Green Green Rocky Road: A Song History
In its traditional form, "Green Green Rocky Road" is an African American children's ring game in which one player is called into the circle and then picks another to join in.[1][2] The earliest documentation found in the sources consulted here is a 1950 field recording that folklorist Harold Courlander made of children at Lilly's Chapel School in York, Alabama, issued by Folkways in 1955 on Negro Folk Music of Alabama, Vol. 6: Ring Game Songs and Others.[1][2] Courlander's notes on the game, as quoted by Elijah Wald, describe a leader in the middle of the ring trading sung calls and answers with the group before choosing a child to bring into the center.[3]
Arthur Rothstein, Children playing a singing game during afternoon play period at homestead school. West Virginia, photograph, 1941. Shown for its subject; the game in the photograph is not identified.
The version usually sung by revival performers was reworked by Len Chandler, whom Wald describes as a onetime classical oboist from Akron, Ohio, turned Greenwich Village folksinger; Wald credits him with a new melody and the verses.[1][3] Sources differ on how the song reached him: the Ballad Index says his source was the traditional song as Courlander documented it, while Wald reports that Chandler and Dave Van Ronk both recalled hearing it from the poet Bob Kaufman, who had picked it up as a boy in New Orleans, though the two men remembered the occasion differently.[1][3] The Ballad Index adds that the revival song also borrows from "Rosie, Darling Rosie," another piece Courlander recorded.[1] According to Wald, Van Ronk learned the new song from Chandler and recorded it on In the Tradition (Prestige, 1963); Wald calls it "probably Dave's all-time favorite song to perform."[3][4] Wald also mentions a separate Peter, Paul and Mary variant that some singers learned instead.[3]
The song should not be confused with "Rocky Road to Dublin," an Irish slip jig in 9/8 time first printed in 1841.[5] Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione include it, in the keys of D and C, in 30 Old Time Tunes, a pair of compatible dulcimer and autoharp books that give each of their thirty songs in two keys.[6]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Rocky Road (Green Green)".
- Smithsonian Folkways: "Negro Folk Music of Alabama, Vol. 6: Ring Game Songs and Others".
- Elijah Wald, Old Friends: A Songobiography: "Green Rocky Road (Len Chandler, Bob Kaufman, etc.)".
- Elijah Wald: "Dave Van Ronk Listener's Guide".
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Rocky Road to Dublin (1)".
- Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione: "30 Old Time Tunes".
- Image: Arthur Rothstein, Children playing a singing game during afternoon play period at homestead school. West Virginia, photograph, 1941. Library of Congress.