Phillips Family - evergreentrad

20 Jan

A New Name and a New Project for 2016

Brian Miller and Randy Gosa will now perform under the name The Lost Forty. We have a new site as well: www.thelostforty.com.

This site, www.evergreentrad.com, will continue to be the home of this blog (Northwoods Songs) along with other information and updates about my research, performing and teaching work.

Also, this month marks the launch of an exciting northwoods folksong revival project that will run throughout 2016: The Lost Forty Project. The Lost Forty Project will celebrate and make accessible forgotten field recordings of Minnesotan traditional singers recorded almost a century ago.

A bit about the name(s):

In November of 1882, a surveying crew in the north woods of Minnesota accidentally plotted Coddington Lake a half-mile further north than it was actually located. Today, the happy result is the Lost 40 Scientific and Nature Area—a rare and wonderful stand of old growth pine, some trees now over 300 years old, that was overlooked by logging companies due to the error. It is a breathtaking time capsule from Minnesota’s past.

Much of Minnesota’s early folksong traditions (including some songs as old as those trees) have been similarly overlooked. For almost ten years now, I have sought out the forgotten songs of farmers, Great Lakes sailors, lumbermen and saloon-keepers that carried Old World ballads to the North Star State back in the 1800s. These songs are what Randy and I perform as The Lost Forty… and a very special group of these songs is the focus of The Lost Forty Project.

In September 1924, pioneering folksong collector Robert Winslow Gordon traveled from Berkeley, California to Cambridge, Massachusetts with his Edison wax cylinder recording machine in tow. A month after arriving in Cambridge, Gordon wrote a letter in which he gave a brief account of his trip:

I made a very leisurely trip east with many stop-overs and side trips collecting material. I got some immensely good stuff up in northern Minnesota, lumber-jack material…[1]

The “good stuff” Gordon recorded on this September 1924 trip was overlooked for decades—much like the pine trees north of Coddington Lake. Gordon’s 1924 recordings of singers from northern Minnesota, documenting 47 songs, were preserved by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress but not cataloged as having anything to do with Minnesota. Gordon did extensive recording in North Carolina, Georgia and California and must not have kept notes on his brief adventure “up north.”

Through my research, I was able to track down and identify Gordon’s forgotten “Minnesota” recordings. This spring I will be creating The Minnesota Folksong Collection—an online digital library for the songs Gordon recorded from Michael Cassius Dean of Virginia, Minnesota and Reuben Waitstell Phillips of Akeley, Minnesota. The recordings will be free to listen to for anyone with an internet connection. These are some of the only existing recordings of traditional folksong from Minnesota and some of the earliest from anywhere in the Great Lakes region. The 47 songs include regionally-composed songs about woods work, Irish come-all-ye’s, songs about sailing the Great Lakes, railroading songs, deer hunting songs and old British ballads dating as far back as the 1680s—a similar age to those trees up by Coddington Lake! In addition to the recordings and background on Dean and Phillips, song texts and transcriptions will be provided to encourage people to learn these songs and make them their own.

As part of the project, Randy Gosa and I (The Lost Forty) will perform and teach our arrangements of songs from the collection at concerts and workshops throughout the state. We will also post online monthly videos of us performing our arrangements. The first video will be posted here on February 1^st! In addition, an online “song forum” connected to The Minnesota Folksong Collection will invite others to post their own videos of themselves doing songs learned from the collection.

This project has been a dream of mine since July 2012 when, late at night while scouring a set of digitized newspapers for information about singer Michael Dean, I found an article implying the existence of these recordings. Seventy-five percent of the funding for this project is coming from a Folk and Traditional Arts Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. In February, I will be launching a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to help make up the rest of the funding needed to make this dream a reality.

Please check back for more information on the launch of the Minnesota Folksong Collection site, the Kickstarter and to see the first song video when it posts on February 1^st!

[1] Gordon, Robert W. Robert W. Gordon to C. L. Canon, October 31, 1924. Letter. From American Folklife Center, Gordon Manuscript Collections, Gordon Mss, #769.

12 Sep

Lovel (Laws L13B)

As Lovel was walking a walking one morning
He espied two pedlers two pedlers a coming
He boldley stept up to them and called them his honey
Saying stand and deliver boys for all I wants your money.

Lol te de a de um, Lol te de a dum.

