In the earlier years of the camp-meeting movement, few if any of the
songs produced in and for that environment appeared in print. The
whole body of revival song was therefore generally known as "unwritten
music." The first recordings were of the texts only. They appeared in
the form of booklets and bore some such title as "Hymns and Spiritual
Songs / for the Pious of all Denominations / as Sung in Camp
Meetings." They were prepared first by itinerant preachers or song
leaders who saw in the Great Revival a chance to serve the cause, and
perhaps to make money. That these books filled a great need is
attested by their ubiquity during the period which may be designated
roughly as from 1800 to 1840.
The musical notation of the tunes they sang was the least concern of
the revival folk. It is quite probable that the camp-meeting crowds of
those times never saw their tunes in musical notation. It is evident
that the first recordings of this unwritten music were not made by the
revivalists themselves, and that the first book collections of such
recordings were not made primarily for use in revivals. The books in
which these tunes first appeared were the country singing manuals of
which I have spoken above. The singing masters were quick to recognize
the value of the rousing revival songs and saw to it that their own
institution benefitted from their vogue. _The Christian Harmony_,
published in New Hampshire in 1805 was perhaps the first book to
record the revival tunes. _The Olive Leaf_, a Georgia book of 1878 was
the last.[6]
We sometimes have the compiler's own story of his sources. In the
preface to William Caldwell's _Union Harmony_ for example, the
compiler tells us that "many of the airs which the author has reduced
to system [notated] and harmonized have been selected from the
unwritten music in general use" among Baptists, Methodists and
Presbyterians. William Walker says, in the preface to his _Southern
Harmony_, "I have composed parts to a great many good airs, which I
could not find in any publication or in manuscript, and assigned my
name as the author." William Hauser's preface to his compendious
_Hesperian Harp_ is lacking in my copy of his work (the only copy in
existence, I believe); but the compiler's method of finding songs
becomes clear when we peruse his pages of song. On the page with
'Patton', for example, he notes that he first heard the Rev. William
Patton, of Missouri, sing the song which bears his name "at a
camp-meeting, North Cove, Burk Country, North Carolina, in 1831 or
1832." The song entitled 'Houston' was an "air I learned from my
mother when a small child." As to 'Land of Rest' he states that the
"inspiration of this tune [was] caught from a female voice at a
distance, at Barbee's Hotel, High Point, N. C., June 9th, 1868." Under
the song entitled 'Rev. James Axley's Song,' in the same compiler's
_Olive Leaf_, he tells who the Rev. Axley was and how he, Hauser, came
to record the preacher's favorite tune. John G. McCurry gives a song
called 'Good-By' in his _Social Harp_ and tells that he put it down
"as played on the accordion by Mrs. Martha Hodges of Hartwell,"
Georgia.
Instances like these cited above are numerous. They all go to convince
us of the great service rendered by the rural singing masters of yore
in the preservation of a body of song, in the collecting and
publishing of which no one else seems to have been interested.
The country singing books on which I have drawn for most of the songs
of this collection, are in the main those which were at my disposal
while I was preparing _White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands_. From
the Georgia-Carolina section were _The Southern Harmony_ in its 1835
and 1854 editions; _The Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist_ (1845);
_The Sacred Harp_ which first appeared in 1844 but whose oldest
edition at my disposal has been that of 1859; its three descendants,
_The Union Harp_ (1909), _The Sacred Harp_ (Cooper edition, 1902 and
four subsequent printings; I consulted the fifth reprint), and _The
Original Sacred Harp_ (1911);[7] _The Hesperian Harp_ (1848); _The
Social Harp_ (1855); _The Christian Harmony_ (1866); and _The Olive
Leaf_ (1878). Among the books originating in the eastern half of
Tennessee I searched _The Western Harmony_ (1824); _The Columbian
Harmony_ (1825); _The Union Harmony_ (1837); _The Knoxville Harmony_
(1838); _The Harp of Columbia_ (1848); and _The Western Psalmodist_
(1853). From the Valley of Virginia I used _The Kentucky Harmony_
(1814); the German _Choral-Music_ (1816); _The Supplement to the
Kentucky Harmony_ (1820); _The Virginia Harmony_ (1831); _Genuine
Church Music_ (1832); and _The Union Harmony_ (1848). From Saint Louis
I had _The Missouri Harmony_ (1820). I found also some material in two
publications which are still in use among the Primitive Baptists, _The
Primitive Baptist Hymn and Tune Book_ (1902) and _Good Old Songs_
(1913).[8] Two books, invaluable compendiums of the very sort of songs
I was seeking, came to my hand too late for consideration in _White
Spirituals_. They were _The Revivalist_, published in Troy, New York,
in 1868; and Jeremiah Ingalls' _Christian Harmony_, published in New
Hampshire in 1805. The latter contains scores of religious
folk-songs--among them many _spiritual songs_--which duplicate, though
in variant forms, the songs which are found in abundance in the
southern country-song manuals. The _Revivalist_, more than 60 years
younger, is a veritable treasure trove of the same sorts of song.
Together the two books open new vistas as to the spread and active
life period of the song movement under observation. The New Hampshire
book, made by a Vermont compiler, proves beyond doubt that the
movement did not remain in the South--the section of its first
prevalence presumably and of its present persistence--but spread early
also into New England. The New York book points definitely to the
persistence of the tradition in the northeastern section far longer
than we would, without this evidence, have been warranted in assuming.
I went song hunting also among the authored hymn-and-tune-books of the
big denominations, but I found little, and that little was already
familiar to me from its appearance in the country-singing books.[9]
Further information as to the identity of the books mentioned above
may be found in the Bibliography at the end of this volume. The
abbreviations which will be used in the body of this song collection
when referring to the source song books are explained in the List of
Abbreviations of Titles.
_Features of American Folk-Tunes_
Even after recognizing the three types of religious folk-song as they
are described above, it was not always easy in particular instances,
to decide on acceptance into this collection or on rejection as
non-folk material.
There are literally thousands of songs in the books searched. In the
_Original Sacred Harp_ alone there are 609, and the _Hesperian Harp_
holds 677. And while other books are slimmer and duplications from
book to book are numerous, it must still be quite evident that it was
no easy task to identify just the songs I was after. At times I had to
apply a number of criteria. Often the folky nature of the text pointed
to an equally folky tune. There was another hint sometimes in the name
given as that of the composer of the song. When I met with the names
Moore, Walker, Chapin, Breedlove, White, Carrell, Davisson, Hauser,
McCurry and a number of others, in the upper right corner of the song
page, then I was practically certain that the song on that page was
usable. For the men in question were, in reality, not composers. They
were recorders and arrangers of unwritten music.[10]
When an example of the old unwritten music made its way into the
authorized church hymnals--as happened to a restricted degree from
fifty to seventy-five years ago--it was called a "Western Melody" or a
"Southern Melody." Such designations became another reliable token of
folk source.
More important than any external indications in determining whether I
was dealing in a particular instance with a folk-tune, was the
character of the tune itself. The ability to recognize a folk-tune
comes to the student of such music gradually, somewhat as does the
recognition of a strange language or dialect. It came to me that way;
but after assembling my tunes I felt that their general folk character
might to some degree be reduced to a set of definite traits. I
therefore reexamined not only my own melodies but also those far more
numerous tunes in the secular collections of Sharp and others, for
such characteristics as tonal trend, rhythmic trend, tonality (modal
character), and musical form. Since there is no available definition
of a folk-tune and since probably no succinct one can be made, I am
hoping that my deductions in the following paragraphs as to some
earmarks of American folk-tunes may be helpful to others who are
interested in our traditional melodism, as they have been helpful to
me.