Black Jack Davy- Mary Lomax (GA) 2007 REC
[From: The Art of Field Recording released 2007 Rosenbaum. The date is probably 1950s or earlier but there's not way to document the date at this point.
R. Matteson 2012, 2015]
Performers Bios - Athens Folk Music and Dance Society: Sisters Mary Lomax and Bonnie Loggins (Alto, GA) have sung all their lives, but their appearance at last year's North Georgia Folk Festival was their first ever performance before a large audience. Octogenarian Mary Lomax of Habersham County is arguably the finest traditional Appalachian ballad singer to emerge in the 21st century. Her repertoire-- learned mostly from her father, Lemuel Payne, at a time when singing old songs at the fireside after a day's work was the main entertainment--includes many ballads from the British tradition (including 10 Child ballads!), American lyric, humorous, and narrative ballads of frontier days; she sings several previously unrecorded songs. In the summer 2008 Old Time Herald, Bob Buckingham wrote in his review of Art Rosenbaum's compilation Art of Field Recording: "There is powerful ballad singing from Mary Lomax, a sweet looking woman in her photographs, who can conjure the past and bring it to hair-raising reality in the present. Her reading of "Lord Daniel" will have you looking over your shoulder, it is so wonderfully eerie." Mary's sister, Bonnie Loggins, also sings several of the family songs; as well she is a talented song and poem maker, as well as a selftaught visual artists.
The Art of Field Recording by Philip L. Graitcer
JANUARY 24, 2009
Mary Lomax lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She's 80, and in one of Rosenbaum's recordings she sings a 250-year old British ballad she learned from her father called "Lord Lovell." For Rosenbaum, finding a living person singing this old ballad was the equivalent of finding the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Rosenbaum: There's this chain, these links in the chain as they go on. So the oral tradition is very important. Now Mary Lomax might sing "Lord Lovell he stood at his castle gate, combing his milk-white steed." Now that's before her time, and before her father's time to be talking about castles and milk-white steeds and lords and ladies, but the sadness of the story can speak to modern sensibilities.
Black Jack Davy- Mary Lomax (GA) 2007 REC
[Listen: Black Jack Davy- Mary Lomax]
1. I whistled all day and I whistled all night,
To charm a heart of a lady.
And I came downstairs with a glass of wine,
Sayin', "Drink one health to Davy
Drink one health to Davy."
2 It was late at night when the husband came home,
Inquirin' for his lady.
But his old servant said to him:
"She's gone with the Black Jack Davy,
She's gone with the Black Jack Davy."
3. Go saddle up my old grey mare
The black one ain't so steady,
I'll ride all day and I'll ride all night
Till I overtake my lady,
Till I overtake my lady.
4. He rode till he come to the river side
It being deep and muddy.
He rode till he came to the other side,
And there he overtook his honey,
And there he overtook his honey.
5. Come go back my dearest dear
Come go back with me my honey.
I'll lock you up in a chambers high
Where Black Jack can't come nigh you
Where Black Jack can't come nigh you
6 I can't go back my dearest dear
I can't go back my honey.
For I'd rather have a kiss from Black Jack's lips
Than you and all your money
Than you and all your money.
7 I once had a feather bed,
A waiter girl to wait upon me
But now I come t o the old straw tick,
The Black Jack begging all around me,
The Black Jack begging all around me