Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Arkansas Traveler arrives on CD

BY JACK W. HILL
Several impending anniversaries provide an excuse for The Arkansas Traveler: Music From Little House on the Prairie.
The year 2007 will mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the series; the 75th anniversary of the first publication of one of the books; and the 140th anniversary of her birth.
But for Dale Cockrell, professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., the release of the CD — second in a planned series of at least 10 — is more like the fulfillment of a promise he made to his young son, to whom he was reading Wilder’s stories, while wishing for an easy way to also play the music that the author mentioned in her stories.
“Actually, it took quite a while to get it done,” Cockrell explains. “The idea came when my son, Sam, was 8, and he’s 17 now, and sort of embarrassed by it, since he’s into punk music. Hopefully, the time will come when he takes pride in having had a part in it.”
The 18-cut CD includes such recognizable (if somewhat differently titled) songs as the title cut, plus “Old Dan Tucker,” “The Gum Tree Canoe,” “Irish Washerwoman,” “Dixie’s Land,” “The Devil’s Dream” and “Oh! California (Oh! Susanna).”
The song “Arkansas Traveler” and its accompanying humorous tale is performed by Riders in the Sky.
Other featured singers include Mac Wiseman, John Cowan, Jeff Black and others known for their musicianship, including The Nashville Mandolin Ensemble, Alison Brown and the late dulcimer virtuoso, David Schnaufer.
Some of the songs were also on the first CD in the series, HappyLand: Musical Tributes to Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Cockrell, whose official title is director of American and Southern studies and professor of musicology and American studies, also knew that working on the musical project would be help- ful in his academic specialty. A native of the Paducah, Ky., area and a graduate of MurrayStateUniversity, he spent a dozen years teaching musicology at William & MaryCollege and has been on the faculty at Vanderbilt for 11 years.
“My specialty is American music, and when I read the books to my boy, I was amazed at the amount of music imbedded in them,” Cockrell says. “I sat down one Christmas season and did an index of them, coming up with more than 120 songs that Wilder mentioned. So that led to both a scholarly project and this effort to get the music out, which I named Pa’s Fiddle Recordings, since it was Laura’s pa who plays the music in the books.
“In my attempt to get all the music assembled, it took a year of pondering, and since I live in Nashville, Tenn., I figured I could round up some musicians who would be able to help, so I eventually got started. A couple of years ago, I sat down with my wife and a couple of our mutual funds and we got the legal means to really get launched.”
The first CD, HappyLand, was well-received by music and literary fans, but Cockrell learned that his listeners also wanted CDs that corresponded with the books. The series will eventually cover Wilder’s other eight books, one of which doesn’t mention any music.
“They wanted to hear the music as Wilder intended for it to be heard, as she heard it while writing the stories,” he explains, adding that he never saw the TV series, Little House on the Prairie, when it was first being broadcast, as it was a time when he lived in the backwoods of Vermont with no TV.
“We’ll probably also do a Christmas CD and one that has hymns,” he adds. “We had to decide whether to take the approach of reconstructing the songs to the way that ‘Pa’ played them, or go for what popular music has always done, which is to make it your own, to fit the context of your life, so that kids and their parents would hear it as something other than just quaint old music.
“That’s the approach we took, to do something that’s not just filed away as ‘quaint.’ I’d say we learned from O Brother Where Art Thou?, which my son grabbed onto when he was 10. That proved that you don’t have to dumb down music for kids, that it can be made where folks from 7 to 87 will love it. That film and soundtrack has changed our consciousness in lots of ways.”
Cockrell’s co-producer on the project was mandolinist Butch Baldassari.
For more information on the CDs, see the Web site
National Public Radio stations will broadcast a one-hour Christmas special during December; featured will be 10 of the songs on the Arkansas Traveler album, plus interviews, readings and commentary. Noah Adams will host the special and Riders in the Sky will be guests.
An 1870 Currier & Ives print of The Arkansas Traveler adorns the cover of a new CD featuring the song and others of its era that were mentioned in the Little House on the Prairie books.