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Follow the Drinking Gourd:
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Cultural History1934 to 1947The song did not initially make a big impression. It was reprinted in 1934 in American Ballads and Folk Songs by John A. and Alan Lomax. It inspired a well-received novel of the same name by the southern writer, Frances Gaither, in 1940. But there were no recordings, even though the Lomax book was well-known to the folk music community. Perhaps this is owing to the Parks version – his granddaughter told me he was very unmusical. Parks described the song as a "jerky chant" and sang it as best he could to a musicologist who transcribed it for publication.
Musical fragment in the original 1928 article The original song fragment has never been recorded. The version that comes closest was sung by Leon Bibb in 1962 and released decades later in Harry Belafonte's set, "The Long Road to Freedom." (Listen)► Turning back to the Lee Hays arrangement, he took the melodic snippet in the Parks article and turned it into a full-blown song. His new lyrics were considerably more literary than the original vernacular version. He also changed the line, "The ole man waits" to the much more overt "The old man is awaitin' for to carry you to freedom." The chorus now conformed to the Underground Railroad mythology of the time, where whites played a pre-eminent role and slave initiative counted for a distant second. Today one could argue that slaves who made it to and past the Ohio had already carried themselves to freedom and didn't need an old man to do it for them. In perhaps the ultimate compliment, the words were almost immediately presumed to be "traditional" and over a century old. For example, the Hays lyrics are placed in pre-Civil War settings in all three children's books inspired by the song – even though these lines simply could not have been sung as depicted because they had not yet been written! 1949 to 1958Folklorist B.A. Botkin included the song in his 1949 Treasury of Southern Folklore. It's very possible that later confusion about Drinking Gourd traces back to this book. Botkin reprinted the entire Parks article, but he stripped out most of the original lyrics and all of the music. Botkin then appended the Hays arrangement – both lyrics and music – to the bottom of the redacted Parks text. Readers who don't check a footnote could easily miss how loosely connected the two actually are. In 1951, The Weavers released the song's first-ever recording on the Decca album Folk Songs of America and Other Lands in 45 rpm, 78 rpm and LP formats. (Listen)►
The Weavers Hays and his fellow Weavers turned a relatively obscure fragment into a powerful, enduring folk song and launched it to prominence. Their work forms the basis for virtually all subsequent printed versions and most recordings of the song. The duo of Foster and Larue recorded the first commercial version by black artists in 1958. (Listen)► 1960s to the Present
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Copyright 2008, Joel Bresler. |
