Aunt Molly Jackson (KY) 1939 Recording
[From: Library of Congress AFS L57: Child Ballads Traditional in the United States: Aunt Molly Jackson, Clay County, Kentucky, 1939. Dives and Lazarus notes by Bronson. At this point Bronson did not call this an "Appendix" to Child 56.
R. Matteson 2012, 2014]
DIVES AD LAZARUS (Child- No. 56)
B4 [(a) "Lazarus." Sung by Aunt Molly Jackson of Clay County, Kentucky at New York, N.Y., 1939. Recorded by Alan Lomax. This improving but horrendous ballad seems to have got into the category of Christmas carols in the nineteenth century, for reasons unexplained, and is found in the collections of Sylvester and Husk. At the same time it seems to have travelled with the itinerant Baptist singing-masters through the Southern and Southwestern States, in their Shaped-note hymnals. Cf. George Pullen Jackson's Down-East Spirituals and Others (New York, J.J. Augustin, 1943, 1953), page 21; there from Arthur Kyle Davis' Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Cambridge, Harvard, 1929) , pages 115 and 116.
1. There was a man in olden times
The scripture doth inform us
Whose pomp and grandeur and whose crimes
Was great and very numer's.
For begging Lazarus at his gates
To help himself unable
He was begging 'umbly for the crumbs
That fell from his rich table.
But not a crumb would he bestow
Or pity his condition
The dogs took pity and licked his sores
More ready to defend him.
2. Poor Lazarus died at the rich man's gate
To Heaven he ascended
He rested in the bosom of Abraham
Where all his troubles ended.
The rich man died, was buried too,
But O his awful station!
With Heaven and Hell both placed in view
He waked up in damnation.
Saying I pray thee, Father Abraham,
Send Lazarus with cold water.
For I'm tormented in these flames With a tormenting torture.
3. Rich Dives, poor Lazarus cannot come to you
There is a gulf between (us)
Now you must burn on in those flames
As though you had not seen us.
Our hell-fired brothers in yonders world
Send Lazarus back to tell them
The wicked brother screams in Hell
With no one to defend him.
If Lazarus went to yonders world
Your brothers would not believe him
They would answer him with cruel words
And say he had deceived them.
Forever you must burn in Hell
And forever be tormented
And your other five brothers will end in Hell
If they have not repented.
_______________
From wiki: Aunt Molly Jackson (1880 – September 1, 1960) was an influential American folk singer and a union activist. Her full name was Mary Magdalene Garland Stewart Jackson Stamos.
Biography
Jackson was born in Clay County, Kentucky as the daughter of Oliver Perry Garland and Deborah Robinson.[1] In 1883, her father opened a store in Laurel County selling groceries to miners on credit. When the miners failed to make their payments, he was forced to close it two years later to go to work in the coal mines. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was six years old.[2] Because her family were involved in union activities, Jackson was thrown in jail at the age of ten.[1] She began learning songs from her great-grandmother, Nancy MacMahan, at a young age.
In 1894, she married the miner Jim Stewart. She bore two children.[1][2] For the next decade, she worked as a nurse in Clay County before moving to Harlan County in 1908 and a job as a midwife delivering 884 babies.[2] Her husband was killed in a mine accident in 1917 and shortly afterwards, she married the miner Bill Jackson.[1] Tragedies struck her family when her father and a brother were blinded in another mine accident.[2] She became a member of the United Mine Workers and began writing protest songs like "I Am A Union Woman", "Kentucky Miner's Wife", and "Poor Miner's Farewell".[1] When Jackson was jailed because of her unionizing activities, her husband was forced to divorce her in order to keep his mining job.[3]
She was discovered in November 1931 by the Dreiser Committee, investigating mining conditions in Harlan County when she spoke and sang her song "Ragged, Hungry Blues" in front of the committee.[4][2] In December 1931, Jackson traveled to New York City to support and raise money for striking Harlan coal miners against tobacco.[5] She made her recording debut on December 10, 1931.[6] For the next year, she performed in various cities in the north.[5] She stayed in New York for much of that decade and was a part of the Greenwich Village folk revival, singing for Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress, and influencing folk singers from Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger.
In the mid 1930s, she performed in New York City together with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Earl Robinson, Will Geer, her half-brother Jim Garland, and her half-sister Sarah Ogan Gunning.[1][3] After a bus accident in Ohio, leaving her badly crippled, Jackson became incapacitated and was confined to her New York apartment.[5][3] She died in 1960 and was interred as Mary Stamos, next to her husband Gust Stamos, at the Odd Fellows Lawn Cemetery in Sacramento, California.[5]
The given dates of Aunt Molly Jackson's life are mostly uncertain since she was very flexible when giving them. Folklorist Archie Green became very frustrated during interviews with her, due to her "elastic responses", inconsistent elaborations and "flexible dates." It was not unusual for her to contradict her own prior accounts.[7]
Discography
Kentucky Miner's Wife, Part 1-2 (Ragged Hungry Blues) - Columbia 15731-D (1931)
The Little Dove / Ten Thousand Miles - Library of Congress AAFS-7 (1942)
The Songs and Stories of Aunt Molly Jackson, 1960 - Folkways FH-5457 (1961)
Aunt Molly Jackson, Library of Congress Recordings, 1939 - Rounder 1002 (1971)
Footnotes
1.^ a b c d e f Kleber 1992, p. 459.
2.^ a b c d e Hevener 2002, p. 66.
3.^ a b c Hevener 2002, p. 67.
4.^ Weissman 2006, p. 42.
5.^ a b c d Romalis 1998, p. 2.
6.^ Russell 2004, p. 452.
7.^ Romalis 1998, p. 4.
References
Hevener, John W. (2002) Which Side Are You On?: The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39, University of Illinois Press
Kleber, John E. (1992) Lowell H. Harrison, Thomas Dionysius Clark, The Kentucky Encyclopedia, University Press of Kentucky
Russell, Tony - Pinson, Bob (2004) Country music records: a discography, 1921-1942, Oxford University Press US
Romalis, Shelly (1998) Pistol Packin' Mama: Aunt Molly Jackson and the Politics of Folksong, University of Illinois Press
Weissman, Dick (2006) Which Side Are You On?: An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America, Continuum International Publishing Group