FRC 739 - Eunice Yeatts McAlexander | Eunice Yeatts McAlexander

FRC 739 - Eunice Yeatts McAlexander

by Eunice Yeatts McAlexander

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of FRC 739 - Eunice Yeatts McAlexander, Survey of Traditional Music, Vol. 1: From British Tradition, Survey of Traditional Music, Vol. 2: A Musical Melting Pot, Survey of Traditional Music, Vol. 4: The Anglo-African Exchange, Survey of Traditional Music, Vol. 3: Songs of Melancholy and Sorrow, Survey of Traditional Music, Vol. 5: Grown on American Soil, FRC 749 - Robert "Strawberry" McCloud - Bloomington Breakdown, FRC 750 - Luther Davis & Hus Caudill - Old-Time Galax-Style Twin Fiddling recorded by Tom Carter & Blanton Owen, and 114 more. , and , .

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1.	The Bad Boy 02:25	buy track
2.	George Collins 01:43	buy track
3.	You Can Hear the Whistle Blow 01:22	buy track
4.	Go Away and Leave Me If You Wish To 01:49	buy track
5.	I'm Going to Georgia 01:23	buy track
6.	It's Hard to Love 02:08	buy track
7.	The Butcher Boy 01:47	buy track
8.	The Pretty Mohea 01:54	buy track
9.	The Three Little Babes 02:38	buy track
10.	The Jewish Lady 02:30	buy track
11.	[chat - The Jewish Lady] 00:22	buy track
12.	The Three Little Babes 03:34	buy track
13.	[chat - The Three Little Babes] 01:17	buy track
14.	Froggy Went a-Courting 02:59	buy track
15.	Over the River to Charlie 01:31	buy track
16.	Little Massie Grove 04:04	buy track
17.	As I Went Up One Morning 02:01	buy track
18.	Old Joe Clark 00:58	buy track
19.	Old Joe Clark (with band) 02:31	buy track
20.	Old Molly Hare (fragment) 00:13	buy track
21.	Now the War is Raging 01:28	buy track
22.	Texas Rangers 02:41	buy track
23.	The House Carpenter 05:00	buy track
24.	Wild Hog in the Woods 02:26	buy track
25.	[chat - Wild Hog in the Woods] 00:53	buy track
26.	[chat - Eunice's father] 00:54	buy track
27.	Lord Bateman 05:09	buy track
28.	The Stormy Winds, How They Blow 00:47	buy track
29.	George Collins 01:55	buy track
30.	King William Was King George's Son 00:49	buy track
31.	[chat - Put My Little Shoes Away] 00:33	buy track
32.	Put My Little Shoes Away 01:08	buy track
33.	Bye-o Baby Bunting 00:20	buy track
34.	[chat-Bye-O Baby Bunting] 00:15	buy track
35.	The Two Sisters 02:52	buy track
36.	[chat-The Two Sisters] 00:20	buy track
37.	I Know a Pretty Little Girl 01:30	buy track
38.	One Morning in May 02:00	buy track
39.	The Miller's Will 02:41	buy track
40.	[chat - The Miller's Will] 00:26	buy track
41.	The Miller's Will 02:24	buy track

about

This album features the singing of Eunice Yeatts McAlexander (1909-1990), of Meadows of Dan, Patrick County, Virginia. I recorded Eunice in the spring of 1974 but was not the first or last to visit her. Folklorist Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr. collected songs from Eunice in 1932 and included several in his Folk Songs of Virginia (1949). Following me were Kip Lornell (1976), Wally Macnow (1978), Mike Yates (1979-80), and Julie Henigan (1985), and together over time we were able to capture the full range of her considerable repertoire. Our recordings, along with those early ones by Prof. Davis are shared with you here. I think I speak for all of us in saying that meeting Mrs. McAlexander and hearing her perform these folk songs and ballads, many of them centuries old, was an experience we shall not likely forget.

Eunice Yeatts was born in 1909 just south of Meadows of Dan, in the Mayberry Section of Patrick County. Both her mother, Edna Reynolds, and father, John Henry, were singers, and Eunice learned a great deal from them. Edna would often sing of a morning while making breakfast. John Henry was shy about his voice but, as Eunice would say, “really let his lungs out” when out by himself. Another important influence was her good friend Ruby Bowman (Plemmons), also of Meadows of Dan. Eunice mentioned one song in particular that came from Ruby, and this was Massie Grove. Edna wouldn’t sing it for Eunice, because of the licentious subject matter. But Ruby’s mother, again in Eunice’s words, “was less conventional” and would, so it passed from Ruby to Eunice. In singing the ballad for me, Eunice was still a bit hesitant, and interestingly changed the line in stanza six from “they went home a hugging and a kissing” to “a laughing and a talking.” There are some things you don’t sing about to a male stranger!

Although Meadows of Dan during most of her life was a remote rural hamlet, Eunice was very much part of the modern world. She attended boarding school at the Central Academy outside Stuart and earned a “normal certificate” (a teaching degree) from the nearby State Teachers College at Radford (which is where Prof. Davis found her). Her husband, Elkanah McAlexander, worked for the state highway department, while Eunice taught at the Meadows of Dan elementary school. Keenly aware of the venerable nature of her songs, Eunice was quick to remind me that they endured through the generations not only because they were “good stories,” but also because they contained lessons. I asked if a moral came along with them, but “No,” she said, everyone would have to “draw their own conclusions.” That is now the task for all of us.

Tom Carter
Spring 2023
For Kip, Wally, Mike, and Julie

credits

released January 30, 2024

Recording credits to follow track list on inside panel:

Tracks 1-10, 42 recorded August 10, 1932 in Radford, VA ℗Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr.
Tracks 12-18, 20 recorded February 1, 1974 ℗Tom Carter.
Track 19 recorded May 18, 1974 ℗Tom Carter.
Tracks 21-23, 26, 36 recorded October 25, 1976 ℗Kip Lornell.
Tracks 24-25, 27-34 recorded September 21, 1978 ℗Wally Macnow.
Track 35 recorded August 7, 1979 ℗Mike Yates.
Track 37 recorded August 22, 1980 ℗Mike Yates.
Tracks 11, 38-40 recorded February 23, 1985 ℗Julie Henigan.

Tracks 11-40 recorded in Meadows of Dan, Patrick County, VA.

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Field Recorders' Collective

The Field Recorders’ Collective is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and distribution of noncommercial recordings of traditional American music, material that is unavailable to the general public.

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