Chapter II: Folk Collection – Preserving the Message

Folk collectors were instrumental in conveying the black folk songs composed by

slaves, religious communities, free workers, and chain gang workers. Performers often held

back for certain audiences, and did not release the entirety of the material they had in their

arsenal.1 Songs which may have offended whites by supposing social structures besides

complete black inferiority would not be sung. We must remember that the anthologies left by

folk collectors will not always accurately represent all the songs that a people had to sing. Only

later in the folk tradition would some like Lawrence Gellert, Alan Lomax, and Guy Carawan

take care to immerse themselves in black culture to gain trust and understanding before they

would begin writing, interviewing, or recording.

Beginning with abolitionist folk collectors William Allen, Charles Ware, and Lucy

Garrison in the mid 19th century, there is a clear paternalistic role adopted by white folk

collectors of black music that would not be recanted until the 1920s. They saw themselves as

releasing a beautiful creation of a creature that was less than a white human. Not only this

they assumed songs served as a way to bring humor to their wretched state and assuage the

pains of slavery, physical and economic. Howard Odum and Newman Ivey White would

continue on a similar vein in the early 20th century, enjoying their theories that black prisoners

made songs to amuse themselves so they would be distracted from their incarceration. They

saw no themes of protest apparent, but Gellert would rise above this stale orthodoxy in folk

collection and identify the progressive, protesting nature of free willed human beings, equal in

intellect to whites.

Allen, Ware, and Garrison represented a post Civil War abolitionist persuasion that

sought to unearth the songs of black southerners. Although they did not want to upset the

1 Levine

white hold on black humanity in the South, they did want to ensure some kindly treatment of

black, and admiration for their talent. Through interviews with black slaves, black workers,

white colonels, citizens, and clergymen they collect enough material for an extensive song

canon and theory on black music. In 1867, following several years of research in the South,

they released a book, claiming it included 136 authentic slave songs. Their work, entitled Slave

Songs of the United States, included over fifty songs, a lengthy introduction explaining their

methods and additional facets of culture they learned along the way.2 Spirituals made up the

majority of Slave Songs, which may have been for many reasons. Allen Ware, and Garrison may

have mostly gone to places like prayer houses where spirituals would be sung, they may have

collected a wider variety and released mostly the spirituals, or it may be that slaves of the

American South had sung mostly spirituals.

Abolitionists in the post-Civil War south sought to remake the state of affairs for

blacks and whites together in the south. These activists suggest unity through equality to

former slave-owning white, which would most certainly be met with a high degree of

disapproval. Rather, there was the mantra of kind paternalism, where whites could take care of

blacks and recognize their good qualities and take a shine to them. The authors of Slave Songs

reflect this effort, by attempting to exemplify the places where blacks are similar to whites. In

their introduction, they tell of this reliance on whites for civilization:

“Still, the chief part of the negro music is civilized in its character – partlycomposed under the influence of association with the whites, partlyactually imitated from their music…. On the other hand there are very fewwhich are of an intrinsically barbaric character….”3

Our authors seem to pose that the blacks have a wonderful capacity for reinterpreting and

regurgitating what they have heard from their white keepers. Exotic flavors arise from their

2 Allen, Ware, and Garrison3 Ibid. 10.

African decent that gives the music an edgy feel:

“The greater number of the songs which have come into our possessionseem to be the natural and original production of a race of remarkablemusical capacity and very teachable, which has long enough beenassociated with the more cultivated race to have become imbued with themode and spirit of European music – often, nevertheless, retaining adistinct tinge of their native Africa.”4

They give blacks some credit for originality and then immediately point to how it was taught

them by the superior race. There can be no empowerment of blacks in this theory of their

music. If power is given to blacks to create beautiful music by their former slave masters, then

black would have great difficulty move from out underneath the shadow of whites. Allen,

Ware, and Garrison are folk diplomats in this sense, giving blacks credit through whites.

Of course spirituals are the easiest songs for which to make this argument. Since it

was whites that bestowed Christianity on their slaves through baptism, all tenets of the

Christian faith had been passed from white to black including the songs. “Our original plan

hardly contemplated more than the publication of the Port Royal spirituals…,”5 say the

authors.

