H ILL IN I S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

PRODUCTION NOTE

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007.

Number 22 ( i w November 21, 1,964

SEEGER-BOGGS CONCERT-LECTURE TO BE GIVEN DECEMBER 8 AND 9, 1964

Come all you good time people While I've got money to spend. Tomorrow might mean money And I neither have a dollar nor a friend.

Dock Boggs is a man of sensitivity and honesty when it comes to music--he is a man with his own interesting style, known by most as " ." But no matter what you call it, it is unique and haunting in its esoteric way. For Dock, the that he sings are his life capsuled in music, and when he sings them, his body and face cry their meaning,

Dock is sixty-six years old, but he is young in his mind and his playing, and his fingers are as spry as ever. His feeling for his music springs from the very hard life that he had led, as is indicated in the above stanza from one of his best known songs, "The Country Blues," which may be heard on the Smith Anthology of .

In the July, 196h issue of Sing Out magazine, Dock tells about some of his experiences in the coal mines. He describes the trouble that they had unionizing, and of the great number of accidents that occurred in the dangerous mines.

In his own words Dock describes his feelings on the music that he sings:

"...(it's) something I've been 50 or 53 years learning, and plenty of the younger generation wants to learn...I feel I am doing something worthwhile for my country; as long as the Lord gives me strength and health and people want to hear me and I can make a little money, I intend to give it to them."

Dock will be accompanied by Mike Seeger of the New Lost City Ramblers. Mike plays , banjo, , autoharp, and harmonica, though he probably won't play all of these on Wednesday night. On December 8th Mike will give a lecture in l1l Commerce Building, and the next night, the 9th, Dock and Mike will give a concert in the Illini Room. Both events will take place at 8:00 p.m.

LIFE WITH CFC

Twang'. (plunk) Twang'. (plunk plunk)...That's the sound of a guitar class in full swing. Every Saturday afternoon at 2 o'clock I join fifteen or twenty other "advanced" guitar students at the Illini Union for my guitar lessons. The benefits of this adventure are certainly multifold: first, I am learning to play the chorus to "John Henry" with my shiny steel finger picks and little plastic thumb pick; second, while twang-plunking away I can gaze into the handsome eyes of our leader and instructor, Jont Allen; and third, I get all these benefits for the paltry sum of three dollars and fifty cents. Isn't that a bargain for anyone '. I could have taken banjo lessons, also, but they are held at 2 o'clock, too. Or maybe I should have joined the "beginners" at 1 o'clock. Frankly, I feel fine right where I am. Where's that? In the Campus Folksong Club, of course. How'd I get there? Well, thatts a long story.

You see, I was a freshman like any other freshman--except for one fact. I attended Freshman Conference. Now this was not entirely my idea of a lovely way to spend the last few days before my banishment to the U of I campus (as my little freshie mind conjectured); but with my father's helping push, I arrived at the YMCA-YWCA Encampment. As I sat there one day, minding my own business and happily slugging homers and doubles for our baseball team, (the trip was highly educational), a big bear-like creature rode into view. Not exactly bear-like though; more the creature-from-outer-space type. It had a helmet on its head, a shaggy face (one of those funny beards, you know) and a huge, bulky covering over its upper half. After watching it gracefully dismount from its mobile vehicle (a Honda to us earthlings), I returned to my baseball game.

That night at our cozy bonfire (we called it a bonfire out of politeness, as it was rather small), I learned that the creature had singled me out. I, too, have hair under my chin. It seems that he was the Leader of a non-profit organization entitled the Campus Folksong Club (I knew he was from outer space) and he was trying to attract people to the Club. Being a typical, trusting freshman, I was attracted. Introductions and discussions ensued. President Allen presented me with a two-foot- long list of committee chairmanships and calmly said, "Choose one." Stabbing with the fingernail of my right index finger (I honestly had fingernails before I took guitar lessons. Fingers, too.), I hit upon a job marked Folksing. "Oh, Folksing'." I exclaimed, "What's that?" "Oh, Folksing ." he exclaimed, "that's tough luck ."

And soon I was attending meetings, talking to outside organizations, arranging Folksings, cornering folksingers and prying into their lives, and generally having a ball making a nuisance of myself. As I sit here drawing delicate, intricate, and artistic posters for our next Folksings, I look back on it all in nostalgia (ad "nauseum"?). My life has been radically changed since the Club took me in. My knowledge of bluegrass and other folk music had been rather superficial up till now. I didn't even know Doc Watson had a family'. Now, however, the Campus Folksong Club and its members consume half my time here at college. Between executive committee meetings, Folksings, and private meetings with the President, I am completely steeped in folk music. In fact, I'm even starting to look like a guitar.

