Music professor Byron Arnold traversed the state from 1945 to 1948, compiling one of Alabama's most comprehensive
Less than two weeks after Byron Arnold joined the music faculty of the University of Alabama, he was taken to a Sunday "foot-washing" at an African American church in Northport. The chant-like singing and the religious fervor of the singers as they moved to the rhythm and flow of the music deeply stirred the Eastman School of Music graduate.
Dr. Joy Baklanoff observes that "footwashing is taken from Jesus' command (John 13:5-20), during the feast of passover, that his disciples wash one another's feet." In southern tradition, the service integrates music and ritual in a captivating manner. Notably, Carl Carmer's Stars Fell on Alabama became a best seller by 1934. In this quasi-fictional work, Carmer describes a footwashing ceremony in an exotic and intriguing manner.
During that fall of 1938, he was impressed with some old folk tunes hummed by a friend as she prepared dinner, and he encountered a student in his elementary school music class who said that her grandmother knew "Barbara Allen" and that the African Americans on her father's plantation sang spirituals, but not like the versions in the class text. Such experiences convinced Arnold that Alabama was a state full of folksong, whose riches had not been explored systematically.
The best folksingers deeply respect their material. Arnold noted that the songs in his collection "were sung quietly, naturally, never dramatically, and entirely without the mannerisms and clichés of the concert soloist." For instance, Callie Graven observed that sprightly professional renditions of "Barbara Allen" missed the point of the ballad: "I have heard [it] many times over the radio but they never get it right and I don't like it. It's a dwellin' song and must be sung slow and mournful, dwellin' on the long notes." Arnold said that "it was as if each song, as I heard it, was a creation by the singer for the satisfaction of an inner compulsion." The true folksinger enjoys the songs and enjoys singing them. Mrs. Julia Greer Marechal of Mobile is a good example. When Byron Arnold met her in the summer of 1947, she was ninety years old, blind, and hardly able to walk. But she recorded thirty-three songs in a continuous three-hour session that Arnold confessed wore out both him and Abernathy. Marechal concluded the session by saying, "This has been so thrilling; I wish I knew more songs to record." And the true folksong audience is supportive, appreciative, and polite.
For more, read the rest of this article by Robert W. Halli, Jr. Or explore the following links:
- Bullfrog Jumped: Children's FolkSongs from the Byron Arnold Collection, a CD available for purchase at Amazon.
- Listen to children across Alabama sing the folksongs.
- Mrs. Carlton remembers Byron Arnold.
- John Bealle's excellent essay on Byron and his life.