Chain gang songs owe a great debt to slave spirituals and seculars. Since there are so

many secular songs in a prisoner’s canon, it is likely that folk collectors were apt to collect a

disproportionately large amount of spirituals with respect to the real proportions. Protest was

present from the very beginning of American black folk song as in Come Along Moses:

“O come along Moses, don’t get lost, don’t get lostCome along Moses, don’t get lost, We are the people of God.We have a just God to pleada our cause (3x)We have a just God to pleada our cause, We are the people of God.”6

Calling upon the help of Old Testament heroes, angels, and God, Negro spirituals evoked a

4 Ibid. 10.5 Ibid. 13.6 Allen et al. 160-161

sense of direct connection between the assistive supernatural and the natural in plight. To

identify this as simply a reinterpretation of the Bible studies taught to blacks by whites entirely

misses the symbolic meaning of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Below the sheet

music and lyrics to this song, the authors include a picture titled ‘Branding of Slaves.’

Significantly, it is not a horror-invoking picture, as one might expect branding to be. Instead,

the slave being branded grimaces comically, while slave onlookers smile. This totally confuses

the meaning of Come Along, Moses. I argue, that Moses is black when this is sung by slaves. A

picture of only moderately painful branding supposes a white Moses marking blacks with his

approval.

Just as St. Paul had been saved by God through the angel Gabriel in Blow Your

Trumpet, Gabriel, so too do its lyrics express the desire for God to save the singer in the same

way:7

“De talles’ tree in paradise,De Christian call de tree of life;And I hope dat trump mightBlow me home to de new Jerusalem

Blow your trumpet Gabreil,Blow louder, louder,And I hope dat trumpet mightBlow me home to de new Jerusalem

Paul and Silas bound in jail,Sing God’s praise both night and day;And I hope dat trump mightBlow me home to de new Jerusalem”8

Clearly, protest was thematically present in black folk music as early as the antebellum South.

Linking imprisonment to Biblical heroes would continue to grow as the peonage and convict

labor system as described by Perkinson continue to gain momentum in the late 19th century.

7 We should make sure that we distinguish between the singer and the collective opinion of slaves. Songswritten down by folklorists do not necessarily reflect the general opinions of slaves, though it is difficult todisentangle the two.8 Allen et al.

By the descriptions of a few people, the authors suppose that most songs are simply

spontaneous creations meant to amuse a childish breed at play. In the writings of Col.

Higginson, the commander of the first black regiment in South Carolina during the Civil War,

the authors extracted the following description of song composition, which they found

suitable:

“I always wondered whether they had always a conscious and definiteorigin in some leading mind, or whether they grew by accretion, in analmost unconscious way…. One of the oarsmen, a brisk young fellow, nota soldier, on being asked for his theory of the matter, dropped out a coyconfession. ‘Some good spirituals,’ he said, ‘are start jess out o’ curiosity. Ibeen a raise a sing myself, once.’…. ‘Once we boys,’ he said, ‘went for totesome rice and de nigger-driver, he keep a-callin’ on us; and I say, ‘O de olenigger-driver!’ De anudder said, ‘Fust ting my mammy told me was, notin’so bad as nigger drivers.’ De I made a sing, just puttin’ a wird, and denanudder word.’”9

Yes, this provides a blacks description of song genesis, but we should not always be convinced

by a black’s response to a white’s question for blacks may tell whites what they wish to hear

for fear of punishment. In Slave Songs of the United States, the introduction presents blacks as so

disenabled a people as to limit the effectiveness of the lyrics as evoking progress in the reader.

Following the turn of the century, many folklorists would continue to present the

black folk song as one of self-deprecation and sorrow. Howard Odum surveyed black folk

songs far outside of slave songs. Odum, and later collectors Newman Ivey White and Howard

Krehbiel, all advanced a more regional view of black folk music. As many blacks had migrated

north following emancipation, one could not speak of blacks anymore as a single unit in the

south, but had to discuss southern blacks. Secular songs had become a much larger genre, the

bad man songs of heroes, work songs, and bluesy love songs all made their way to the fore of

this secular tradition in the early 20th century.10 In analyzing these, Odum sought to study

9 Ibid. 13.10 Odum, Folk Song and Folk Poetry.

songs as backgrounds for culture, while White looked at culture as background for song.11

Odum hoped to understand black culture by examining black song. Of course, one did not

have to look far to see that blacks were oppressed, but Odum viewed black reaction to this

oppression as accommodation, much the way that abolitionists had and that White would.

His work on “Folk Song and Folk Poetry as found in the Secular Songs of the

Southern Negroes,” published in 1911 would be followed by more work on secular folk songs.