Meanwhile, my natural feminine shyness is hiding in a corner of myself: with my present duties, I can't afford to be bashful. I guess you might say that CFC is helping me develop into a well-rounded person. Pinning down those folksingers, recording names, places, and events, conducting a Folksing for all those shining faces out there--all these duties are turning me into a responsible and dependable person. Providing entertainment for a keen, alert audience is as thrilling to me as it is to them. And if I need help, I can always call on President Jont, VP John Munday, or our advisor, Archie Green.

Between these duties, though, I keep up my twang-plunking in hopes that some day I too can play the chorus to "John Henry." Every Saturday I trudge up to 217 Illini Union (the ancient part) and go through that little green door. I pluck away at my A-string with my shiny steel finger picks and at my G-string with my little plastic thumb pick while gazing into the handsome eyes of our instructor and leader, Jont Allen--and all for the paltry sum of three dollars and fifty cents. Isn't that a bargain for anyone ,

-- Carol Palmer

A GENERAL BUSINESS MEETING

of

THE CAMPUS FOLKSONG CLUB

is called for

WEDNESDAY -- DECEMBER 2, 1964

at 8:00 pm

in

ROOM 215 ILLINI UNION

Members Please Note:

Various constitutional amendments will be considered and voted on. See next page for proposed amendments. PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION of the CAMPUS FOLKSONG CLUB

December 2, 196h

To Amend:

Article II - Aim to read: The aim of the Campus Folksong Club is to facilitate the study, exchange, and enjoyment of traditional folk material.

Article III, Sec. 1 add: Such members shall be designated regular members.

Article V, Sec. 7 to read: ... by a simple plurality of regular members...

Article VIII, Sec. 2 to read: ... by a 2/3 vote of regular m.mbrs...

Article VI - Meetings to read: ...at least once a semester, during the first half of the semester.

Article VII - Rules add: Sec. 2. No regular member shall be compensated financially, or in kind by the Club for functions on behalf of, or services to the Club.

Article VIII - Adoption and Amendments add: Sec. 3. All members shall be notified in writing prior to business meetings of proposed constitutional amendments.

To Add:

Article X - By-Laws Section 1. The Campus Folksong Club shall have By-Laws.

Section 2. The By-Laws shall be the working rules of the Club.

Section 3. All By-Laws shall be passed by a majority of the members of the Executive Committee present at a meeting.

Robert Koenig Recording Secretary

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I : AN APPRECIATION

They Came '. They Sang ' They Conquered t This sums up the Campus Folksong Club's first concert of this season in which the nearly-forgotten Blue Sky Boys of were presented. From the opening strains of their old radio theme , "Are You From Dixie," to the closing strains of this same song presented as an encore, the Blue Sky Boys, Bill and Earl Bolick, indeed had conquered the hearts of the audience. After a brief introduction they opened the program with the first song they recorded for Victor Records in 1936, "I'm Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail." They continued with such numbers as "The Knoxville Girl," "The Fox," "Kentucky," "Sunny Side of Life," "Little Bessie," "In the Hills of Roane County," and many many more.

The duo's was enhanced by comments on early days in radio and the recording industry which were freely interspersed among the ballads, songs, and hymns. The vocal balance of Earl singing lead and playing the guitar with Bill on the mandolin singing tenor was simply amazing. They blended together so well that it was virtually impossible to tell at times which voice belonged to which brother. Their presentation was beautiful, and the concert was a truly exciting occasion. I maintain that of the vocal duets of the past or present, none can top the Blue Sky Boys.

The remarkable feature of this concert was that this was the first time in more than a dozen years that the Blue Sky Boys had sung in public. Bill lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Earl lives in Tucker, Georgia. Before their October 17 visit to Illinois, they got together for about three days practice. This was the second time in twelve years that they had practiced. The previous time that they got together to sing was over a year ago when they went to Nashville to make their two recent for Starday Records.

There were a few times during their Lincoln Hall appearance when mistakes were made, but for the most part it sounded as if Bill and Earl had been singing together every day of their lives.

From the standpoint of the folk revival and living tradition this was the most important concert ever presented by the Campus Folksong Club. In the past several years much effort has been made on the part of individuals and groups to "dig up the traditional voices from the past and get them started on a second musical career. The presentation of the Blue Sky Boys was a major contribution in this area. Bill and Earl were a little reluctant to commit themselves at first, but having done so they were pleased and really surprised at the response of college students to their music.

The Blue Sky Boys are still young (both in their hO's) and they have a tremendous treasury of talent to offer the folk music world. It is the hope of our Club that this concert is the first and not the last to be performed by the memorable Blue Sky Boys in their "second" career.

