This post continues the story of Lillian Short, who sang the song "Robin Hood" for Vance Randolph in 1941. It reveals that Lillian's husband, Leonard Short, was a notorious bank robber who had died in a jailbreak attempt in 1935. It recounts several legends that have developed about Leonard Short, including that he had a network of tunnels under Galena, Missouri, to allow him to escape the law. Most interestingly, it shows that Leonard Short himself had the reputation of being a modern Ozark Robin Hood, raising the question of whether Lillian's singing about Robin Hood had any connection to her husband.
In 1941, Vance Randolph recorded 34 songs from one of his favorite Ozark singers, Lillian Short of Galena, Missouri. We've featured Lillian Short's version of the song known as "Robin Hood," "The Cornish May Song," or "Hal An Tow" on the blog before. This post presents more information about the singer, with a selection of her best recordings. In addition to biographical information and photos, it includes extensive notes on her songs.
The exciting old time duo The Creek Rocks, the recipients of the 2024 Artists in Resonance Fellowship from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, bring old songs back to the Library in shiny new arrangements! Accomplished singer and banjo player Cindy Woolf and veteran guitarist and singer Mark Bilyeu established the group in 2015. Much of their work has been interpreting the traditional music of the Ozarks region. The Artists in Resonance Fellowship provided Cindy and Mark the opportunity to immerse themselves in the field recordings of folklorist Sidney Robertson Cowell, who in December 1936 and January 1937 visited communities in the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks. The Cowell recordings in the American Folklife Center’s archive serve as the source material for this concert, as well as The Creek Rocks' current album-length recording project. This blog presents the concert along with an interview in which we talk with them about their fellowship, their music, and their use of archival sources.
We continue our exploration of Jack tales with a look at printed collections of stories. The prominence of Richard Chase’s 1943 book “The Jack Tales” has tended to obscure other valuable collections, both before and after his publication. We’ll look at works from a wide variety of authors: collectors from oral tradition, including Isabel Gordon Carter, Vance Randolph, Leonard Roberts, and Herbert Halpert; storytellers, including Donald Davis, Jackie Torrence, and Duncan Williamson; and folklorists and anthologists such as Joseph Jacobs, Carl Lindahl, William Bernard McCarthy, and Anita Best. There's also embedded audio of Maud Long and Duncan Williamson, and links to other audio versions of Jack tales you can enjoy!
The latest episode of the Folklife Today podcast features award-winning singer-songwriter Thea Hopkins, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Martha’s Vineyard. Thea took the Archive Challenge, adapting songs from the American Folklife Center archive. On the first occasion she arranged and sang a Creek lullaby which, according to Creek elders, was created during the Trail of Tears. For her second challenge, Hopkins wrote new lyrics for the song “Red Wing,” which originally contained damaging stereotypes of Native Americans. The new lyrics pay homage to pioneering Native film actress Lilian St. Cyr, who was known as “Red Wing.” In the episode, Thea discusses her process and the meanings of the songs with AFC staff members Stephen Winick, Jennifer Cutting, and Meg Nicholas; Meg, a fellow Folklife Today blogger, is one of the American Folklife Center’s specialists in Native song, and affiliated with the Munsee-Delaware Nation in southwest Ontario. The episode features the field recordings of both songs, as well as Thea’s new versions, and a fiddle tune by Chippewa fiddler Mary Trotchie. The blog post features the link to the podcast, full audio of most of the source songs, as well as relevant links to Native American resources and Archive Challenge tools.
In this post we examine some of the earliest evidence of the Cornish May Song, also known as "Hal An Tow." A version of this song was recorded from Lillian Short in Missouri by Vance Randolph in 1941. By that time, the melody to the song had changed in oral tradition, but this early evidence, a written transcription by Edward Jones from 1802, shows that the song was formerly sung to the same melody retained by Lillian Short. The post includes Jones's 1802 passage describing the May 8 observances in Helston, Cornwall, which include the "Hal An Tow" song, the "Furry Dance" or "Flora Dance," and other events; the sheet music as he published it; and a discussion of Jones's interpretations of the Helston song in relation to AFC's field recording.
Many divisions of the Library of Congress have fascinating collections that are closely related to folklife and that complement collections in the American Folklife Center. The Recorded Sound Section is a part of the Library that works closely with the American Folklife Center in a variety of important ways. Among their holdings are recordings related …
[This post is part of a series of blog posts about the song “Hal An Tow.” You can find the whole series at this link.] It’s May 6, and the people of Helston, Cornwall, are celebrating Flora Day [1], a large outdoor festival featuring dancing in the streets throughout the town [2]. One of the …
[This post is part of a series of blog posts about the song “Hal An Tow.” You can find the whole series at this link.] As you can read in Stephanie Hall’s Post “May Day: A Festival of Flowers,” on May Day, or May 1, people in Europe traditionally celebrated the coming of summer …