He had always sought to understand blacks by looking at their songs. He believed that folklore

studies were part of the process of understanding cultural roots and ultimately overcoming

cultural difficulty. Much like Allen, Ware, and Garrison had though he copped out and

advanced the idea that kindly whites needed to root out bad whites in the South so that a

more generous system of paternalism could replace the cruelty he saw. He began in the early

20th century collecting black folk songs for a doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. He

held positions at Emory University and would later settle on the University of North

Carolina.12 Folk song collection had become an academic discipline to Odum and others and

was studied as a science of black expression. The conclusions would continue to be similar to

those presented in Slave Songs, however.

Negro Workaday Songs, which he published with Guy Johnson in 1925, revealed

Odum’s view of the working Negro’s personality. “…[T]he songs of jail and chain gang, the

songs of women and love, and the songs of women and love, and the specialized road songs

all embody that fine quality of full and complete reflection of the folk spirit in the Negro’s

workaday life and experience.”13 Put simply, Odum viewed blacks as well aware of their

situation, unhesitant to complain about it, and good humored enough to make jokes about it.

11 Sanders, 57.12 Sanders, 10-21.13 Odum and Johnson. Negro Workaday Songs, 47.

However, Odum does not fully explore the protest notions bound in lyrics. While discussing

“bad man ballads,” those songs that make heroes of criminals and rebels, he portrays Lazarus,

of Bad Man Lazarus, as a hard-luck man on his way to the afterlife. “Here is a character more

to be pitied than censured, according to his companions.”14 Yet, the songs begins:

“Oh, bad man Lazarus,Oh, bad man Lazarus,He broke in de commissaryLawd, he broke in de commissary.”15

Lazarus is not a pitiable man here. He has broken into the food hold to steal from the white

man. Levine points out that this was often the best way for blacks to strike back at their

oppressors, by robbing them.16 Heroic men exhibit bravery and usually a detest for authority.

Odum chooses to view Lazarus as less than heroic though.

As Odum moved to chain gang songs, he portrayed them more as forms of protest,

but is hesitant to call them anything more than “attitude” songs, with little impetus for change

in society. “The songs that follow will illustrate further the Negro’s story of his prison life, his

desire for freedom, his efforts to escape, his attitude toward the policeman, jailer and sheriff,

and his humorous interpretation of various situations in which he finds himself.”17 In his Folk

Song and Folk Poetry, his 1911 article for the Journal of American Folklore, Odum presents a

“Grade Song,” with a most famous lyric interpreted differently by different folklorists.18 In

response to this build up of proposed actions including, “Well, if I had my weight in lime/I’d

whip my captain ‘til I went stone blind,” Odum comments on the attitude of wantonness.

“More than anything, the worker is loathe to work a single minute overtime.”19 Yet, this song

14 Ibid, 49.15 Ibid, 50.16 Levine, ~20017 Ibid, 75.18 Including Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness and Gellert. Me an My Captain & Papers. 19 Odum, “Folk Songs and Folk Poetry,” 382.

possesses much more than opinions of a disgruntled worker. The singer is a man that wishes

to strike back against authority. There is the implication of revolt in this song, an implication

that should not be ignored. Chain Gang Blues, presented by Odum in the same article, provides

a strong picture of the working prisoner

“Standin’ on the rock pileWid a hammer in my hand,Lawd, standin’ on rock pile,Got to serve my cap’n down in no-man’s land.”20

However, Odum does not take the time to draw this image out as an empowering picture for

the convict. Bruce Harrah-Conforth notes this obvious oversight on the part of Odum, in the

majority of his collection of work songs – there is very little mention of the Negro work song,

or song in general as protest.21 Self pity appears often in Odum’s description of the black

convict as a whole. Despite his assertions that race relations must be understood to combat

the harmful state of Southern white/black relations, Odum identifies a more pitiable creature

in black song, one that still is not equal to whites.22

Odum continually comments on the pathetic nature of the black work song and

secular song in general with a means to only shout out the hurt inside. There is no effort to

think about a possible change to this situation, but only complaint and mourning. Odum says,

“Watch the lonely singer plodding along and singing. Does his song mean anything more to

him that the expression of a passing feeling in harmony with his work?”23 Mood music gains

little from an audience other than empathy, and likely a feeling of superiority. At points,

Odum even neglects this sorrow and latches onto a spark of love for work, “The negro’s

fondness for the railroad has been noted. Some of the songs thus originating were given,

20 Ibid, 78.21 Harrah-Conforth, 106.22 Odum, “Folk Songs and Folk Poetry,” 255.23 Ibid. 388.

many of which are sung as railroad work songs.”24 Perhaps Odum has seen blacks that see a

silver lining in the dark cloud of Southern peonage, but this opaque look at a work song

neglects the progressive hope for overcoming oppressive conditions. This begs the question

as to whether ideal race relations in the South for Odum would be white and black equality or

not, or if it would be some paternalistic system still where masters give slaves plentiful scraps

from their table. As the convict can often be a symbol for the black race of America, these

opinions can hold back black progress.

