Songs to keep: "Getting the lore back to the folk".
Ward, Daniel Franklin
It seems like a lifetime ago that I first set out to collect folk
songs and ballads in the Adirondacks and Champlain Valley. Once in the
field, I was surprised to find that there were so many old songs still
being sung throughout the region. It struck me that everyone--young and
old alike-seemed to know at least one old local song. I also noticed
that, more often than not, the same song appeared to change from village
to village and from singer to singer. Occasionally, there would be a
song learned from a fixed source--usually an ancient newspaper
clipping--that was referenced by the singer. More often, these local
songs were learned from a relative or a neighbor who either lived
through the event in the song or knew someone who did. Once in a
while--but rarely--a recording would be mentioned by the singer.
There were a handful of commercial recordings of recordings of
songs from New York's North Country made during the 1960s. Some of
these recordings presented local singers that included Sara Cleveland
and Lawrence Older. It wasn't long before I was listening to two
albums of songs recorded by two professional singers who were outsiders
to this North Country region--Pete Seeger and Milt Okun--that featured
contemporary arrangements of songs collected in the field years earlier
by a local historian, Marjorie Lansing Porter. The material was rich. I
soon learned that when Ms. Porter passed away she left her extensive
field recordings to the stewardship of the local history special
collections at SUNY Plattsburgh. The collection is known today as the
Marjorie L. Porter Collection of North Country Folklore.
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Ms. Porter's original recordings on SoundScriber discs were
not available for playing, but over 30 reel-to-reel audiotape copies
that could be played were made available. These transcription tapes were
noisy, with lots of scratchy sounds, pops, and hiss. The recorded
performances were mostly unaccompanied and, unlike the Seeger's and
Okun's interpretations of the same material, they were obviously
unrehearsed renditions. Much of the recorded material in the archives
was not musical. It was clear to me that the collector's interest
was in the lives and experiences of her subjects, not just their
singing. The songs were like everything else Ms. Porter recorded--they
were part of life. She understood the songs' value; indeed, she
actively sought out singers to record them. Yet, it is important to note
that she also had a strong historian's interest in each song's
context and usefulness, its place in space and time.
Marjorie Lansing Porter (1891-1973), of Keeseville, NY, served as
county historian for the two most northeastern upstate New York
counties, Clinton and Essex, as well as historian for the city of
Plattsburgh. Her intense interest in documenting local people and their
everyday lives led her into the areas of folklore and folk music. Her
discovery of the SoundScriber portable recorder was at a pivotal moment,
when a generation of North Country tradition-bearers were about to take
their memories and their songs to the grave. Ms Porter's
recordings, made between 1942 and 1967, therefore constitute a treasure
trove of regional tradition that has been well utilized since moving to
the college archives. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, through the
work of Cathy and Jerry Supple, an effort was made to create lower noise
tape transcripts and to place a clean archival copy of everything with
the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
Jump to the 21st century. Seeking to further encourage the use of
the collection and to revive interest in these songs, Traditional Arts
of Upstate New York (TAUNY) embarked upon a multipronged project to mine
and share Ms. Porter's documentation in several ways. First they
produced a series of six concert programs throughout northern New York
that featured local musicians performing local music and songs. Many of
the performances were tied directly to recordings made by Ms. Porter.
The intention of the concerts was to spark an interest in the old songs.
Ultimately, three products came out of the project: a 40-page
songbook, a 17-song CD featuring contemporary interpretations of
traditional North Country songs, and a Public Television documentary,
available as a DVD, about Marjorie Lansing Porter's life, her
collection, and the project itself. Fittingly, the products are all
branded with an image of Ms. Porter's SoundScriber machine.
The songbook, Songs to Keep: Traditional Adirondack North Country
Songs, is a project directed by TAUNY folklorist Hannah Harvester. The
book includes words from specific field recordings and musical
transcriptions by musician Lynn Arthur Koch. The songs (and their
singers) included are: Banks of Champlain (Lily Delorme), Frog in the
Well (Lily Delorme), Johnny Barbour (Charlotte Meron), John Riley
(Stella Perry), Bonnie Banks of Bernio (Marjorie Lansing Porter), My
Gallant Black Bess (Dean White), Ballad of Big Moose Lake (Lawrence
Older), Young Brennan (Mrs. Wm. Spry), Once More a-Lumbering Go
("Yankee" John Galusha), Blue Mountain Lake
("Yankee" John Galusha), Young Thibeau (Peter Wells), The
Flying Cloud ("Yankee" John Galusha), Dolan's Ass
("Yankee" John Galusha), Isabeau s'y Promene (Peter
Wells), Lily of the Lake ("Yankee" John Galusha), and Bert
LaFountain's Packard (Elizabeth Smart).