An excellent selection of traditional folksongs recorded by Bill and Earl Bolick can now be heard on RCA Victor's re-release of 12 of their 78 rpm records: The Blue Sky Boys, Camden CAL 797.

--Preston Martin THE BLUE SKY BOYS - A HAPPY REVIVAL

by Naomi Hare

On Saturday, October 17th, Dick Reuss, I.U.F.C. Concert Committee Chariman, and I trekked over to Urbar• to hear the University of Illinois Campus Folksong Club's first paid concert of the year. This was a unique event: the Blue Sky Boys, the famous duo of the late '30's and 40O's, had been persuaded by several interested students, with the assistance of Archie Green, the CFC's faculty advisor, to return to their music for this concert. This was no simple undertaking: one of the Bolick brothers lives in Greensboro, N.C. and the other in ; each of them had to take vacation time from a regular job. Playing together again for only the second time in hIyears, Bill and Earl Bolick neverthe- less made some of the most beautiful music that any audience could hope to hear. Despite Bill's apologies for their "blunders" (where does one go for "blundering" lessons?), their harmonies and arrangements were as sweet as ever, and, juding by the RCA Camden rerelease of their old Bluebird recordings, time has, if anything, mellowed and smoothed their voices.

The concert was a long one, with numbers ranging from their old radio theme song, "Are You From Dixie?" to a long, more traditional version of "Barbara Allen", done by Bill Bolick alone, forsaking his mandolin for a guitar. A great deal of their material is frankly sentimental, both secular and sacred, yet they did several traditional selections: "Butcher's Boy"; "Knoxville Girl"; "Worried Man Blues", as well as recreating one of their radio specialties: a session with "Uncle Josh", a back country jokester.

Near the end of the evening, Bill went into some detail about conditions in the recording industry at the time they first recorded (1936 on). He noted that often performers were not allowed retakes on items they felt they had not done their best on, and that groups playing something for "timing" would often be informed afterwards that that was the recording'. This direct communication with people who "were there" is one of the best things about the "folksong revival": these few remarks were very enlightening. He also commented wryly on the three albums they made for Starday two years ago, remarking on the drums, electric and honky tonk piano that the company felt necessary to add to their ensemble .

Bill Bolick himself said on stage, "We don't feel we fall under the bluegrass category." Indeed, they seem to be a category of their own. Taken individually, the guitar, mandolin, repertoire or individual singing are not virtuosic. Combined into the incredible blend of the two voices, perfectly backed by the two instruments, however, the Blue Sky Boys produce a sound which has probably never been duplicated.

As Archie Green remarked in his cover notes for the RCA Camden record, "It is ironic that they ceased performing on the eve of the city 'discovery' of country music." (1951) It was a minor miracle that they were persuaded to come to Urbana, and encouraging to see how well received they were by the CFC audience. Folk and country music lovers would be doing the musical scene a favor if they could persuade the Blue Sky Boys to perform again regularly: they are still in their musical prime and deserve to be known as live musicians, not just as old recordings.

Reprinted from: IUFC Blue Yodel, Vol. 3, No. 1

The IUFC Blue Yodel is the official publication of the Indiana University Campus Folksong Club, Bloomington, Indiana. 200 Watch Irish Tale-teller... ENNIS STARS IN FOLKSING by F. K. Plous, Jr.

Anyone who might have walked unprepared into 180 Bevier Hall last night got what he deserved.

The casual visitor, like the 200 members of the Campus Folksong Club assembled there, would have been quickly reduced to jibbering and delighted admiration by the talents of Seamus Ennis, the Irish tale teller and musician who held the spotlight at the Club's first membership concert of the season.

Ennis regaled the rapt audience with his Uillean bagpipe tunes, his dazzling hornpipes and jigs played on the penny whistle, his ballads and comic songs and-- most delightful of all--his rambling Celtic humor, a collection of ancedotes, wry observations, recollections, inuendoes, philosophizing and other assorted drol- leries, all of which come under the heading of what the Irish call blarney and the Americans call something else, and which the audience, apparently, never got enough of.

If Ennis achieved anything distinctive at Thursday night's concert of tradi- tional Irish music it must have been the way in which he demonstrated how folk music and folklore run together to produce a real folk entertainer. It was difficult to determine just where a song ended and a story began, since every musical number seemed to have a story to go with it. Ennis successfully wove his music and his lore together into one evening-long unit.

The reviewer was captivated by the fast Irish dances which Ennis brought out of his little brass penny whisle--the hornpipes, slip-jigs and reels which tax the musician as much as the dancer. The audience seemed to realize the difficulty of these works, but at the same time acknowledged their beauty. There were a great many feet tapping in Bevier Hall Thursday night.