Charting black progress prior to his time, Howard Krehbiel expounds on a diverse

survey of Negro folk songs in Afro American Folk Songs, first published in 1914. No doubt, he

seeks to expose the trodden nature of the black performer, “…as a rule the finest songs are

the fruits of suffering undergone….”25 From the outset, this opinion denies sung protest as an

accomplished form. For a suffering song may evoke notions of protest, but continual

progress would not be of interest to a folk collector, as suffering would diminish as protest

was more and more successful. This is a danger of the folklorist which seeks the songs of the

most battered people, they may begin to feel rewarded by it. A more recent example of this

eerie desire is reflected in a statement by the chairman of the Charleston society for the

Preservation of Spirituals, “[S]ince only three hundred years of slavery had served to produce

such wondrous music by ‘our people’ – meaning the Negroes – one view with awe the

prospects of the kind of music that perhaps another hundred years addition for slavery in our

country might have brought forth.”26 Certainly, this should not be the hope of any folk

collector.

The majority of early 20th century folk music collectors continued along this vein of

24 Ibid. 384.25 Krehbiel, 26.26 Gellert papers.

self-pity songs. In 1916, John Lomax presented an article in the Nation title “Negro songs of

self-pity.”27 Certainly, Lomax’s viewpoints may have been reflective of the times and the

contemporary scholarship, for he would later advance a more uplifting view of the black folk

song, but one that was still plagued with a tendency to elucidate self pity. Folk consumers –

those who listen and read about folk – could not but take a folklorist’s word for the views a

people possess. In the 1930s, he would join with his son Alan in a “left wing” expedition to

expose America to the music of the downtrodden, an expedition that greed and antique white

values too often overtook.28

Newman Ivey White, who published American Negro Folk-Songs in 1928, touted a

rather inferior view of the black folk song and the blacks who sang it. Raised in the South as

well with a keen interest in the beautiful folk songs of Southern blacks, White would become

the chair of humanities at Duke University and continue the study of black folk music by

understanding it in the light of black culture. In a chapter on the Negro folk song as a whole,

he says of the singing black man:

“In his songs I find him, as I have found him most elsewhere, a mostnaïve and unanalytical-minded person, with a sensuous joy in his religion;thoughtless, careless, unidealistic, rather fond of boasting, predominatelycheerful…occasionally suspicious, charitably inclined toward the whiteman, and capable of a gorgeously humorous view of anything, particularlyhimself.”29

White’s “sambo” view of the black man was anything but empowering. With these

introductory remarks to his survey text, he embarked on an explanation of folk songs as if

they were joy-bringing play toys of an obedient pet. These songs, to White, did not promote

change or protest the conditions in which blacks lived; rather, they try to accommodate the

Negro to his plight and salve the pains of enslavement – economic or physical. On the work

27 J. Lomax. “Self-Pity in Negro Folk Songs.” 141.28 Filene. “’Our Singing Country.” 602.29 White, 30.

songs of gang laborers, White explained their primary function as, “…they are to keep the

worker’s mind contented with at least the illusion of thought while his body is allowed to work

mechanically.”30 As with his general comment on Negro folk songs, White points out work

songs, employed both by peons and chain gang laborers, as suggestively humorous

acceptances of the inhumanity to which the singers are subjected.

Of course, one cannot blame White too badly, as he has lifted most of his songs from

prior folk collectors like Odum. He could not understand the emotions present during the

performance of songs the sentiments of the people that sang them. A deeply emotional and

telling element of a folk song is listening to the performer and being present to see the

emotion on his face, hear the timbre of his voice, and witness his intricate body language. To

view a folk song on the printed page is not to know its message. Yes, White printed many

songs in his survey of black folk, but rarely offered specific per song commentary. White

seems to ride the coattails of Odum by borrowing so much of his collection and employing a

more bigoted interpretation of the songs that not only ignores the protest present in black

work songs, but supposes that blacks enjoy being treated like pets or children.

