House Carpenter- McAllister (VA) 1959 Worthington; Bronson 61.
[Text is from Worthington (Clayton) in 1959 from: LC/AAFS, rec. No. 11,868(A5). A partial transcription was made by Bronson in TTCB, III, 1966, No. 61 which was taken from Wilkinson's MS. See also: House Carpenter 1- McAllister 1935.
Worthington (AKA Paul Clayton), who collected this ballad in 1959, worked with Davis, Wilkinson and Foss in the Virginia and NY folk scenes. Foss's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2013]
Excerpt: From White Hall to Bacon Hollow by George Foss
Marybird McAllister served as my initial point of contact and the focal point of my interest during my first trips into the Brown's Cove area. She is the archetypal mountain woman. Her age (“I'm the oldest one in Brown's Cove.”) and life story have combined to make her almost an anachronism, the last of a species on the verge of extinction. Marybird could neither read nor write. (“Ma and Pap never sent me to school. I wish they had of. I know I could of learnt.”) She was married at fourteen and bore eight children. She was forced to care for her children alone for a long period during the absence of her husband, Lem. She carried in her mind a large repertoire of songs which she constantly added to, and she never grew tired of singing, playing her banjo or listening to others make music.
In her late years she boarded with Hilma Yates, a first cousin once removed, and it was at Mrs. Yates' that I spent many evenings listening and recording the songs Marybird pulled from her long memory. Sometimes Marybird would ask us to write a letter for her. Her dictation would be a blend of personal notes, sayings and homilies quoted verbatim, and rhyming couplets extracted from one or another of her songs. The result was much like a literary crazy quilt like the ones she sewed together from countless scraps and pieces.
Marybird's perfect foil was Hilma's husband, Al. The two spent countless hours in intense bickering. Al, a transplanted northerner from Maine, was not totally attuned to Marybird's Southern mountain ways and beliefs. The constant smoldering feud intensified upon the arrival of a television set at the Yates. Al would become livid when Marybird broke into an old ballad right in the middle of one of his favorite shows. And Marybird resented the intrusion of such a disruptive device (“He turns that thing on and you cain't make music in here.”) She was delighted to point it out to visitors, however, and her concept of its electronic intricacies was startling. “ Watch Al there, he can turn them knobs and make 'em sing or dance or whatever. Makes 'em do whatever he wants.”
Once during a break in singing and recording the TV was playing away. A popular crooner came on the screen in one of those dub-over arrangements where three harmony parts are pre-recorded. So there was the singer mouthing his one melody line as out poured a perfectly blended quartet arrangement of his own voice. Marybird sat bolt upright and her dim old eyes brightened and she sat in rigid attention till the number was over. Then Marybird, who in her youth must have been a magnificent singer sighed, “Lord, I never knew anyone could sing like that.”
Wiki bio: Paul Clayton (born Paul Clayton Worthington; March 3, 1931 – March 30, 1967) was an American folksinger and folklorist, who was prominent in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
A graduate of the University of Virginia, where he earned a master's degree in Folklore, Clayton specialized in traditional music, primarily New England sea shanties and ballads and Appalachian songs. He became interested in the first of these as a youngster and began playing guitar as a teen. While attending college, he expanded his interests to include the music of Virginia and the surrounding states. Within a short time after leaving college, he began recording. His first releases were for a small specialty record company, but in 1956 he joined Folkways Records, the day's leading folk music label. He recorded six solo albums for Folkways from 1956–58, issued albums for a few specialty labels, moved to another prominent folk label, Elektra Records, for two albums in 1958–59, and collaborated with artists such as Jean Ritchie and Dave Van Ronk on other releases. He made his last recording in 1965.
As much a scholar as a musician, Clayton began collecting songs at a young age in his hometown of New Bedford, Massachusetts. At the university, he studied under a professor who was a leading folklorist. Soon he was combing the hills and valleys of Virginia and surrounding states for songs that formed the region's musical heritage. In making field recordings, he "discovered" Etta Baker and Hobart Smith, homespun musicians who have come to be regarded as all-time greats.
Clayton became a prominent figure in the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City during the early 1960s. He was close with artists such as Dave Van Ronk and Liam Clancy and was also a mentor and friend of Bob Dylan during the first years of Dylan's career. A song Clayton wrote was allegedly "borrowed" by Dylan in 1962 as the basis for one of his most famous tunes, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right". The resulting lawsuits by their record companies were settled out of court, and the two remained friends for several years afterwards.
Clayton was beset with personal problems in his mid-20s, including frustrations with his career, doubts arising from his homosexuality, manic depression, drug abuse and a related arrest. He died by his own hand in 1967.
"House Carpenter"- Sung by Mrs. Mary Bird McAllister, Brown's Cove, Va., October 31, 1959. Collected by Paul C. Worthington. Mode M/D
1. I am married to a house carpenter
And he is a fine young man.
2. O will you forsaken your house carpenter
And go along with me?
I'll take you where the grass grows green
0n the banks of sweet Kiddie.
3. She taken her little babe on her knee,
Gave't kisses one, two, three;
Stay at home, stay at home, my tender little
And keep your pap's company.
Stay at home, stay at home, my tender little
And keep your pap's company.
4. She hadn't been a-trav'lin' but the last two weeks,
I'm sure it was not three,
Before this vessel sprung out a leak,
And she wept most bitterly.
Before this vessel sprung out a leak,
And she wept most bitterly.
5. Or are you a-weeping for your gold,
Are you weeping for your store?
Are you weeping for your house carpenter
'At you never will see no more?
6. I'm neither weeping for my store
Nor neither for my gold.
I'm a-weeping for my tender little friend
That I never will see no more.
I'm a-weeping for my tender little friend
That I never will see no more.
7. She hadn't been sailing but the last three weeks,
I'm sure it was not four,
Before this vessel sprung out a leak,
And it sunk to rise no more,
Before this vessel sprung out a leak,
And it sunk to rise no more.