As for the tales--it is doubtful that the Club has ever presented an artist who could spin such delightful yarns with such apparent ease as Ennis. Of course, the talent for tales is supposed to be one traditional with the Irish, but it still is hard to imagine even another Irishman surpassing Ennis' gift of fancy gab and outrageously silly stories.

It is difficult for a man to carry on for two hours with his tongue in his cheek and not injure himself; Ennis did it. His audience loved it.

Perhaps they were warned of what was coming by the merry twinkle which Ennis could not banish from his eye, or perhaps (and this is the whole theory behind the telling of such tales), people just like to be deliberately bamboozled with fantasy and fancy words. If so, men like Ennis are just what is needed to cater to such a harmless and delightful lust.

Reprinted from: Daily Illini, October 9, 196h BLUES ATO/W MF -^ ;^-Ol;Zjl ,

BLUES AT NEWPORT. BROWNIE McGHEE and SONNY TERRY (vocals, guitar, harmonica)-- Long Gone, Key to the Highway, Walk On. MISSISSIPPI JOHN HURT (vocals, guitar)-- Candy Man, Frankie, Trouble, I've Had It All My Days. JOHN HAMMOND (vocals, guitar, harmonica)--No Money Down, Me and the Devil, Tallahassee Woman. REV. GARY DAVIS (vocals, guitar)--Samson and Delilah, You Got to Move. JOHN LEE HOOKER (vocals, guitar)--Sometimes You Make Me Feel So 3ad, Bus Station Blues. DAVE VAN RONK (vocal, guitar)--That Will Never Happen No More, Gambler's Blues. Vanguard VRS-91h5

A slice of performances from the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, this Vanguard disk contrasts the delicate balladry of John Hurt and the explosive energy of John Hammond. Elsewhere, there is a great porridge to be dealt with.

The distance between Hurt and Hammond might be several light years instead of the few board feet spanning their Festival locations. Since his recorded debut for Vanguard, Fanmond has honed his brilliant delivery still more and attacks lyric and guitar with unflagging elan and intensity: one senses the bravado and swagger of the fellow who wants that Cadillac (No Money Down) and the extras that have extras (rollaway bed, short wave radio, telephone, etc.). No longer reigns the Ford (now "old" and "ragged") which Sleepy John Estes 25 years ago dubbed the Poor Man's Friend EDecca 7hh23 and whose motive reliability Cleo Gibson pridefully recalled in her jaunty I've Got Ford Engine Movements in My Hips (OKeh 8700, 1929; reissued on Odeon JAZZ SOUNDS OF THE TWENTIES, Vol. 4, 1177).

For evocations of the guttiness of the vehicles which drone in America in the ' 6 0's and the hell-bent-for-rubber spirit of the men who drive or await them, Hammnond's whiplash guitar holds the field. Shifting down nudges Hammond's voice into a role of greater responsibility. Because his material here (Me and the Devil) is sung partly in falsetto without either sustaining a particular mood or serving to characterize a dramatic contrast in lyric meaning (cf. Robert Johnson's use of falsetto in Kindhearted Woman Blues, ROBERT JOHNSON, Col. 165), Hammond turns in an unconvincing performance. His voice remains an unknown quantity in that range between gutteral bursts in the lower register and tissue-thin statements in the upper. Musically, the Real John Hammond has yet to stand up--at least, all the way up.

In the Festival but apart from it, John Hurt reminds one of a rare cameo in a super-market of contemporary paintings. McGhee and Terry are Old Hands and fit into the proceedings, professionally. Van Ronk's is a bald, patently theatrical filip that goes from moderately mediocre to mediocre. John Lee Hooker is a studied, stilted performer who indeed may have been the last of the (recently) great blues singers. Only the Rev. Gary Davis, represented by numbers taped at the 1959 New- port Festival, stands outside this pedestrian group. Against this backdrop, Hurt distinguishes his art and musical individuality. Rather than annoy, Hurt's low-keyed turns of phrase and elegantly simple instru- mental figures compel attention to the total performance, into which they fit with a remarkable justness and grace. Hurt's songs, thereby, seem lifted from another world for transmission. intact and unspoiled into a society whose models of folk music style and content bend under the pressures exerted by entrepreneurs, concert situations, and mass audience expectations.

THE IMMORTAL CHARLIE PATTON. NO. 2. Charlie Patton (vocals, guitar) w/Henry Sims (vocal and violin on 1) and Bertha Lee (vocal on 2). Shake It and Break It But (Don't Let It Fall Mama), Down the Dirt Road Blues, Dry Well Blues, A Spoon- ful Blues, High Water Everywhere (Pts. 1 & 2), It Won't Be Long, Bird Nest Round, Yellow Bee 2, Revenue Man Blues, Pony Blues, When Your Way Gets Dark, Come Back Corina 1, Banty Rooster Blues, Tom Rushen Blues, Hammer Blues. Origin Jazz Library 7.