Too many of the folk collectors that came about in the early 20th century were hell

bent on dismissing the heartfelt spirit of protest in black work songs as soon as the theme was

introduced. Though abolitionists like Allen, Ware, and Garrison provided a canon of

potentially moving songs of protest to the post Civil War United States, it seemed the seed

had fallen on barren ground in the folk community. Yes, there had been many folk collectors

since, but to view these old and new black work songs as simply art to be enjoyed is to deny

its full potential. Common glosses over songs were to see them as mere humor, to concede

that they were merely complaint songs, or to harp on their pity aspects. Yet, the theme of

30 Ibid, 251.

protest could not be denied for long, it was persistent in the minds and hears of Negro

prisoners and the black people in general. There was one folklorist of this era, however, who

recognized the protest potential in this music.

Lawrence Gellert has rarely received the praise he deserves in folk scholarship. Of

course, there are those that recognize his passion for portraying the Negro worker as he truly

was. Benjamin Filene notes, “In the songs that Gellert collected, oppressed southern blacks

express anger and sorrow at their plight and threaten revenge on their white oppressors.”31

His folk collection began in 1919 when he moved from New York to the black section of

Tryon, North Carolina.32 He did not simply record and write down songs, but also asked for

feedback from the performers. After an instance where Gellert wrote the word that as “dat”

for a song lyric, the performer replied:

“I ain’t say nothing about no ‘dat.’ I saying all the time about…and hespelled the word torturously ‘T-H-A-T.’ I know I ain’t had me no heap ofschoolin’, But you ain’t never see me climb no tree. I don’t answer to nocat’s meow. I’m just a man, see. You know it. Everybody know it.”33

Gellert was absorbing the personality of the blacks he recorded, and so he was more

compelled to present an honest replication of their art, rather than his own agenda.

We can compare this incipient attention to the humanity and free will of the black

performer to the animalistic views of Allen, Ware, and Garrison. The 19th century folklorists

even devote several paragraphs of their introduction to describing the inferior dialect of the

American black:

“A stranger, upon first hearing these people talk, especially if there is agroup of them in animated conversation, can hardly understand thembetter than if they spoke a foreign language, and might, indeed, easilysuppose this to be the case…. With these people the process of ‘phoneticdecay’ appears to have gone as far, perhaps, as is possible, and with it anextreme simplification of etymology and syntax. There is, of course, the

31 Ibid, 608.32 Harrah-Conforth, 37.33 Gellert notebooks.

usual softening of th and v, or f, into d and b; likewise a frequentinterchange of v and w, as veeds and vell, for weeds and well…. There isprobably no speech that has less inflection, or indeed less power ofexpressing grammatical relation in any way. It is perhaps not too strong tosay that the field-hands make no distinction of gender, case, number,tense, or voice.”34

Perhaps these the blacks of the 1860s were much more phonetically incorrect than those of

Gellert’s time. Perhaps those that Allen, Ware, and Garrison spoke with were particularly non-

emphatic with their grammatical accuracy, but this description does nothing to uplift the

black race. Describing incorrect grammar of blacks as “decay” suggests that blacks themselves

are a cultural decay. Gellert meant to overturn the mistakes of folk collectors of the past. He

meant to get to know blacks personally, to see them as human beings – and not chattel with a

knack for moving music.

From his very beginnings as a folk collector, Gellert noticed the theme of protest in

music and attitude of the black convict. “I recognized the clearly voiced protest of the Negro

against the denial of his manhood; the mimicking of his speech, the slandering of his

character, the debasing of his person….”35 Comparing this with Odum or John Lomax shows

how much more credit Gellert gave to the black convict than his contemporaries. He did not

see a disgruntled worker or a self-pitying child; he saw a man aware of how the world around

him had slighted him so who sought to fight back.

Gellert was an insider to the Black community.36 This gave him not only a more

complete understanding of Southern Black culture than other collectors, but also more

exclusive access to authentic folk material. Gellert’s insider status is very important to

understanding why the material that he collected was not only novel, but extremely accurate.

