The Concert of the Century for VH1 Save The Music VH1 Music Studio Cable in the Classroom Lessons for Music and Social Studies Classes, Middle School and High School American Music Styles--European Roots and African Influences Lesson 3 Objectives Students will describe some of the distinguishing characteristics of country and blues music Students will learn how country music rose from regionally known styles to a nationally known music style National Standards for Music Education Content Standard 5: Reading and notating music Content Standard 6: Listening to, analyzing, and describing music Content Standard 7: Evaluating music and music performances Content Standard 9: Understanding music in relation to history and culture Materials videotape of The Concert of the Century for VH1 Save the Music television VCR Procedures 1. For background, review briefly with students the two lines of development for European-American music and African-American music in Lesson 1. 2.1 Tell students that country music first came to national attention after recordings were made of Appalachian hill country musicians in 1927 at Bristol, Virginia. It was here that the Carter Family was first captured on sound equipment. In less than a year later that the Carters recorded the great early country classic "Wildwood Flower." 2.2 Depending on the interest and ability level of your students, have them read the following essay on the Bristol recording sessions or briefly outline the information for them. Pre-War Melodies And Old Mountaineer Songs That summer in 1927 commercial country music was barely four years old. It was a bawling infant, though, and the record sales of people like Fiddlin' John Carson, Uncle Dave Maron, Vernon Dolbart, Riley Puchert, and Charlie Poole had shown the big New York record companies that there was something to this "Southern" music. Finding new performers who could do this kind of music was another thing; they didn't hang around the big studios in New York or Chicago, and as early as 1924 companies like Okeh and Columbia had sent recording expeditions into the wilds of Texas, Georgia, and Louisiana in search of new talents. Pioneering this new technique of on-location recording was a 35 year old man named Ralph Peer. A native of Kansas City, Peer had grown up with the record industry, and in 1923 had traveled to Atlanta for Okeh to record the famous efforts of Fiddlin' John Carson that set off the old-time music boom. Late in 1925, Peer had quit Okeh, and offered his services to the Victor Talking Machine Company, whose success with Vernon Dalhan's million selling "Wreck of the Old 97" had whetted their appetite for this sort of music. "I had what they wanted." Peer recalled later. "They couldn't get into the hillbilly business and I knew how to do it." By January 1927 the company was outfitting Peer with the latest electrical recording equipment, produced by Western Electric, and asking him to take Victor into the field. The ground rules were simple: Peer would go into a Southern town or city, locate local talent, and record them on the spot for $50 a selection plus royalties of about 2 1/21 per side. He would look for gospel music, blues, and hillbilly music, and would network through local contacts like Victor dealers, music store owners, and radio station operators. An early trip in February and March 1927 yielded mostly blues and gospel, so in June he set out by himself to line up another round of sessions. Savannah and Charlotte soon fell into line, but the third choice was not so easy. Peer finally settled on Bristol, a bustling small city whose main street formed the state line between Virginia and Tennessee. Flanked on the South by Johnson City and on the West by Kingsport, Bristol was part of an early urban area known as Tri-Cities, which in the 1920's boasted a collective population of over 32,000--making it the largest urban area in the Appalachians eclipsing even Asberville. It was a natural base for Peer. He told a local newspaper when he arrived there with his recording crew: "In no section of the South have the pre-war melodies and old mountaineer songs been better preserved than in the mountains of all Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, experts declare, and it was primarily for this reason that the Victor Company chose Bristol as its operating base." There were other reasons for choosing Bristol. Scouts from three other record companies had had, or had scheduled, auditions in the town that year, and local newspapers and civic clubs were proud and supportive of old-time music. The local Victor dealer, Carl McLissor was a keen-eyed talent scout himself. As early as June, he had put Peer in touch with a nearby group called the Carson Family. Other Bristol musicians had already made their mark in