With PATTON NO. 2, OJL has reissued 32 of the nearly 60 released sides recorded by the Mississippi Delta singer alone or in the company of Henry Sims and Bertha Lee between 1929-193h. As OJL-1 revealed, Patton was an intense, uncompromising vocalist of monochromatic persuasion whose harsh delivery and unrelenting guitar cadence were dramatically effective.

Nonetheless, this new release uncovers additional facets of Patton's style and approach to song materials. On A Spoonful Blues, Patton is, in turn, sly, boastful, and matter-of-fact as he mimics the woman who asks, "Would you kill my man?" (in a high voice), replies with a spoken, "Yes, I will, baby, you know I'll kill him" and sings, "Just about a (guitar completes phrase) spoonful." The lyrics and half-jests about the volatile relationships of men and women reflect Patton's sensitivity to his world--a world in which Patton and his friends often enter- tained at the country balls, as those lusty dance-dine-and-drink parties which belonged to Delta weekends were known.

The bonus numbers are interesting. Bertha Lee is fully in the "hard" Delta tradition: her Yellow Bee abounds in abrasive slurs and vocal quavers and is a fit companion to Patton's darker-hued chants. Henry Sims' voice, however, is unexceptional, and Come Back Corrina is chiefly interesting for Sims' mournful violin.

Well-worth the price of admission, as they say, are the notes which accompany OJL-7. In unhurried fashion, Bernard Klatzko reports the search which he and Gayle Wardlow made in August 1963 for data on Charlie Patton's life. That search, from one small place to the next, following leads, rumors, hunches, etc., makes for high drama for anyone who has ever nourished the slighest wish to do "field" research. The value of the fundamental research shows up in the quality of Klatzko's statements about Patton's music.

--Ronald C. Foreman, Jr. SON HOUSE AT PURDUE

On Saturday, November lh, two carloads of UI Club members headed for Purdue University. Their purpose was to meet and hear the recently rediscovered singer, Son House. For some it was their first introduction to the Country Blues, and for others it was a legend brought back to life.

Eddie "Son" House, now 62, was found last June in Rochester, New York, by Dick Waterman--his present manager, Phil Spiro, and Nick Perls, three blues enthusiasts from the East Coast. Their search took three weeks and covered 3800 miles in 16 states. House is the last of the early Mississippi Delta blues singers. This low, flat, cotton-rich land has contributed a long list of great musicians from Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton--Son's old friends--to John Lee Hooker, Big Joe Williams, and Muddy Waters. This was Son's first tour of the Midwest and only his second or third appearance before a college audience. Before this tour he appeared for two weeks at Boston's Unicorn coffeehouse, and recently he gave a concert in his home town, Rochester, with .

The Purdue concert was given in the small St. Thomas Aquinas Hall before a crowd of about 150. None of us knew what Son was going to be like after 20 years of not playing professionally. But from the reaction to his first few songs, it became obvious that no one was disappointed. The most striking thing about his music is its intensity. Few artists are so thoroughly involved in their songs. It was easy to see the importance and meaning blues music has to its artist. All Son's blues are his own, based on his experience. He is a self-taught guitarist and plays his music in a style that emphasizes his voice. Voice and instrumental technique are so well intertwined that often he'll stop singing in the middle of a verse and the guitar will finish it. Son's National is given rough use by his heavy plucking of the base strings. These base notes are balanced by the numerous variations he gets from the treble strings by sliding a copper tube on his ring finger up and down the neck. Son plays in three tunings: natural or standard (E-A-D-G-B-E), Spanish tuning (E-A-E-A-C#-E) and cross natural tuning (which can be either open D or E).

In addition to blues, House sings many religious songs. Son claims he knows more of these than blues. Most of his sacred songs were learned when he was a boy in the Baptist Church (which forbade playing of musical instruments). Others he learned later as a part-time preacher. He always hated guitar music ("Oh, those sinnin' guitar men") until he was 21 and heard a man named Willie Wilson play ("It was so good, even though I wanted to hate it, I just couldn't"). Son made a h-string guitar and started playing church music. Later he got a 6-string and improved his religious music. He never abandoned church music, but found new expression in the blues. He can also play all his music on the piano, except for a few blues numbers.