Despite not being funded by the government, a record label, or an academic institution,

34 Allen et al. 14-15.35 Gellert notebooks.36 Harrah-Conforth, 44.

Gellert used the capital he was given by a private Tryon resident and a makeshift Edison

phonograph recorder to collect songs never before heard by white ears.37

Harrah-Conforth, expert and translator of Gellert’s field recordings, divides his protest

song collection into three distinct categories: those stating racist conditions; those responding

with social commentary, and those providing recommendations for change.38 Since most

other folk collectors provided a general survey of black folk songs, there they were unable to

provide specificity within the theme of protest. In fact, most other collectors had no songs

that they would classify as protest. As we will see with Alan Lomax, this may have been

because the audience and consumers receiving this music would not have appreciated words

against them. Gellert did not seem to worry about this.

Gellert was painstaking about his collection, and made sure that his readers and

listeners knew that he had gone above and beyond to ensure authenticity in the songs he

collected:

“During the past twenty years, at frequent intervals, I’ve criss-crossed thelength and breadth of the Southern states. I trekked, hitch-hiked, andrailroaded from the tidewater region of Maryland and Northern Virginiaacross the Carolinas, Georigia, Mississippi, Louisiana and the TexasPanhandle. I visited city clums, on isolated farms out in the sticks, chaingangs and jail houses, cotton and tobacco plantations, lumber andturpentine camps…. I slept on miserable dirty pallets (heaps of old clotheson the floor) in ghetto hovel or ramshackles half disappeared in materialswamps.”39

Geller intended to expose songs that were underneath the surface of the superficial folk

collector who would remain on a plantation long enough to hear a few joyful spirituals before

high tailing it back to his respective academic institution. Likely, these songs had existed long

before Gellert began to collect them from convicts. For, as Robert Perkinson would tell us,

the convict labor system began soon after the close of the Civil War to make up for the

37 Ibid, 50.38 Ibid, 44-46.39 Gellert. Negro Songs of Protest [audiorecording].

emancipation wrenching laborers from plantation owners.40 The song All de wrong, Cap’n

seems to fall under all three categories of protest and serves as a fine example of progressive

statements of the grassroots. It begins:

“All de wrong, Cap’n (white folks)You do to meBoun’ to come back somehowJes’ wait an’ see”41

While this could be viewed as a convict speaking out against his captain, it could also be seen

as blacks speaking out against oppressive whites. These lyrics come from the typed notes in

the Gellert collection, and “white folks” appears in parentheses because it is crossed out in

pencil and “Cap’n” is written above it. Perhaps Gellert cautioned himself as many folk

collectors did so as to not offend too many sensibilities. Regardless, this song is in a relatively

raw form. In the last two verses, a strong sense of protest is even more apparent:

“Some dese days soonAh’s gwine show you ah’m a manNot a no-tail monkeyJes’ arattlin’ his chain

As feels it comin’ Cap’n (white folks)Gwine see you in GoddamnGit me a pick an’ shovelBury you in de Debil’s lan’”42

Including an ethnic slur; associating it with bondage; and proclaiming that violence will ensue,

the singer has no qualms about speaking his mind. This is not enveloped by any sort of

religious theme either, although the Devil is referred to. All de wrong, Cap’n never appeared on

a record album, but it is indicative of the songs that Gellert collected. Anyone hearing such

strong words from a direct source would be heavily influenced. Work Ox is another song that

would later be published and spoke succinctly to oppression:

40 Perkinson41 Gellert papers.42 Ibid.

“I ain’t goin’ be your old work ox no moreI ain’t goin’ to be your old work ox no moreI ain’t goin’ to be your old work ox no moreI done my do ain’t goin’ to do no more”43

Although this has no racial statements, its beauty is in its simplicity. For, indeed, slaves had

been treated like chattel, and so too were convicts. Since a disproportionately large number of

blacks were convict laborers, this is an identifiably black song in the 1920s South.

Interestingly, Gellert collect many secular songs among blacks where so many other

folk collectors had found only religious spirituals. Of course, Gellert’s primary focus was on

work songs in a strictly non-familial environment. White Folks Ain’t Jesus is a particularly

interesting convict song, in this light. Speaking out against the Protestant Church’s continual

efforts to drive the black man into submission with the doctrine of the abiding slave, this

draws a distinction between abusive whites and, of course, Jesus.44

At length, the collection of Lawrence Gellert reaches into the depths of black worker

culture for the attitudes of the workers through song. The collection’s authenticity derives

from Gellert’s total immersion in black culture. He did not study it from a distance as White’s

had done in the past. He made a special effort to interview and feedback from black

performers. Following a decade of collection in the Southern states he returned to New York

to report his findings.

