Cypress Knee Surrender: A Song History

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"Cypress Knee Surrender" is an original mountain dulcimer tune by John Keane, a Shreveport, Louisiana, musician with a degree in music education who performs together with Karen Keane.[1][2] It appears in his 15 Originals, a 43-page book of fifteen tunes, all credited to him, published by Fingers Of Steel; the listing gives this one in DGD tuning.[1] The sources consulted here give no account of its inspiration and no recording of it.[1][2]

Photograph of a swamp forest of tall, thin trees, with a man seated among cut branches.

Israel Cook Russell, Great Dismal Swamp, Virginia, albumen print, c. 1872–90. Shown for its swamp forest; it has no connection to the tune.

The bald cypress, a conifer native to the wetlands of southern North America, often raises cone-shaped knobs of wood, known as knees, from its spreading roots up past the surface of the water.[3] A U.S. Forest Service species review gives their height as 1 to 12 feet, varying with the water level, while an Arnoldia article from the Arnold Arboretum records one of fourteen feet.[4][5] Sources differ on what the knees do: Britannica calls them pneumatophores that help get oxygen to the roots, the Forest Service review says they lend support, and the Arnoldia article concludes that no explanation has won general acceptance.[3][4][5] Nothing in the sources consulted here ties the tune's title to a particular swamp, place or story.[1][2]

Our book that contains the song "Cypress Knee Surrender"

Sources

  1. Fingers Of Steel: "John Keane, 15 Originals".
  2. DulcimerDownloads: "John Keane".
  3. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Bald cypress".
  4. USDA Forest Service, Fire Effects Information System: "Taxodium ascendens, T. distichum".
  5. Arnold Arboretum, Arnoldia: "Cypress Knees: An Enduring Enigma".
  6. Image: Israel Cook Russell, Great Dismal Swamp, Virginia, albumen print, c. 1872–90. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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