Before playing a song at Purdue Son would explain what it meant and the source of his idea. Usually he prefaced a song by telling a story from his life or explaining a scriptural passage. When he'd play, he would shut his eyes, rock back and forth on his chair, and work his hands to make the guitar say just what he wanted. In a time when so many people play things they know nothing about and that are not a part of their living, it was enriching to see a man of such sincerity and honesty. All Son's listeners knew they were hearing real music. After the concert, at a party we had a chance to talk with Son and learn his reactions to the whole business of being rediscovered. "At first," he said, "I got to thinking I was too old; who'd want to hear an old man playing old music? But Dick (Waterman) said I could do it. And then I thought that sometimes you're just as old as you think you are."

Son may be heard on record, but these are all reissues of his early recordings and are found on Folkways 2467 and Origin Jazz Library, Volumes 2 and .5-With age, Son has lost some of the magnificent guitar ability heard on these records, but his intensity and expression are as potent now as they were in 1930. Son says of himself: "I'm an old man with young ideas."

--Bruce Hector

DO YOU LIKE MEAT PIES?

A touch of the macabre was injected into last Friday night's folksing when Fritz Plous sang a cockney ballad, "Sweeney Todd the Barber," about a seventeenth century barber who provided meat pies for the beggars of London. "What a fine, generous thing to do," you might say. But as the story unfolded, the audience began to squirm, for it turned out that Sweeney's meat supply was not exactly Kosher. He would put his customer into the barber chair, then--zip, cut his throat and--whoosh, open a trap door into the basement. Below the barber shop, Sweeney's girlfriend busily made the meat pies and sold them to the poor Londoners. Many was the poor orphan lad, as the song goes, that kept body and soul together by eating a meat pie made of his father'.

Eventually, Sweeney Todd was caught when the trap door stuck and the frightened customer in the chair bolted out of the shop and called for help. Since police had not yet been invented, a group of citizens appre- hended Sweeney and he was sentenced to swing at Tynebourne. Fritz, however, added an alternative ending: Sweeney's basement was raided when a suspicious customer found a fingernail in his pie. (Shades of dormitory food .)

-- Janis Smith DORSEY DIXON ON LP

Dorsey Dixon, a North Carolina textile worker and important folk music recording artist of the 1930's, can now be heard on his first LP . It is scheduled for release before Thanksgiving Day, 1964, and is titled "Babies In The Mill." The jacket is designed by A. Doyle Moore, UI Art Department faculty member. The liner notes are written by Archie Green, UI Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations faculty member. Below we reprint, with permission, the album's liner notes.

Babies In The Mill (Testament T3301)

The association of American folksong with southern rural life is so appealing that when hearing native song one visualizes cabins in cotton patches or cabins framed by mountain pines. Yet, since the Civil War, many cabin-like dwellings were hammered together in drab southern mill and factory towns. Dorsey Murdock Dixon was born in such an industrial village. All his life he worked in textiles, and he still lives a stone's throw from his former work site, the Aleo Mill, East Rockingham, North Carolina.

Dorsey Dixon does not conceive his role as a champion or chronicler of his fellow textile workers. His self-perception is that of an evangelical Christian teaching gospel with song, a country-sacred song composer, and even a popular entertainer. Yet this portrait fits thousands of individuals, amateur and pro- fessional, who have created, carried, and cared for folksong.

Dorsey is distinguished from his peers precisely because he adds to the normal characterization of the hillbilly musician a deep knowledge and feeling for industrial life. Except for a few dollars earned on the radio and in phonograph recording studios, his fortune has been that of a "millhand," and he has been gifted enough to weave the tone of his own experience into a handful of industrial songs presented here on his first LP. This record includes work, sacred, and secular songs and ballads sung by Dorsey as well as by his sister Nancy and late brother Howard. They, too, were Aleo workers. Nancy retired from spinning in 1954, and Howard, a skilled cloth-room machine fixer, was stricken at work on March 24, 1961.

Southern textile workers came to their industry primarily from two areas: tenant farms in the Piedmont and lowlands or mountain subsistence farms. The Dixons stemmed from Carolina's coastal section; their date of transition from agrarian to factory life is unknown. Dorsey's father was a mechanic in wood and iron. At Dorsey's birth (October 14, 1897), his father worked for the Darlington () Cotton Manufacturing Company as a steam engine operator. Seven children were born to Mr. and Mrs. William McQuiller Dixon; three made a significant folk- song contribution. Dorsey's older sister Nancy Alena (born October 23, 1892) began work at the age of eight as a child spinner in the Darlington mill for eight cents a day. Dorsey followed her to work at 12; at 13 he was on his own in the mill's machine shop making bobbin bands. He got away from the factory for some four years during World War I by working as a railway signalman (block-house leverman flagging trains) on the Atlantic Coast Line in Darlington. By concealing his age, Howard Briten (born June 19, 1903) was able to join his older brother in the ACL tower for a few years, but when Dorsey gravitated back to the mills, Howard followed. From 1919 until his eyes "gave out" in 1951, Dorsey worked regularly in cotton mills at Darlington, Lancaster, and Greenville, S.C.; at "home" in East Rockingham, N.C.; and during 1947 in a New Jersey rayon plant. Even after leaving the mills (1951), he continued industrial work in a munitions plant box factory.

