78 Blues: Folksongs and Phonographs in the American South

Prelude: Supposing We Have Us a Little Tune Here

 Prelude SuppoSing We Have uS a LittLe tune Here It’s July 23, 1928, the offices of Columbia Records, 1819 Broadway, NewYork City. Three musicians from the Carolina-Virginia Piedmont have arrived to record Southern string band music. The North Carolina Ramblers—banjoist Charlie Poole, guitarist Roy Harvey, and fiddler Lonnie Austin—have long been a live attraction back home, where Columbia has recently discovered an untapped market for its phonograph records. The Ramblers have played a big part in that. Just three years before, their first release, “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues”/“Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight Mister” (Columbia 15038-D, 1925), sold an unexpected 102,000 copies, a smash hit by any standards of the day. Since then, Poole and the Ramblers have appeared on a dozen more Columbia releases. They will never duplicate the success of that first record, but they are never anything but dependable. July 23 is especially productive. Ordinarily the group manages two, maybe four sides a session, but today they log their next six releases, twelve sides total. More than usual, the songs are weighted toward the sentimental favorites for which Charlie is renowned at stores and private homes in mill villages like Leaksville, Draper, and Spray. Most come from sheet music published between 1855 and 1904, titles like P. J. Downey and L. T. Billings’s “Old and Only in the Way” (1880), Gussie Davis’s “Let’s All of Us Stay at Home (Husband and Wife Were Angry One Night)” (1896), and Henry Harrison’s “I Cannot Call Her Mother” (1855). One piece—“Ramblin’ Blues”—is Charlie’s take on Memphis bluesman W. C. Handy’s 1916 composition“Beale Street Blues.”(Poole also likes nineteenth-century minstrel material, but Handy’s blues reflect more recent  | prelude: Supposing We Have us a Little tune Here black trends.) And two tracks recall the very roots of white mountain tradition. “Hangman, Hangman, Slack The Rope” (Columbia 15385-D, 1928) descends several centuries from a medieval British ballad, that most hallowed of all Appalachian folk survivals: this is the kind of song mothers and grandmothers back in Spray sing to babies.“Shootin’ Creek”(Columbia 15286-D, 1928), on the other hand, derives from the fiddle music British and Irish immigrants brought along with their ballads, reshaped by African American styles—and an African instrument: the banjo. Actually, “Shootin’ Creek” is just the old dance tune more often called “Cripple Creek,” still the first piece many banjo players learn.1 The Ramblers have renamed their version for one particularly beloved homeplace—complete with a vivid portrait of when, where, why, and how folks back there make this kind of music. As the record begins, Austin and Poole are playing the tune, when they are suddenly interrupted by an insistent pounding. “Who’s that knocking that door out there?” Poole sounds startled. He’s imagining himself in an isolated Piedmont cabin. “That’s me,” replies Roy Harvey. “Dog, if it ain’t old Roy Harvey,” enthuses Poole. “Hello, Roy. How you getting ’long?” Charlie poole and the north Carolina ramblers, in new York City to record. September 1926. Charlie poole, posey rorer, roy Harvey. Courtesy Kinney rorrer. prelude: Supposing We Have us a Little tune Here |  “Hello, Charlie, it look like you’re having some music around here.” “Yes, boy.” “Who is that you got with you there?” wonders Harvey. “That’s old Lonnie Austin,” chides Poole.“Don’t you know him?” “Oh, yeah.” Harvey remembers now. “That’s that old boy we used to play with up on Shooting Creek.” According to Poole biographer Kinney Rorrer, “The real Shootin’ Creek was a place in Franklin County [Virginia] known for its liquor and hospitality. Poole and his musician friends often stayed there at a boarding house run by a prominent bootlegger.”2 “Yes, boy,” Charlie again assures Harvey. But Harvey now is reminded of something else. “You remember that old tune you used to play,‘Shootin’ Creek’?” “Yes, boy. Have you got your guitar with you?” Charlie wants to know. “I reckon I have got it.” “Boy, supposing we have us a little tune here.” “All right, just wait till I roll down my britches and get these overshoes off and we’ll go,” Harvey pleads. The home folks don’t need a hymnbook to read what’s clear. They can almost smell the muddy fields. It’s the too...