Working with the editors, including his brother Hugo, of the New Masses Communist

journal, he began writing columns which included the music he had collected. He entitled the

article, “Negro Songs of Protest,” and focused on the deep distress in the Southern Negro

work community and Negro community at large, and the protest that resulted. Later, he

43 Gellert Papers & Gellert, Me n’ My Captain.44 White Folks Ain’t Jesus, Gellert Papers; In Black Culture, Levine speaks at length of the way that white slavemasters masters, and later white captains, used the teachings of the Christian church regarding being a goodservant to God to mean slaves and workers should keep well subservient to their bosses.

would release, through Rounder Records, two produced samplings of his field recordings –

Negro Songs of Protest and Me n’ My Captain. These would stand as definitive attests to the sprit

and theme of protest apparent in black music, especially convict labor music. Since Gellert

was not affiliated with any academic institution, as Odum and White had been, his work

received much less credence. He was also suspected of being too much of a leftist for the

traditional folk community because his brother was part of the Communist party and he

himself participated in a Communist journal by writing a regular column. All in all Gellert did

not have the connections necessary to advance his progressive theory of the reasoning behind

and the potential for convict labor music, but he would continue to try, as Chapter 3 will

discuss in more detail.

Shortly after the work of Gellert, the son of John Lomax, Alan Lomax began to

collect African American folk songs of the South at a young age. While inspired by the work

of his father, he sought to forge his own identity as a folk collector who identified with the

humanity of the singer. By 1933, at eighteen, he had already attended the University of Texas

for two years and Harvard for one. That year he would embark on a folk song collection

expedition with his father that sparked a lifelong career in the subject.45 In his early work, he

began collecting black folk songs. While making light of many of the songs that he collected

in his first fifteen years of folk collection, he remained relatively empathetic with the situation

of the black Southerner for the oppressed state of affairs in which he lived. He collected many

songs in penitentiaries, prison farms, peon encampments, and jail houses.46 When compared

with Gellert, however, he does less to highlight the protest theme present in the art form.

In an essay on ‘Reels and Work Songs,’ Lomax describes several songs and describes

them as an anesthetic, much in the way that Odum and White had in the past, but there is an

45 Cohen. 1.46 Cohen. 2-6.

apparent feeling of equality not present in those denizens of early 20th century folk.

“I hope you may be ready now to listen to Negro songs with differentears. These songs are full of love for people, they are lonely for people andthey are full of hunger for gentleness and kindness in this world. Thesesongs rose up out of slavery, out of misery. They jumped up out of leveecamps, they sprang from turpentine camps and back alleys…. Some ofthese people could look past poverty and misery, they could look clearthrough the darkness and despair and ignorance and see something on theother side.”47

Lomax hints continually at workers believing that the state of their condition was not right

and should be changes and could be changes. There is never the clarity in his writings that

Gellert had in stating protest as a clear theme. His descriptions of specific songs and attitude

towards the performers that sing them make clear that he wishes to assist in the improvement

of their situation through the spread of their song, but he is held from arguing that blacks

wish to overcome the situation themselves and strike out against their oppressors. The

tradition of the self-pity argument precedes Lomax in his folk heredity.

Alan Lomax’s analysis of work songs speaks of the strength of the collective black

man inherent. Blacks do have a message to proclaim to their listeners in song and the message

is their strength, but Lomax does not connect this strength to protest, but rather outlasting

the oppression that is seemingly inevitable:

“They tell the sun and the whole world how the blood is running warm intheir veins. They tell the world how good they feel. Listening to this songyou may understand why the work song has been called ‘the musicalspeed-up system of the South.’ Even under the hot sun, even with themean boss-man and the long hours, the singers can shout their songbecause they feel the strength in their collective arms.

Old Hannah was a beaming, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd,Old Hannah was a beaming,God almighty knows.‘Bout to burn me down suh!Lawd, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd,‘Bout to burn me down suh!God almighty knows.”48

47 Cohen. 76.48 Cohen. 72.

The strength felt in the collective arms of black singers is not necessarily noted as one that will

seek to overturn the system, as is apparent in Gellert’s description. We see a black that wishes

to sing so that he can do more work. In this sense, the song is fuel for more production

capability that the white boss-man can use.

