Harrison Town: A Song History

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"Harrison Town" is an Ozark ballad of crime and capture. The Traditional Ballad Index describes a singer who blames bad company for his lawbreaking: captured and bound for prison, he hopes someone will care for the horse that served him, and vows to settle down with his sweetheart once freed.[1] The index, which lists it as Roud 4095, records two texts and a tune under Randolph no. 162,[1] evidently a reference to Vance Randolph's Ozark Folksongs, the collection the State Historical Society of Missouri issued in four volumes between 1946 and 1950.[2] It suggests that one of Randolph's texts may have picked up material from "The Boston Burglar" (a song on the same theme) or something like it, while the other appears free of it.[1]

Thomas Cole painting of a rider on a white horse fording a stream below a wooded rocky peak

Thomas Cole, The Mountain Ford, oil on canvas, 1846. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A rider fording a wooded stream, shown for atmosphere; it has no connection to the song.

The song is firmly local. Versions in the Max Hunter Folk Song Collection at Missouri State University name Harrison, an arrest on the Kings River, the jail at Berryville in Carroll County, and a trip under guard to Little Rock.[3][4] Hunter, a Springfield traveling salesman who recorded Ozark singers between 1956 and 1976,[5] taped it in 1959 from Fred High of High, Arkansas, in February and from Harrison Burnett of Fayetteville in June; he also recorded a related text titled "Shackle Chain" from Fran Majors of Fayetteville that May.[3][4][6] The sources consulted here name no author.

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Sources

  1. Traditional Ballad Index: "Harrison Town".
  2. Encyclopedia of Arkansas: "Vance Randolph".
  3. Max Hunter Folk Song Collection, Missouri State University: "Harrison Town" (Cat. #0316).
  4. Max Hunter Folk Song Collection, Missouri State University: "Harrison Town" (Cat. #0365).
  5. Max Hunter Folk Song Collection, Missouri State University: "The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection".
  6. Max Hunter Folk Song Collection, Missouri State University: "Shackle Chain" (Cat. #0344).