Category: Music & Songs

Our Radio Bristol DJs are a diverse bunch – and they like a huge variety of musical genres and artists. In our “Off the Record” posts, we ask one of them to tell us all about a song, record or artist they love.

The first music I ever heard was my grandmother’s. I was very small, nestled in her lap as she rocked and sang. That sound was a basic part of my growing up, something I, and the rest of the family, took completely for granted. Much later, living far away from the Kentucky homeplace, I began hearing people around me sing “folk songs” that were oddly familiar – songs my grandmother sang, but somehow different and not quite right. I started listening, really listening, to her music and gradually realized she was a great traditional singer.

Her name was Addie Graham, born before 1900 in the hills of eastern Kentucky, heir to a great stream of traditional music she heard from her family and community. She sang ballads, Old Baptist hymns, blues pieces learned from African American railroad workers, frolic songs, and some songs that are hard to categorize. One of these is a remarkable window back into a piece of Kentucky’s and America’s past.

The song is “We’re Stole and Sold from Africa.” It is apparently an abolitionist song from before the Civil War that my family held for generations. Addie learned it from her mother, and the song was a family possession: “All the family I guess sung it, sister Nan and all. I can’t even remember how long it’s been in the family.” Addie felt it was an important song and always sang it with great seriousness. It’s a rarity; in a lot of research I haven’t found any other version of it.

We’re stole and sold from Africa
Transported to America
Like hogs and sheep, to march a-drove
To bear the heat, endure the cold

See how they take us from our wives
Small children from their mothers’ sides
They take us to some foreign land
Make slaves to wait on gentleman

We’re almost naked as you see
Almost barefooted as we be
Suffer the lash, endure the pain
Exposed to snow, both wind and rain

O Lord have mercy and look down
Upon the race of the African kind
Upon our knees pour out our grieves
And pray to God for some relief  

Here is Addie singing this song:

Though no other singer has been recorded doing this song, we can trace some of its history through records of the abolitionist movement. The text is similar to abolitionist ballads published in The Liberty Minstrel of 1844 and the Free Soil Minstrel of 1848. A prominent Kentucky abolitionist, James Birney, ran for president under the banner of the Liberty Party in 1844; other Kentucky abolitionists founded Berea College in 1855, which became “an oasis of anti-slavery and democratic education.” Slavery became a very hot issue in Kentucky, particularly in the mountains where few people owned any enslaved people. During the Civil War, communities and families (including Addie’s) were divided, leaving scars that took many years to heal.

Though it speaks from a slave’s perspective, Addie’s song probably has no connection with Black folk sources. It is almost certainly derived from one or more as-yet-untraced abolitionist tracts. George Clark’s The Liberty Minstrel contains the following in “Song of the Coffle Gang” (“Words by the slaves, music by G.W.C.”):

See these poor souls from Africa,
Transported to America;
We are stolen, and sold to Georgia, will you go along with me?
We are stolen and sold to Georgia, go sound the jubilee.

In the same volume, “Stolen We Were” (“Words by a Colored Man”) contains these stanzas:

Stolen we were from Africa,
Transported to America;
It’s work all day and half the night,
And rise before the morning light;
Sinner! man! why don’t you repent?
For the judgment is rolling around!
For the judgment is rolling around!

Like the brute beast in public street,
Endure the cold and stand the heat;
King Jesus told you once before
To go your way and sin no more;
Sinner! man! &c.

Tunes for these songs do not at all resemble Addie’s, which instead shares the musical feeling of her Old Baptist hymn tunes. The song may have become part of the folk-hymn tradition, for a couplet “Upon my knees pour out my grief/ And pray to God for some relief” turns up in “Young Ladies All I Pray Draw Near” in the Old Baptist Sweet Songster.

In any case, it is striking that an abolitionist song survived in tradition so many years after the end of slavery. Perhaps it had a special meaning for the family. The song came through Addie’s mother, Gillian Williams Prater. Her ancestor Elder Daniel Williams preached at the Lulbegrud [Baptist] Church in Montgomery County, Kentucky around 1800. He was forced to leave after disagreements with prominent elders of the North District Association to which the church belonged. Williams’ successor at the church, David Barrow, was similarly “run off” for advocating the emancipation of slaves. Williams’s differences with the elders were probably doctrinal rather than political. But in light of the preservation of the song “We’re Stole and Sold” in the Williams family, it is tempting to speculate that Daniel Williams, like David Barrow, sympathized with abolitionist views. Barrow, by the way, went on to found an association of emancipationist Baptist churches; its membership included Thomas Lincoln whose son Abraham would take the lead in settling the slavery question.