radio and records and from vaudeville, and 140 area bands, the Johnson Brothers and the Stoneman Family, had been to New York to record for Peer. They were invited to hunt up more talents from their friends and relatives. In almost every way Bristol was a natural place to start Victor's greatest talent search. Accompanied by his wife, Anita, and two engineers named Echbars and Lynch Peer returned to Bristol July 21 with a carload of portable recording equipment. They leased a former furniture store at 408 State Street (the street there was the state line) and began to prepare the second and third floors for recording; they hung blankets on the wall, built a tower for the pulley that would drive the recording turntable and a platform for singers to stand on. Contrary to many popular histories, Peer was not reduced to simply fishing for talent; his first week was pretty much already booked up with established local stars such as the Stonemans, the Johnson Brothers, and the singer Blind Alfred Road. But he needed people to fill in his second week. A small ad appeared in the Sunday paper announcing that the Victor Company would have a recording machine in Bristol for ten days, but this hadn't generated much response. On the third day of the session, July 27, Peerinvited a writer for the local paper to watch Ernest Stoneman and Eck Dumford record "Skip to Ma Lou." The result was a major front-page story in that evening's NEWS BULLETIN. "The synchronizing is perfect," wrote the reporter. "Ernest Stoneman playing the guitar, the young matron (Mrs. Stoneman) the violin, and a young mountaineer the banjo and mouth harp. Bodies swaying, feet beating a perfect rhythm, it is calculated to go over big when offered to the public." But to many people, the most interesting part of the story was the last paragraph. Where it was revealed that Stoneman got $100 a day for his services, and that his sideman got $25 a day--and that Stoneman, a carpenter form nearby Galos, had received $3600 in royalties the previous year. "This worked like dynamite recalled Peer. "The very next day I was deluged with long-distance calls from surrounding mountain region. Groups of singers who had not visited Bristol during their entire lifetime arrived by bus, horse and buggy, trains or on foot." In a matter of hours, Peer had gone from famine to feast, and soon he found himself having to add night sessions to accommodate the new talent. During his stay in Bristol, Peer would eventually record 76 performances by 19 different groups. They would include old pop and vaudeville songs, traditional mountain ballads and songs, fiddle and banjo tunes; gospel songs alone counted for almost half the output. THE SESSIONS Going into the sessions, the big star was undoubtedly Ernest Stoneman--known to generations of fans as "Pop Stoneman," and the founder of country's first dynasty, the Stoneman Family. Working from his base in nearby Galax, Virginia, Stoneman by mid-1927 had recorded more than any other Southern artist--over 100 sides for various companies. A versatile instrumentalist and fine singer, he had a nose for good songs and got them from barb printed and oral sources. TELL MOTHER I WILL MEET HER, the second song done at the sessions, came from a 1903 songbook compiled by Georgia publisher John B Vaughan, ARE YOU WASHED IN THE BLOOD, sung by Stoneman, his wife, his brother- and sister-in-law; and other Galax friends, is gospel standard by Elisha Hoffman dating from 1878, while THE RESURRECTION came from a Pentecostal songbook the same era. On the other hand, themes like SKIP TO MA LOU and THE MOUNTAINEER'S COURTSHIP are well grounded in Appalachian folk tradition: the courtship song-a delightful duet between Stoneman and his wife Hatsie- is often called "OLD GREY BEARD," though Stoneman titled it "NO SIR" in his own manuscript version. MIDNIGHT ON THE STORMY DEEP, a heretofore loss item recently discovered in the Victor vaults and issued here in complete forms for the first time, is a duet between Stoneman and his sister-in-law Irma Frost, and a traditional ballad later popularized by the Blue Sky boys. OLD TIME CORN SHUCKIN' features most of the Galax area musicians Stoneman brought with him and marks Victor's entry into the genre of rural comedy. A few months earlier Columbia records had issued a skit by the Georgia band the Skillet Lickers about a fiddling contest and had seen it become a bestseller. Peer had asked Stoneman to write a similar one, and, fresh from a real corn shucking on a Virginia farm, Stoneman obliged. This record was the very first issued from the session and rushed out less than a month later. Peer was fascinated with what he called "holy roller" music and went out of his way to record it when he could. On the second day of the session (July 26) Peer