Dorsey married Beatrice Lucele Moody, a South Carolina textile girl, in 1927; four boys were born to them. When the boys grew up and left home, he and his wlf@ separated (1953). Now alone in the world and unable to work, Dorsey sustains himself by music and faith. Fortunately, his creative talent is abundant and he feels blessed that at least one of his compositions, "Wreck on the Highway," (initially popularized by ) has become both a country song classic and folksong during his lifetime.

Although Dixon and his songlore deserve extended study, one can only comment briefly here on his career. His musical skill was apparent in his fifth year when he began to sing his mother's hymns and sentimental ballads. At l he taught himself the guitar. A local music teacher gave him violin lessons and Dorsey played in Darlington's Sunday schools. Some years later, after Howard had picked up the guitar, the brothers performed fiddle-guitar duets in the Rockingham movie theater. Dixon's turn to song composition did not come until his third decade. In May, 1923, a South Carolina schoolhouse (near Camden) burned, killing 76 children. The tragedy's impact on Dorsey was great but delayed; during 1929 he wrote a poem, "The Cleveland Schoolhouse Fire," which his mother and Howard started to sing to the tune of "Life's Railway to Heaven." Aware of his skill as a song writer, he began an activity that continues until today.

Along with composition, Dorsey gradually developed a highly personal guitar style, using a pick on each finger and the thumb of his right hand. Until 1931 he had always frammed (banged), but now he was inspired by Jimmie Tarlton, a fan- tastically gifted guitarist-singer temporarily employed in East Rockingham's Little Hanna Pickett Mill. (Talton was one of many textile workers who moved from the mills to music, having recorded "Birmingham Jail" and "Columbus Stockade Blues" for Columbia before meeting the Dixons.) Howard shared his brother's musicality and now left the straight guitar in favor of Hawaiian (steel) guitar style; his model also was Jimmie Tarlton. Dorsey and Howard formed a team in 1932 to enter- tain at church and in the village; they also performed during an early trade union drive in the Richmond County, N.C., mills. The Dixon Brothers first played "for gain" in 1934 on Charlotte's radio station, WBT, as participants on J. W. Fincher's Crazy Water Crystals Saturday Night Jamboree. In Charlotte they met and exchanged material with many fine Tar Heel radio and recording artists: Fisher Hendley, Snuffy Jenkins, Homer Sherill, Dick Hartman, J. E. and Wade Mainer, the Tennessee Ramblers, the Briarhoppers, the Three Tobacco Tags, the Blue Sky Boys.

The Dixon Brothers made their own phonograph recording debut February 12, 1936, in Charlotte for Victor's A & R man, . Periodically they returned for five more sessions and ended their recording career on a final Rock Hill, S. C., trip, September 25, 1938, having placed more than 60 numbers on wax. For a few selections Dorsey was joined by his wife Beatrice and on others Howard was joined by his fellow mill-musicians Frank Gerald and Mutt Evans. All Dixon Brothers discs were originally released on two labels: Bluebird or Montgomery Ward. One song alone, "Intoxicated Rat," was reissued by Victor in 1941 on its Smokey Mountain Ballads album. (In October, 1964, this album was reissued once more with a second Dixon Brothers piece, "Down With The Old Canoe": Victor LPV 507.) Between 1936-1938 Oberstein assigned copyrights of Dorsey's material to various publishers; in some cases other performers shared claims to his work. Dorsey and Howard were paid normally (nominally) for their radio and recording work. Such fees were not enough to free them from the mills in the 1930's. Howard, at the age of 17, had married a mill girl and together they raised a family of eight children. Dorsey's third boy was born during the recording years. Like many fellow composers whose culture was poverty, Dorsey knew that his songs had monetary value, but he could never quite make the connections in the to protect his prolific talent.

My personal interest in the Dixon Brothers stemmed from acquiring "Weaver's Life" and "Weave Room Blues" on 78 rpm records after World War II. I was unable to meet Howard before his death, but I did meet Dorsey at home in the summer of 1961 while on a field trip with Ed Kahn of UCLA. A year later (August 6-8, 1962) Gene Earle and I visited East Rockingham and taped the material on this disc. For the session Dorsey accompanied himself on a Gibson Jumbo h5 guitar. Fortunately, we were also able to meet his sister Nancy, nearly 70 years old, and to collect two nineteenth century textile folksongs from her. To contrast Dorsey's 1962 mate- rial with Dixon Brothers style of the 1930's, RCA Victor has permitted Testament Records to reissue three original on this LP.

