was on the stage but a short time. Joe Sweeney didn’t know a note, nor did most of the banjoists of 40 or 50 years ago. In fact, when I was a boy, I often heard it said: ‘There are no notes to banjo, you just play it.”

- excerpt from the 1897 writings of Fred Mather, a contemporary of Joe Sweeney and also a minstrel banjoist (“Joel Sweeney and The First Banjo”, Arthur Woodward, in Los Angeles County Museum Quarterly Spring 1949, vols. 3, 7, 8)

[MBBursig]

I would hope that Marc Hermann, Jason Wickersty, Annie Pederson, and myself singing with a "natural twang" at events is authentic...

"Oh God forbid said Kind Henry That ever the like betide That ever a fiend that comes from Hell Would stretch down by my side"

[Dusty Merritt]

Check out the sound track of "Songcatchers" for an introduction to authentic, unaccompanied, ballad singing.

Thanks, Danny. Can't wait to check that out. It looks like they assembled a lot of great performers for it. I'm a big fan of Gillian Welch in particular.

Have you heard the Smithsonian Folkways comp "Dark Holler?" Old ballads sung by men and women who learned by oral tradition in the mountains around Sodom, NC. There's also a couple interesting banjo tunes played in the old frailing/clawhammer style and a Juba song. One thing that struck me as really fascinating is George Landers's "Scotland Man." John Cohen's liner notes explain, "His banjo duplicates precisely the sound of the words he sings, rather than setting down a basic rhythm."

Anyway, you should check it out if you haven't already. The 2005 version comes with a DVD of John Cohen's documentary on Dillard Chandler & other balladeers of Sodom. It's great to see them just sitting on their porches, staring off into the hills as they sing the songs of their ancestors.