Cox met many traditional singers, white and black, including one old woman who “made her living … by washing, begging, and selling off things that she could get along without. Times were hard, men were out of work, and women were doing their own washing instead of sending it out.” She sang “Jesse James” and “Johnny Collins,” “in a low contralto voice, heavy and mournful.” Cox began with numerous variations of Child ballads, starting with “Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight,” but also included “John Hardy,” “Davy Crockett,” “Putting On the Style,” “The Arkansaw Traveller,” and other local standards. Cox noted not only his informant for each song, but also where the lyrics might have previously been published. While D. K. Wilgus later had both praise and criticism for Cox’s methodology, he did indicate that he set the “standard for most editors with any sort of academic interest in folk song. The regional archivists and the lone academics naturally followed Cox’s lead, their aim being to present their collected materials fully and accurately, to be approved and studied by other academics.” The almost invisible line between folk and popular songs was evident in Henry Schoemaker’s North Pennsylvania Minstrelsy (1919). He included not only older folk songs and ballads, and newer songs from the state’s lumber camps, but also compositions such as Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna!”
While Cox and others were presenting folk songs and ballads in an academic setting to a limited audience, Carl Sandburg successfully tapped into the growing popular market. The award winning poet and historian published The American Songbag (1927), which has always remained in print. “There is presented herein a collection of 280 songs, ballads, ditties, brought together from all regions of America,” he explained in the introduction. “The music includes not merely airs and melodies, but complete harmonization or piano accompaniments. It is an all-American affair, marshaling the genius of thousands of original singing Americans.” Sandburg’s collection was designed to be studied as well as performed. While he recognized the importance of the academic publications, he admitted that he also personally collected many of the selections. The ballads and songs were divided into various categories: dramas and portraits, minstrel songs, pioneer memories, prison and jail songs, Mexican border songs, railroad and work gangs, and much more. “Ballad singers of centuries ago and mule skinners alive and singing today helped make this book,” Sandburg explained. “Pioneers, pick and shovel men, teamsters, mountaineers, and people often called ignorant have their hands and voices in this book, along with minstrels, sophisticates, and trained musicians.” His expansive democratic politics guided his musical approach and broad outreach. While records and radio shows were now widely available, replacing the parlor piano as the center of musical life in an increasing number of homes, Sandburg counted on the continuing popularity of homemade performance. And he was not wrong.
Folk songs differed somewhat in various sections of the country, demonstrating the role of economic, geographical, ethnic, nationality, and racial diversity since the seventeenth century. For example, Child ballads were rather common in New England, as well as songs about farming, whaling, sailing, and work in the timber and textile industries. Also common were songsfrom theRevolutionaryWar and War of 1812, which were rare in other sections. Child ballads also circulated widely in the Southeast, along with broadside ballads such as “Pretty Polly” and “Jack Monroe.” Murder ballads had more of a local nature, along with mine and train disaster tunes. In the deep South songs from the African-American tradition, such as “John Henry,” “Stagolee,” and “Boll Weevil” circulated widely. Throughout the Midwest and Great Lakes region the presence of Scandinavian and German immigrants meant songs from their homelands, as well as ballads about lumbering, such as “The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks,” and sailing. The “Little Old Sod Shanty on My Claim” expressed the unique experience of trying to carve out a farm on the Great Plains, while “The Dreary Black Hills” is probably self-explanatory. The Far West encompassed songs from the other regions, as well as the experiences from gold and hard-rock mining, cattle ranching, railroading, lumbering, and other work places. Texas produced “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” “The Texas Ranger,” and so many others. “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” “The Buffalo Skinners,” “Ho for California,” and “Streets of Laredo” certainly captured life on the western frontier. Americans had not only a common song heritage, but also rich musical regional diversity that would come together in the twentieth century. “In antebellum [before the Civil War] America, regional cultures were very distinct even though their origins were somewhat complicated,” Norm Cohen has explained in Folk Music: A Regional Exploration (2005). “Later, other more efficient means of passing a song from one person to the next gradually began the process of blurring regional cultural boundaries.” Still, after such a long process of seeming homogenization, regional, as well as ethnic and racial variations, continued to exist into the twenty-first century. The North and the white South differed greatly, for example, concerning what songs from the Civil War would be recalled and performed.
Folk Music in Early Twentieth Century