During 1963 Dorsey Dixon participated in the Newport Festival and three of his concert performances are now available on Old Time Music at Newport (Vanguard VRS 91h7). Subsequently he journeyed to Washington, D.C., for a short engagement in several clubs as well as a recording session for Piedmont Records and the Library of Congress. Here, on November 15, 1963, he deposited 22 pieces in the Archive of Folksong; two months later he taped 16 more as a gift to the Archive.

Students of American labor have compiled extensive studies of the southern textile industry and its "lintheads" and "millhands." (Dictionaries are not needed to gloss these demeaning terms.) Beyond social science research, many novelists and poets have been attracted to the red brick mills of the old South ensconsed behind their barbed wire fences and para-military guard posts. Sherwood Anderson, particularly, felt the warmth and cold and saw the light and shadow of mill life. From within their hearts, and while still stationed at thier looms and shuttles, Dorsey, Howard, and Nancy Dixon added a dimension of folk music to American industrial history and literature.

The album will be available in record shops or by mail from Testament Records, P.O. Box 1813, Chicago, Illinois, 60690.

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CaroleAnn Lovin Folk Music Pen Pal Bureau 636 Dogwood Avenue Franklin Square, N.Y. 11010 A SUMMER MUSIC JAUNT TO TURKEY--AND OTHER PLACES Last Spring, as many of you remember, Jim Fowler, a representative of USNSA (National Student Association) came through Champaign auditioning folksingers for a proposed tour of the Mediterranean. Being one of many who like to sing any time someone will sit long enough to listen, I brought my various instruments, played a few songs for him, and promptly forgot about the whole matter. After having spent about three weeks at Harvard Summer School, I received a call asking if I could come down to Philadelphia for the "final tryouts". The next evening, as I got out of the taxi at the address of the "2nd Fret", the proposed site of the tryouts, I was wondering if I was at the right place. Opening the door a crack, I heard a long stream of profanity and bade my taxi driver leave. Coffee house owners in Philadelphia are no different from coffee house owners anywhere else.

About three weeks later, four of us were on our way to Istanbul: Susie Levin (no stranger in these parts), Jim Croce from Philadelphia (Villanova Univ.), Gene Uphoff from Denver (Univ. of Colorado Medical School), and myself. In Instanbul we performed as a part of a student-organized cultural festival that has been in existence for ten years. We were the first American representatives to this festival which included drama, folk dancing, orchestral, and various other groups from some fifteen countries. It must suffice at this point to say that almost if not all of the cities we visited were fascinating in their own right.

Since this is not a travelogue, I shall try to refrain from explicating the "seemingly more romantic" view from here or the quaint little people there. I must say, however, that it was quite exciting to meet and talk with the performers, mostly students like us, from such places as Russia, Yugoslavia, Israel, Lebanon, and all of the countries in Western Europe.

As we had practiced together for less than a week before performing in Istanbul, I hesitate to say how good we were at that point. However, the receptiveness of the audience there, and in the other countries, amazed us and was truly gratifying. Even the newspaper articles (the verity of which is often questionable) sang sur- prisingly high praises.

Though we were flown from country to country, our audiences and means of transportation within these countries varied greatly and supplied enough anecdotal material for a short book. W7here but in Yugoslavia could you fight with the screaming peasants for eleven hours on a Lionell replica train to go approximately one hundred miles? At one time in Tunisia, after a performance for a Fourth of July type celebration "a l'interieur", we were: 6 people, 2 guitars, one 12-string guitar, one banjo, one mandolin, 3 harmonicas, one kazoo, and one washboard in a small sportscar on our way back to Tunis...Lebanese camels are wonderful beasts, but do not differ from camels anywhere else in the matter of comfort. After a visit to the shrine of the "holy god of iron" in Nigeria, we were guaranteed safety in anything we travelled (that was made out of iron). This was granted by his Highness, the King of Ibadan for whom we played a command performance.... That night we had the only accident of our trip. (Aren't Volkswagon busses made of iron?) Then again how much weight can a royal proclamation have when issued from a mud hut?

By the time we reached Nigeria, having somehow survived the Turkey trots and similar local by-products of Yugoslavia, Lebanon, and Tunisia, we were somewhat disappointed that malaria was about our last chance of getting to extend our stay abroad. But even after dutifully neglecting our quinine pills and throwing away our mosquito nets, we failed and, somewhat saddened, boarded the plane for New York.

Our last show in Nigeria, approximately two and one-half hours long was taped, and I hope eventually to get a copy of it for the archives.

-- Bob Knott