Addie never performed outside the home until I took her to a few festivals shortly before her death in 1978. “We’re Stole and Sold” reached a wide audience that year, when Appalshop’s June Appal Recordings released an LP of her singing, Been a Long Time Traveling (re-released with additional material in 2008). Over the years, awareness of Addie and her music has gradually spread, and today, she’s well known as an important source of Kentucky traditional music. Mike Seeger and John McCutcheon have performed “We’re Stole and Sold,” and I included Mike’s striking version in The Very Day I’m Gone (June Appal 2014), a collection of Addie’s songs performed by 15 artists. The song remains especially meaningful for me, evoking Addie’s voice and personality, her deep sympathy for those who suffer, and her links to an important if little known part of Appalachian history.

Rich Kirby is a producer at Appalshop’s WMMT radio station and a performer and historian of traditional Appalachian music and stories. His show Old Kentucky Bound airs on Radio Bristol on Thursdays 2:00 to 3:00pm.

For our new “Pick 5” blog series, we ask members of the Radio Bristol team to pick five songs within a given theme – from heartsongs to murder ballads and everything in between! Once they pick their “5,” they get the chance to tell us more about why they chose those songs. With a diverse staff of knowledgeable DJs, we’re sure to get some interesting song choices, which might introduce you to some new music, all easily accessible by tuning into Radio Bristol!

For our first “Pick 5,” I thought it would be interesting to look at the some of the black fiddle traditions found in early country music. Many African American artists that recorded during the 1920s and 1930s came from a stringband background, a style predating the blues, and many of these artists were influential in shaping some of the modern sounds of early commercial country music. I find the merging of the fiddle traditions of the 19th century and the more contemporary sounds found in the blues (which were often guitar-based but sometimes also incorporated fiddle) particularly inspiring. I chose five songs that highlight this cross-pollination of musical style and culture, songs where the sounds of stringbands, blues and jazz came together to create something altogether different. This is by no means intended to cover the scope of black fiddle traditions – instead these are only a few of the many recordings I find to be particularly cool. The artistry found on these records is pretty awe-inspiring to say the least. Have a listen!

“Forty Drops,” Andrew and Jim Baxter, 1928, Atlanta, GA

Forty drops of what? Forty drops of Rye! Maybe that accounts for the greasy slippery fiddle heard on this record…but I doubt it. This is country fiddling at its finest. Or is it blues fiddling? I’d say it’s both. The Baxter’s records were sold as a race records yet they could have just as easily sold as hillbilly records.

“That’s It,” Mississippi Sheiks, 1930, San Antonio, TX

A very fitting title to this hot fiddle number. Interestingly, this record was issued on OKeh’s country label and was marketed to a white audience. The Sheiks entire catalog is incredible and worth checking out if you haven’t done so yet.

“Sweet to Mama,” State Street Boys, 1935, Chicago, IL

Big Bill Broonzy on the fiddle?! Yep, not only could he tear it up on the guitar but he learned to fiddle at an early age and was pretty well versed as this song illustrates. This song has the same melody and some of the same verses as another hillbilly classic, “Blues in the Bottle,” as recorded by Prince Albert Hunt in 1927 in San Antonio. I got to listen to an incredibly clean copy of the State Street Boys record at a recent visit to collector Joe Bussard’s house, and it was a completely different listening experience to say the least. It was as if the band was playing in the room just for us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koWgVIYXfOY

“Rosalie,” Son Sims Four, 1942, Clarksdale, MS

This one, a straight-ahead blues song, features a young Muddy Waters, who played with Henry “Son” Sims before making his way up north. Not only is this an incredible document of early Waters, but it shows the great musical depth from which he came. Sims commercially recorded with Charley Patton for Paramount in the late 1920s as well.

“Knox County Stomp,” Tennessee Chocolate Drops, 1930, Knoxville TN

The virtuosity and unique character of Howard Armstrong – aka Louie Bluie – shines right through on “Knox County Stomp.” This record highlights the tenacity, energy, and passion of a true innovator willing to walk out on to the edge of a musical cliff. Wait for the pizzicato plucking midway through and you’ll see what I mean. Exciting to say the least! Louie Bluie and the Tennessee Chocolate Drops are a perfect example of a band that wasn’t defined by the genres and subgenres we now associate with American music.

So that’s my “Pick 5” – five songs exemplifying a small range of the talent and virtuosity found in early black fiddle traditions. I hope these songs – and the brief view into their background – piqued your interest and maybe introduced you to some new sounds!