Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of the Carter Family performing Poor Orphan Child". This is not the version that is on the CD reviewed below but is a mountain song. I could find no Ginny Hawker/Tracy Swartz material on YouTube. Someone should rectify that.
CD Review
Draw Closer, Ginny Hawker &Tracy Schwarz, Rounder Records, 2004
Okay, let me clear up the mystery around the title of this entry. Recently I have been and reviewing and writing up entries about our common American roots music. Music like the various blues idioms, jazz, labor and work songs, the songs of the folk revival of the 1960s and the like. As part of that last stated project I, naturally, had to review the work of The New Lost City Ramblers who, in effect, were there to greet the young folkies as they came to New York’s Greenwich Village and Washington Square to make their marks. The original group included Tom Paley, John Cohen and the recently departed Mike Seeger (Pete’s half-brother if you are interested in folk bloodlines). As a result of that review someone I know who is very interested in this branch of the folk revival gave me a copy of this CD, “Draw Closer”. Why?
At some point in the early 1960s Tom Paley dropped away and one of the pair under review in this CD, Tracy Swartz, took his place. That, my friends, also should tell you something about the value of the tradition of old time mountain music that you will hear in this nice little CD put out by Rounder Records (another link in the folk bloodlines, right?). But enough, all you need to know is that this well-produced CD will display the vocal talents of Ginny Hawker as a traditional singer (not an easy thing to do today now that most of the great old women mountain music singers have passed from the scene…and have not been replaced, for the most part). And Tracy Swartz has the same concerns and cares about the preservation of traditional music that drove him into the New Lost City Ramblers lo those many years ago.
Finally, what do you need to hear here? All fourteen songs are fine but three really stick out (and will form the basis for the songbook that next generation of mountain music singers will use when they come looking for their roots), “Soldier’s Farewell”, “Poor Orphan Child” and “Salem’s Bright King”.
Katie Dear
"Oh Katie dear, go ask your mother
if you can be a bride of mine
If She says yes, then we'll get married
If she says no we'll run away "
"I cannot go and ask my mother
for she is on her bed of rest
and by her side is a silver dagger
to kill the one I love the best"
"Oh Katie dear, go ask your father
if you can be a bride of mine
If he says yes, then we'll get married
If he says no we'll run away"
"I cannot go and ask my father
for he is on her bed of rest
and by his side is a silver dagger
to kill the one I love the best"
So he picked up that silver dagger
and plunged it through his manly chest
Saying "Goodbye Katie, goodbye darling,
I''ll die for the one I love the best"
She picked up that silver dagger
and plunged it through her lily breast
Saying "Goodbye Mama, goodbye Papa,
I''ll die for the one I love the best"
"Poor Orphan Child" The Carter Family
I hear a low faint voice of death call full and mamma's dead
And it comes from the poor orphan child that must be clothed and fed
And it calls from the poor orphan child that must be clothed and fed
And it calls from the poor orphan child that must be clothed and fed
Savior lead them by the hand (Gently lead them by the hand)
Savior lead them by the hand (Gently lead them by the hand)
Savior lead them by the hand
Till they all reach that glittering strand
They call from mended children mouths (?) poor little boys and girls
Who once had loved their loving hands to smooth their golden curls
Who wanted mothers loving hands to smooth their golden curls
Who wanted mothers loving hands to smooth their golden curls
But now we see those wandering curls hang gallop round their brow
They say to us my pappa's dead and I've no mother now
They say to us my pappa's dead and I've no mother now
They say to us my pappa's dead and I've no mother now
Oh savior every orphan breath wherever they may roam
Bless every hand that leaves them aid and bless the orphan home
Bless every hand that leaves them aid and bless the orphan home
Bless every hand that leaves them aid and bless the orphan home
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