interrupted his Stoneman recordings to devote the entire day to a session by a Pentecostal group from Gray, Kentucky (near Corbin), led by Preacher-singer Ernest Phipps. I WANT TO GO WHERE JESUS IS, the first of a number of sides Phipps would make for Peer and Victor, captures the fervent holiness church style so rarely heard on commercial recordings of the time. On July 28 Peer recorded Charles and Paul Johnson, a well-known vaudeville team from nearby Happy Valley. By 1926 the Johnsons were living in Johnson City and had already traveled to New York to record for Victor. POT LICKER BLUES is a harmonica piece featuring Charles backing a musician known only as "El" Wassom. Wassom was a Johnson City resident, and probably black, but little else is known of him, save that he backed the Johnsons on one of their longer sides. Unlike many of the Bristol musicians, the Johnsons later dropped locally out of music, and their subsequent career is unknown. Both THE JEALOUS SWEETHEART and A PASSING POLICEMAN features Paul on steel and vocals, and Charles on guitar. On "A Passing Policeman" a third person, possibly El Wassom is playing the thin bars of bone or wood that were a popular form of percussion in old minstrel shows. "A Passing Policeman" is another minstrel piece heard for the first time. Also known as "The Little Lost Child," the ballad was a hit in 1894 on Broadway, when it was written by music composer Edward Marks and pianist Joe Storr. The awkward bridge, with its odd chord changes, probably explains why it wasn't released, but nevertheless shows the problems of traditional musicians in coping with older pop songs. The same day the Johnsons recorded, a remarkable protest and gospel singer-songwriter from Princeton, West Virginia, came forth. Peer had earlier heard of Blind Alfred Reed's topical ballad THE WRECK OF THE VIRGINIAN and, mindful of the appeal of train wreck songs, asked him to come in; Reed also did his own piece, WALKING IN THE WAY WITH JESUS. Reed would record again, writing such pieces as "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live," revised in the 1970's by Ry Cooder. An equally distinctive gospel singer was preacher Alfred Karnes, from Corbin, Kentucky. Attracted by the newspaper stories, Karnes drove over the mountains to Bristol, bringing with him his rare Gibson harp-guitar, with its three sets of strings. It thrives on I AM BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND, where the old words are welded to the driving melody of "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down" on Dion De Marbello's 1887 standard WHEN THEY RING THOSE GOLDEN BELLS; and on Fanny Crosby's 1899 gospel hymn TO THE WORK. Karnes' lively gospel songs were some of the best selling records from the session, and in 1928 Peer called him back for more. Karnes had brought with him from Corbin another superb traditional singer, B.P. (Frank) Shelton, a barber in Corbin who had supposedly met Karnes while he was an inmate in a prison where Karnes preached. The stark, modal sound of O MOLLY DEAR has made it one of the outstanding examples of traditional Souther music recorded this century: the lyrics, better known as "East Virginia Blues," have helped define the concept of mountain blues. Throughout the weekend, Peer continued to audition groups that came out of the nearby mountains. On Monday August 1, he recorded two fiddle bands. One was the Hillsville, Virginia duo of banjoes-singer J. P. Nesser and fiddler Norman Edmonds who played BLACK-EYED SUSIE. Edmonds would go on to become a widely known and recorded old-time fiddler in the 1950s and 1960s. From Coeburn, Virginia came the Bull Mountain Moonshiners, headed by fiddler Charles McReynolds, the grandfather of bluegrass greats Jim & Jesse. The Moonshiners' Johnny Goodwin, their sole issued record, is a delightful and intricate reading of "The Girl He Left Behind." After supper, from 6:30 to 9:30, Peer recorded yet a third Virginian group, an act he initially identified as "Mr. and Mrs. Carter from Maces Springs." We now know that Peer had set up recordings with A.P. Carter back in June, but he was still somewhat surprised to see them. "They wander in," he recalled. "He's dressed in overalls and the women are country woman from way back there. They look like hillbillies. But as soon as I heard Sara's voice, that was it. I knew it was going to be wonderful." There were A.P. and Sara, a middle-aged couple married then some 12 years and both fond of old songs, and Sara's cousin, Maybelle, barely 18, who had shyly asked A.P., before they had left home, whether or not she should bring her guitar. They began with a song Sara and Maybelle had both known since childhood, BURY ME UNDER THE WEEPING WILLOW, a nineteenth-century song widely known in the mountains. They then