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00:27:52
00:41:11
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Transcription: [00:27:52]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
Are there any questions? Are there any questions from members of the panel?
[00:27:56]
[[Silence]]
[00:27:59]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
We have some information for you if you'd like on the tribes that are covered by the Federal Cylinder Project, and also a brochure if you're interested in the kinds of things that we're doing. The Library of Congress, thank you very much for coming.
[[Applause]]
[00:28:13]
[[Silence]]

[00:28:17]
[[Music]]
{SPEAKER name="Singer"}
A lil' bit of Cripple Creek would hit the spot right now.
[00:28:22]
[[Music continues]]
[00:28:36]
Come on, pat along folks.
[00:28:38]
[[Music continues]]
[00:28:52]
[[Inaudible]]
[[00:29:05]]
Now, this is Mountain Dance music. The least y'all could do is clap your hands, pat your feet, do something. Get into this music here.
[00:29:12]
[[Clapping starts]]
[00:29:42]
[[Music stops]]
[[Applause]] Yeehaw
[00:29:47]
Thank you.

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
The workshop here in the Cultural Conservation Area, starting off the day, is going to be looking at Traditional Ballad styles from the Blueridge Mountains.
[[00:29:59]
We have with us two of the region's finest balladeers, who sing in very very different styles.
[00:30:05]
Mr. Doug Wallan, from the very rich valleys and fertile mountains of Madison County, North Carolina, an area known for its growing of Burley tobacco and lumber.
[00:30:16]
Mr. Wallan sings in an unaccompanied ballad style, performing a lot of the old songs carried over to this country from Scandanavia and the British Isles as well as ballads composed in this country commemorating murders and great tragedies.
[00:30:31]
[[Laughs]] If a tragedy could be great. In the fingers of a ballad writer, it certainly was.
[00:30:38]
Next to him, and the person you just heard on the banjo is Mr. Frank Profit Jr. Though living only 60 miles away from Madison County, Frank lives in a country of hard-scrabble farming.
[00:30:49]
It's a lot of steep, rocky cliffs there, the soil is not worth a thing, and you can't grow much in the way of Burley tobacco or anything else.
[00:30:58]
The folks there try and grow a small crop and Frank's family has been doing just that for generations in those mountains, trying to grow a little bit of Burley tobacco, maybe some strawberries or corn to do some truck farming.
[00:31:10]
The tradition in Madison County, the tradition of singing ballads was one largely unaccompanied, singing without any instrumentation, or if you did use an instrument, it was only to play the tune through one time before you got to telling the story through song.
[00:31:28]
On the other hand, in Watoga County, the tradition was one of always, or almost always, accompanying your ballads. Playing a guitar, a banjo, a dulcimer, or sometimes a fiddle while you sang the stories.
[00:31:42]
What'd I'd like to today is start off by showing you some examples of the older types of ballads and doing a little bit of comparison between the two styles. Then, we'll move to some ballads from this country along with some stories and some explanations of why the ballads are still being sung, why the ballads have survived two and three hundred years to be passed on in forms very similar to those in the 17th and 18th century
[00:32:12]
A lot of folks when they think and hear about ballads in the Appalachians and immediately say "Well the reason those ballads are still there is because those folks are isolated. You know, they really didn't have a way to hear what was happening in the latest music, and they- as a result of this isolation, maybe they just weren't as creative. They didn't come up with their own things and they kept singing the old things because that was easiest."
[00:32:36]
Well, you know when you really look at that region in the mountains, you realize real quickly that the latest in musical developments were always available.
[00:32:46]
In the eighteen-hundreds, in the early nineteen-hundreds, peddlers selling sheet music combed the mountains. The catalogs, especially the Sears and Roebuck catalog, was everywhere and folks would order their ukeleles or organs for their homes, and indeed Doug's mother had an organ from his early childhood. Yet the songs that they chose to keep in their repertoires the songs that lasted because not they were old, not because they were old but because they continued to tell a meaningful story were the ballads. Or at least, the ballads were some of those songs. The ballads from the British Isles, the ballads from America along with the play party songs and the dance tunes.
[00:33:29]
Mr. Wallan was raised in a community where ballads were being sung all the time. Doug, could you tell a little bit perhaps about where you learned your ballads and how common they were up in Madison County?
[00:33:42]

{SPEAKER name="Doug Wallan"}
Well first let me say hello to all these good folks. As for where I learned my ballads, I learned them mostly from my mother and father. This first one I'm going to do, is my second favorite of all the old ballads. I'm a little bit stingy with my first favorite, my very favorite so I may not sing it here today. [[chuckles]] This one is called the the House Carpenter, some know it as the real old English ballad, some know it as the Demon Lover but down where I live and grew up we know it as the House Carpenter. Going to kick it off here on the old fiddle to get the right pitch and we'll take it from there. [[chuckles]]
[00:34:28]
[[music starts]]
[00:34:50]

[[singing]] Well met, well met, my old true love. Well met, well met said he.
I just returned from the salt salt sea, and it's all for the sake of thee.
Now I could have married the king's daughter dear, and I'm sure she'd have married me
But I forsaken all her gold, for the love I have for thee
If you could have married a king's daughter dear, you had better have married she
For I've lately married a house carpenter, and a nice young man is he
if you forsake your house carpenter, and come along with me
I'll take you where the grass grows green, on the banks of Sicily
If I'll forsake my house carpenter, and come along with thee
Pray tell me what you have on land and sea to keep me from slavery?
I have three ships upon the sea, they are making for dry land
I have three hundred jolly sailor boys, you can have them at your own command
Then she dressed up in a yellow robe most glorious to behold
She walked the streets around and about, and shined like glittering gold
Then she picked up her tender little babe, and kisses gave it one, two, three
Stay at home, stay at home, my tender little babe, and keep your papa company
They hadn't been sailing on the sea two weeks, I'm sure it was not three
Till she began to weep, and she began to mourn, she wept most bitterly
Are you weeping for my house? Are you weeping for my store? Are you weeping for your house carpenter whose face you see no more?
No I'm not weeping for your house, neither for your store. I'm weeping for my tender little babe whom I left a-sitting on the floor.
They hadn't been sailing on the sea three weeks, I'm sure it wasn't four
Till the ship springs a leak to the bottom she goes She goes to rise no more
Take me out, oh take me out. Take me out cried she
For I'm too rich and costly to rot in the saltwater sea
Now don't you see that white cloud arising? As white as any snow?
There is a place called heaven you know, where my tender little babe will go
Now don't you see that black cloud arising? As black as any crow?
There is a place called hell you know, where you and I must go.
[00:39:55]

[[applause]]
[00:40:05]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
ballads such as the House Carpenter with their stories of kings and sailing ships continued to be sung in this country, not because of those references and their age, but because of the moral lesson that those ballads contain. These were stories in song, stories that had a lesson. Stories that raised issues which remained ever relevant. Now, Mr. Wallan when you were being raised how common were ballads? Where were they sung by people then?
[00:40:34]

{SPEAKER name="Doug Wallan"}
Very common. and they mostly sung I guess around the home. That's where I learned about all of mine, but usually when they had a party, had a bean stringing, or apple peeling something, or corn shucking,
then they would play and dance a while. The fiddlers and banjo players would play for the dancing. Then they would have a lot of something good to eat maybe, then they would do some ballad singing while the musicians rested. And that's about the way that I learned what I know of it.
[00:41:12]