O we are two pedlers two pedlers are we sir
And you are Mr. Lovel we take you to be sir
O we are two pedlers that have lateley cam from dublin
And all that we have in our box is our bedin and our clothing.

As Lovel was walking up kinsberry mountain
He espied two rich misers their guines they were counting
First he cocked his blunderbus and then he drew his rapier
Saying stand and deliver boys for I’me a money taker.

O Lovel O Lovel my poor harts a breaking
For little did I think my love you ever would ben taken
And if I had ave knawn that the enemy was a coming
Ide have fought like a hero although Ime but a woman.

O Polly O Polly my poor harts a breaking
If it had not been for you my love I never would been taken
For while I was a sleeping not thinking of the matter
You discharged my pistols and loded them with water.

As Lovel was walking all up the galos lader
He called to the sherif for his irish cap and fether
Saying I have robed money but never killed enny
I think it hard that I must die just for grabing money.
__________________________________

From 1923 through 1927, folklorist and song collector Robert Winslow Gordon edited a column in the pulp magazine Adventure called “Old Songs That Men Have Sung.” Each column included folksong texts sent in by readers from their own memories, personal song notebooks and singing friends and family members. Gordon received over 3000 letters from readers, many in search of words to half-remembered songs and many contributing songs themselves.

During my trip to the American Folklife Center this past June I was able to sift through these letters and Gordon’s typed responses to them – all of which are in the AFC’s amazing archive. Going through the letters (the AFC staff allowed me to work with the brittle originals!) gave me insight into the lives and motivations of singers from that era. Many writers lamented the changing times and the loss of the traditional singing cultures they grew up with.

The words to this version of “Lovel” appear in a set of songs sent in to Gordon in 1924 by singer Reuben Waitstell Phillips of Akeley, Minnesota (see N.S. Oct. 2013). Phillips’ accompanying letter began:

Dear Sir,
I am an old man and my hand shakes so that I am compeled to use a pencil insted of pen and ink but I am going to send you a few old songs that men have sung if you can use them well and good if not why just a little time spent.

Gordon was delighted by the 22 song texts sent in by Phillips and he chose “Lovel” to print in his next “Old Songs” column. He introduced the column saying:

A MOST valuable contribution arrived last week from Mr. R. W. Phillips of Akeley, Minnesota—a forty-six-page manuscript of twenty-two songs, every one of them worth while! I have sent Mr.Phillips, in your name and mine, our heartiest thanks. May his voice be heard often!

Above, I have given the text as Phillips supplied it, complete with unconventional spellings. The transcription is my own based on a wax cylinder recording made by Gordon of Phillips during a visit to Akeley (from what I can tell in researching the family, the Phillipses lived south of Akeley near Chamberlain, MN) the same year he received the letter.

The song is a distant variant of “Whiskey in the Jar.” Similar versions were collected in Vermont and Maine but Phillips’ melody is quite unique… and fun to sing!

More on this song and its more well-known variant “Whiskey in the Jar” here.

26 Jun

Hello from the American Folklife Center

I thought I would make a quick post here to report that I’m having a fantastic week here researching songs and singers from the Upper Midwest at the American Folklife Center! The AFC is located within the Library of Congress (see photo below) in Washington D. C.

Last month, I found out that I am a 2014 recipient of the AFC’s Parsons Fund Award which is funding my week here. The trip is allowing me to further my research into recordings made in 1924 of Minnesota singers Michael Cassius Dean, Reuben W. Phillips, Israel Phillips and Seymour Phillips. The recordings were made by Robert Winslow Gordon who founded the Archive of American Folk Song which evolved into the AFC. The archives here have a large collection of letters between Gordon and hundreds of singers, collectors and folksong lovers that he corresponded with and gathered songs from for a magazine column he edited throughout the 20s called “Old Songs that Men Have Sung.” I have found some wonderful letters that give insight into how the Minnesota singers thought about their singing and their songs and where they learned their songs.

I have also been listening to amazing recordings made in Michigan (Beaver Island especially) by Alan Lomax and Ivan Walton. Watch for the fruits of this week’s work in Northwoods Songs!

Thanks to the staff at the AFC–especially Todd Harvey who is helping me while I’m here and Ann Hoog who helped me track down the Dean and Phillips material back in 2012–I am so grateful for your help and for the AFC’s rich collection.