moved to LITTLE LOG CABIN BY THE SEA and POOR ORPHAN CHILD, two songs A.P. had learned from an old gospel song book used at the local church where A.P. had sung in the choir. Sara and A.P. sang them as duets. All three voices returned for THE STORMS ARE ON THE OCEAN, a lyric derived from an old Scottish ballad. The next morning the session continued, but recently found Victor files show that, for some reason, A.P. was not present for the last two recordings. Sara, accompanied only by her autoharp and Maybelle's guitar, did two solos, WANDERING BOY (a song she had known all her life), and SINGLE GIRL (a song she had learned from a boy in Russell County about 1905, and which she felt, "ripped off" the session). The Carters didn't know it, but they had started a long career, one in which A.P. would serve as front man and manager, leaving the two women to carry most of the musical burden. August 2 and 3 saw more local talent. From Alcoa, Tennessee, came John "Lennie" Wells' Alcoa Quartet, then the favorite singing group to perform at conventions or funerals in west Tennessee; I'M REDEEMED, sung unaccompanied from a contemporary seven-shape rose book, was their favorite. The group had also recorded earlier, and later appeared with a young Roy Acuff on Knoxville radio. Another veteran was a harmonica player named Henry Whitner, whose FOX CHASE had been recorded in 1924 for Okeh and had established the piece as a standard. Peer felt an electrical recording of the novelty would give it a new sales appeal, and he was right. From Meadows of Dan, Virginia, came the Shelor Family--actually the Shelor-Blackard family--with its unusual instrumentation of piano, banjo and two fiddles. The singer on BILLY GRIMES, THE ROVER, an old English music ball song that was sung in America before 1850, is Joe Blackard, who had been visited by famed Appalachian folk song collector Cecil Sharp in 1918, SANDY RIVER BELLE, a popular fiddle tune, appears herein an unissued alternate take in which Joe Blackard sings a wordless second verse to the fiddle-an archaic Irish technique called "diddling." Wednesday night was given over to the band of Mr. and Mrs. James Baker, cousins of the Carters, from nearby Falls Branch, who did a driving version of THE NEWMARKET WRECK, about an accident near Morristown, TN in 1904. While the Bakers were recording, the band that was to record the following morning (Thursday, August 4) had been arguing among themselves. This was a band called the Tennessee Ramblers (because they worked out of Bristol, on the state line), which had been in business since 1923, and which was led by Claude and Jack Grant, with Jack Pierce on the fiddle. Since March 1927 the trio had been teaming up with a young Mississippi singer with a skill at yodeling and a flair for promotion; his name was Jimmie Rodgers. The group had been working at a mountain resort in Asheville, and had stumbled onto Peers session by accident when they came home to visit Pierce's mother, who ran a boarding house just across State Street from the studio. After their auditions for Peer-they had had to promise to find older, more down-home songs than the ones they had been doing-the band and Rodgers broke up over how the record label credits were to read. As a result, the Ramblers quickly recruited a banjo player and recorded by themselves. Their classic THE LONGEST TRAIN I EVER SAW, a version of the well known ":In the Pines," was one result-- it was to be the start of a long recording career for the band members. At 2:00 that afternoon Rodgers appeared for his session, accompanied only by his little Martin guitar and a lot of high hopes. Peer was disappointed to find that most of the songs Rodgers had been singing were fairly new pop songs and asked him for older ones, ones that sounded old but could be copyrighted. Rodgers came up with his version of an old World War 1 song, THE SOLDIER'S SWEETHEART, sung to the tune of "Where the River Shannon Flows," and after four takes Peer approved it. To display his yodeling, Rodgers did SLEEP, BABY, SLEEP an old vaudeville song from the 1860s which had already been recorded several times by other singers. "I thought his yodel alone might spell success," Peer recalled in a classic understatement. The next day, August 5, the sessions concluded with a pair of rider by the West Virginia Coon Hunters, a fiddle band from Bluefield, West Virginia, headed by fiddler W.B. Boyles: GREASY STRING is one of these. That afternoon 30 members of a Bluff City church group gathered to record, as the Tennessee Mountaineers, the 1886 hymn STANDING ON THE PROMISES. Among the group was Roy Hobbs, the brother-in-law of A.P. Carter, in whose home the Carters had stayed when they recorded three days earlier. After the session, Peer packed up the heavy wax masters