The words are carefully transcribed. Rarely, when a phrase is
unintelligible on the field recording, it is filled in from another
recording of the song. Otherwise, these are the words on the variants
recorded by Ms. Porter. Historical and contextual information and quotes
from the singers, as well as photographs from the Porter Collection and
the Adirondack Museum make this an attractive package. Although there is
a CD from the Songs to Keep project, it only shares three songs from the
songbook. However, recorded versions of all but two of the songs in the
songbook are available on another CD of songs from the Porter
Collection, Adirondack Ballads and Folk Songs Sung by Lee Knight ($18.00
from www.LeeKnightMusic. com).
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The CD, Songs to Keep: The Adirondack North Country Recordings
Reimagined, is a selection of 17 songs and tunes from Ms. Porter's
collection, reinterpreted by contemporary artists. This project was
overseen and the CD produced by Dave Ruch, who served as master of
ceremonies for the concert series and also performs on two of the songs.
With the exception of the Bacon Brothers, the performers are mostly
musicians who are already associated with the Adirondacks and well known
throughout the region. Short excerpts from Ms. Porter's field
recordings can be heard between tracks. The fiddle interludes provided
by Don Woodcock alone are worth the price of admission, but every
recording is a sparkling gem.
The songs on the CD are: Cutting Down the Pines (Celia Evans with
Dave Ruch), Le Cotillon Blanc (La Famille Ouimet), Interlude: A Life on
the Ocean Wave (Don Woodcock), The Sailor's Grave (Dan Berggren),
My Adirondack Home (The Bacon Brothers), Young Brennan (Lee Knight),
Interlude: Quadrille in D (Don Woodcock), Fish Song (Akwesasne
Men's Singing Group), Thunder Song (Akwesasne Men's Singing
Group), The Days of '49 (Dave Ruch), Johnny Barbour (John Roberts),
Paddy's Wedding (John Kirk and Trish Miller), Bert
LaFountain's Packard (Bill Smith and Don Woodcock), Lord
Ullin's Daughter (Colleen Cleveland), Interlude: Lannigan's
Ball (Don Woodcock), Great Grandad (Sue Grimm Hanley and Jamie Savage),
and The Irishtown Crew (The Fraser Family and Friends).
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The final product is the television documentary available on DVD,
Songs to Keep: Treasures of an Adirondack Folk Collector, produced,
written, and directed by Paul Larson for Mountain Lake PBS. This
documentary won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary at the 2014
Boston/New England Regional Emmy Awards. The program interweaves the
biography of Marjorie Lansing Porter with documentation of the Songs to
Keep projects, drawing on the memories of family members, recollections
of the musicians who performed at the concerts and recorded the CD, as
well as philosophical discussions about folk songs from Pete Seeger,
Peter Yarrow, and Noel Paul Stookey.
Throughout the documentary there are wonderful performances of
songs set in the places they are about. Lee Knight sings Young Brennan,
a ballad memorializing a mining accident, near the head of a mine. Dan
Berggren gives a tour of the Irishtown cemetery near his hometown of
Minerva, pointing to the headstones, naming the long dead crew members
who will forever be remembered in the Irishtown Crew ballad, which was
first sung in the 1880s. There are beautifully captured performances by
Colleen Cleveland and Celia Evans.
The DVD includes a number of bonus features that were not shown on
television. These are at once fascinating but also essential supplements
to the songbook and the CD. There are interviews and performances by
musicians on the CD such as Bernard Ouimet, John Kirk and Trish Miller,
and John Roberts. Folklorist Hannah Harvester explains what they were
trying to do in making contemporary recordings of the songs from the
Porter Collection. There are photographs of the singers on the CD. One
very special feature is what Paul Larson claims is the last interview
Pete Seeger ever granted, which includes a discussion of his friendship,
dating back to the 1950s, with Ms. Porter.
In all, Songs to Keep is a satisfying project. The documentary
beautifully illustrates how it is a model for TAUNY's effort to
"get the lore back to the folk" in upstate New York. The
concerts were well attended and thoroughly enjoyed community events. The
songbook is a beautiful reference work, and the CD breathes new life
into songs that would have been forgotten but for the keen interest and
energy of a North Country woman who learned early on that these songs
were "fine to keep" and kept them for a new generation to
claim and embrace as their own.
Songs to Keep: Traditional Adirondack North Country Songs,
Songbook, 8.5 x 11", spiral bound, 38 pages ($15.00 from
www.nyfolklore.org/gallery/store/books. html#porter)
Songs to Keep: The Adirondack North Country Recordings Reimagined,
CD, 17 tracks ($15.00 from www.nyfolklore.org/
gallery/store/music.html#porter)
Songs to Keep: Treasures of an Adirondack Folk Collector. DVD
($19.95 from www.mountainlake.org)
BY DANIEL FRANKLIN WARD, PhD
Daniel Franklin Ward, PhD, is a folklorist, an adventurer, and an
"End to Ender" who has ridden a bicycle the length of New York
State twice. While in college and graduate school, he conducted folklife
fieldwork in the Adirondacks and Champlain Valley and could often be
found pouring over the amazing Marjorie Lansing Porter Collection. Dr.
Ward is a past president of the New York Folklore Society.