In a discussion on railroad songs, Lomax takes quite a shine to the scene of black

convicts working long hours laying track. Once again, the work is not seen as entirely bad, and

while it may keep convicts busy and they are glad when they finish, describing songs as Lomax

does may give a rosy impression of a practice wrought with thorns:

“In the railroad songs one finds a sort of tenderness not to be found inother work songs, because these songs are all led by a tender-voiced tenorwho is hired to do nothing else but sing, to soothe the men’s feelings andkeep them all working together so they won’t get hurt on the job.”49

Should we be glad that these songs exist as an antiseptic to the pains of hard labor?

Contrasting this with Gellert’s description of the work songs scene in his article “Negro Songs

of Protest” for Music Vanguard, we find dissimilarity in the attitude toward work song:

“I listened for hours – the funeral air and the monotonous thwack,thwacking of half a hundered pickaxes conjured up the cheerfulatmosphere of a burial party…. In these songs we find reflected thecontemporary environment…the peonage, poverty and degradation, thesavage brutality of the Law, and the lynch mob….”50

Stark contrasts in the description of work songs suggests to a reader the emotion reflected in

the song. Lomax portrays work songs as if they were light-hearted.

One of Lomax’s famous discoveries was Huddie Ledbetter, best known as

“Leadbelly.” Leadbelly had been locked up in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Working on

the cotton picking farm there, he would sings for the other inmates. He had grown up playing

49 Ibid. 73.50 Gellert, Music Vanguard. 10-11.

the guitar, accordion, and learning folk songs from his uncle. Lomax’s descriptions of

Leadbelly are very personal:

“Leadbelly begged us to help him get out of prison, and said he hadcomposed a song to Governor O.K. Allen of Louisiana that he would likethe Governor to hear. So we recorded the song for him. It went like this:

‘In nineteen hundred an’ thirty-two,‘Honorable Guvner O.K. Allen,‘I’m ‘pealin’ to you.‘If I had you, Guvner O.K. Allen,‘Like you got me,‘I would wake up in de mornin’,‘Let you out on reprieve.’

We took the record to the Governor in Baton Rouge, and sure enough helet Leadbelly out of jail. I became ill about that time and had to go home,so my father took Leadbelly along with im on his trips through the South,to help him with the heavy recording machine.”51

Thus began the Lomax’s relationship with Leadbelly. They took him with them to the

northeast, where he would perform in his prison garb to large white, wealthy audiences. The

thrill of being able to hear a real live convict sing his blues was quite popular. Yet, there was

little activism apparent in the actions of Alan surrounding Leadbelly. Yes, he showed him to

the world, but it was not with the spirit in mind of assisting the other oppressed in prison or

blacks in general. There seemed to be a sense that they had done a good deed with Leadbelly,

and so they should be congratulated for that.

In response to the activities of the Lomaxes surrounding Leadbelly, and their general

treatment of the convict labor music scene, Gellert took offense. When contrasted with the

deep attachment he had experienced beginning in Tryon, the Lomaxes appeared as patriarchs.

Yes, they had freed Leadbelly, but they were treating him like a mascot as they dragged him

about the country from performance to performance. Solomon says, “According to Gellert,

[Leadbelly] had been promoted by the Lomaxes as the South’s supplicating ‘good nigger’ who

51 Cohen. 52.

only killed another black man – enough to rate a pardon.”52 Despite all of this, Leadbelly

became a symbol of the left and did symbolize the struggling nature of blacks in America,

even if not entirely point out by the Lomaxes.

In the 1930s, Gellert and Lomax represented the future of black folk scholarship.

Although Lomax was often tethered to the self-pity and paternalistic viewpoints of old, he

often sought to bring out the hope for change and equality in America. Gellert’s extreme

departure from the attitudes often harmed him as he could not break into the pastoral

patriarchy of old that still reigned supreme in regional folk scholarship. Ultimately, black

convict labor songs were being revealed as emanations of an oppressed people by 1930, but

not always as one that had that hope of becoming an equal to American whites.

Allen, Ware, and Garrison had begun the black folk song scholarship tradition as

songs sung by poor creatures that were less than. However, as the movement progressed, it

became harder to deny the black humanity that the Peculiar Institution of slavery had

attempted so hard to strip away. As Odum’s eyes began to open to the black complaint,

Gellert would soon follow him with the more enlightened realization that blacks wished to

overturn their situation upon their oppressors. In the years that would follow, this viewpoint

would continue to be suppressed though until it could no longer be denied in the 1960s.

52 Solomon. 278.