for shipment back to New York and moved on to Charlotte. About two months later, on October 7, Bristol papers carried ads for the first real batch of the records to be issued. "New Southern Series" trumpeted the ad, and people rushed to their stores to hear the new records. Though they were curious about hearing their friends and neighbors, and validating their mountain music, they were ushering in a new era in American music. Country music--what Peer called hillbilly music--was about to go in high gear. By Charles Wolfe, from liner notes of The Bristol Sessions (Country Music Foundation, 1987) 3. Lead students in singing "Wildwood Flower," (lyrics located below). Inform students that the song, learned orally by the Carter family was first recorded by the Carters a few months after the Bristol recording sessions. 4. Discuss with students the elements in the notation and text of "Wildwood Flower" that stand out. Write the following list on the chalkboard. Text phrases (long) repetition (not much) narrative (traditional country story) number of words (many) Music form (simple) melody (few variations--strict & simple line) rhythm (simple) harmony (simple) Wildwood Flower (Maud Irving and J.P. Webster, 1860) I'll twine 'mid the ringlets of my raven black hair The lilies so pale and the roses so fair The myrtle so bright with an emeral hue And the pale aronatus with eyes of bright blue. I'll sing and I'll dance, my laugh shall be gay I'll cease this wild weeping, drive sorrow away. Tho' my heart is now breaking, he never shall know That his name made me tremble and my pale cheeks to glow. I'll think of him never, I'll be wildly gay I'll charm ev'ry heart, and the crowd I will sway. Išll live yet to see him regret the dark hour When he won, then neglected, the frail wildwood flower. He told me he loved me, and promis'd to love Trough ill and misfortune, all other above Another has won him; ah, misery to tell He left me in silence, no word of farewell. He taught me to love him, he call'd me his flower That blossom'd for him all the brighter each hour But I woke from my dreaming, my idol was clay My visions of love have all faded away. <> 5.Videotape Play Time [00:00] Play B.B. King's blues classic "The Thrill Is Gone." 6.1 Discuss with students the elements that stand out in "The Thrill Is Gone's" music and text. 6.2 Write the list on the chalkboard. Use the following categories: Text phrases (few) repetition (much) narrative (simple and sketchy--story not told, emotions revealed instead) number of words (few--alternates with instrumental) Music form (12-bars or 3 four-bar phrases) melody (freedom with much improvisation and variation) rhythm (highly complex--not following beats or melody line) harmony (improvisation) The Thrill Is Gone The thrill is gone, The thrill is gone away The thrill is gone, baby The thrill is gone away You know you've done me wrong, baby And you'll be sorry someday The thrill is gone It's gone away from me The thrill is gone, baby The thrill has gone away from me Although I'm still livin' But it's a long way out here The thrill is gone It's gone away for good Oh, the thrill is gone, baby It's gone away for good Some day I know I'll be open armed, baby Just like I know a man should You know I'm free free now baby, I'm free from your spell Well I'm free free free now I'm free from your spell All's I can do is wish you well <> 7. Lead students in a discussion of comparisons and contrasts between the country "Wildwood Flower" and the blues "The Thrill Is Gone," referring to the categories on the chalkboard. Write comments on the chalkboard under the categories already listed. [Videotape Play Time [00:00] 8.1 Play Sheryl Crow's performance of Hank Williams's "Long Gone Lonesome Blues." 8.2 Discuss with students the elements that stand out in "Long Gone Lonesome Blues" music and text. Write the list on the chalkboard. Use the following categories as before: Text phrases (few) repetition (much) narrative (simple--with a background story implied, but not told in elaborate narrative) number of words (relatively few, but more than in some blues numbers) Music form (the song is actually a mixture of a 12-bar blues verse with a 6-bar chorus) melody (some freedom but mostly straightforward) rhythm (relatively simple) harmony (simple) 8.3 Lead students in discussion of "Long Gone Lonesome Blues" as a song that combines the musical elements of both country and the blues. 9. Have students write a two-paragraph essay on what they think country music will be like in the next 100 years. Have them express their thoughts on melody, instrumentation, vocals, and text. VH1, in partnership with Cable in the Classroom, collaborated with MENC: The National Association for Music Education to develop this series of lessons for VH1 Music Studio.