Jes' Plain Folks

The point of folk music, as the name implies, is that it is the music of the common people. Yet the great irony is that it is not; not any more. The common people listen to pop music or country music. It is hard to find others interested, as I am, in folk. Mostly they congregate around college campuses. Hardly the common folk.

What we call folk music is therefore not folk music; but what is it? It’s a kind of romanticism; a rich educated person’s fantasy of what it might mean to be poor and unlettered.

Like romanticism generally, it misses all the gritty bits; the mosquitoes and the foul smells of country life, the grime of the fields and mines.

Take that old folk standby “Goodnight, Irene.” I have an original recording by Leadbelly. Some of his verses are never heard any more:


I love Irene, Lord knows I do;
Love her till the seas run dry.
If Irene turns her back on me
Gonna take morphine and die.

I asked her mother about Irene
She told me she was too young
I wish I’d never seen her face
I’m sorry she ever was born.


Funny, that, eh?

And the original chorus wasn't quite as we've remembered it. I'm used to singing "I'll see you in my dreams," as the Weavers did. But Leadbelly actually sang "I'll get you in my dreams."

And that familiar children’s song, “The Cat Came Back?” In its original, as a turn of the century pop song, the lyrics were rather different than we now remember:

De cat it were a terror and dey say it wer be best
To gib it to a nigger who was going out West.
De train going 'round de curve struck a broken rail,
Not a blessed soul aboard de train wer left to tell de tale.

Little boy took de cat away, he got a dollar note.
Took it down to de ribber in a little open boat.
Tied a brick around its neck an' stone about a pound;
Now dey're grappling in de ribber for a little boy that's drowned.


Kind of sounds more like Eminem and less like Sharon, Lois, and Bram.