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I come from a very musical
family.
I'm building a bridge across the divide
I'm building it strong, I'm building it wide God gave me the Plan, I'm following through I'm building a bridge, now how about you? As anything might be that you
grow up with, I wound up not appreciating what I was witnessing:
a holdover of traditional folk or “old time” music that had been
kept alive purely through family tradition. I enjoyed what
I heard and saw but I needed to rebel as all healthy teenagers are
want to do. I diverged into punk rock where I played electric violin
and guitar in several bands.
 Night Chills, Avon Books, 1975. Edited by Kirby McCauley I
was reading Wellman even back when I was blasting eardrums out with
electric riffs of punk rock horror anthems such asThere's Something in the Basement.
But at that point I was still unable to appreciate what he was writing
about when he talked of Silver Johns fascination of wandering the
back woods searching out old and obscure ballads and tales of American
folklore. The music was too close to what I already knew growing
up and even seemed a bit silly that a good horror tale would have
these ballads stuck in them.
Time went by and I grew up and away from my home and my roots, my heritage of traditional music faded into a mere glimmer of the past. A decade later I had forgotten about Wellman, Silver John and the music. But then I picked up a book called NIGHT CHILLS |
which happened to have the Wellman short “Goodman’s Place” in it and after 10 years away, I saw for the first time what Wellman was writing about from a different view. It was the view of a person long displaced from his roots, that as an adult was missing his family and the sense of home and familiarity.
The sense of place and familiarity
that Wellman is so good atsaturating his stories
with re-ignited an interest in his work. It reminded me of home and
along with it, that recognition of the old-time music as something
special. It was now art instead of kitsch to me and led to seeking
out collections of songs that are luckily quite available these days
with the revival of interest in old time music that seems to be occurring
here at the turn of the century.
Music Resources Though I grew up with it, there's not much I could tell
you about old time music that can't be said a lot better by those
with much more expert knowledge than myself. Mark Wilson,
General Editor at Rounder Records,
has put together an excellent series of articles and autobiographies
called the “ North American Traditions Series
”. I highly
suggest visiting their site and especially taking a look at Mark's essay
on the rationale behind putting this series together. He explains
the difference between what we term as “folk music” these days and
what it used to (and really still should) stand for.
Another great place to research the roots of American music is at the Smithsonian Institution's web site, where CDs of musicians who are actually mentioned by Wellman in certain stories and were obviously an inspiration to him, such as Bascom Lamar Lunsford, can be  Bascom Lamar Lunsford bought. I would speculate that certain aspects of the character of Silver John are based on an amalgam of people such as Lunsford, who wandered the countryside finding and r esearching obscure folk music and Vance Randolph who |
wandered the land researching folk magic and traditions.  Joe
Bethancourt's
CD is now available at his website
Yazoo has come up with one of my favorite series of compilations, “Times Ain't Like They Used To Be” and at their web site you can find a truly impressive and extensive list of compilations ranging in subject from early American blues, wartime, political, gospel, ballads and so on. Their CDs are a great wealth of information, each coming with a booklet listing brief biographical information on each artist, photos and the genus of each recording used on the CDs.
For music directly from the web I would suggest Spud
Mountain RFD . Spud Mountain is an old-time music revival band based out of the
Washington/Oregon region. Spud Mountain RFD is their 1/2
hour pre-recorded weekly streaming audio program that showcases traditional
music of rural North America, including some music from Mexico and
Canada. Their site also includes many excellent links to other resources for old-time music on
the web. And
of course no aficionado of both Old Time music and Wellman's mythical
North American landscape should go without Joe Bethancourt's
tape and soon to be CD of WHO FEARS THE DEVIL. This is a
collection of original songs(Silver John / Vandy,Vandy / Old
Devlins, etc.) written by Wellman for his stories and inclues
several traditional tunes (I'll Fly Away / Mole in the Ground
/ Pretty Polly, etc.) mentioned in the stories, all composed
and sung by Joe. -Daniel |