Katy Cline: A Song History

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"Katy Cline" is a traditional form of "Kitty Clyde," a mid-nineteenth-century American song of courtship that the Traditional Ballad Index credits, with a cautious "probably," to L. V. H. Crosby.[1] The Index dates the song to before 1853, the year sheet music naming Crosby as its author was published, and it lists a song-sheet edition from the New York printer H. De Marsan dated 1861 to 1864, as well as answer songs such as "Minnie Clyde," about Kitty's sister.[1] In the song the singer admires a girl who lives beside a brook near her father's mill and daydreams about being near her in various fanciful shapes.[1] Versions turn up in folk song collections from North Carolina, Middle Tennessee, central West Virginia, Alabama and Pennsylvania under names such as "Kitty Clyde," "Kitty Kline" and "Take Me Home," and a note in the Index signed "RBW" wonders whether the text in the Silbers' Folksinger's Wordbook is a patchwork of floating verses or a love ballad trimmed until it lost its sense, leaning tentatively toward the second.[1]

Lithograph of a young woman in a bonnet standing by a well under a tree, with a water mill on a stream behind her

Winslow Homer, Minnie Clyde, sheet-music cover, lithograph, 1857. The cover of "Minnie Clyde," one of the answer songs to "Kitty Clyde."

Ernest V. Stoneman recorded it twice in 1926, as "Katy Cline" for Gennett in New York on August 20 and as "Katie Kline" for OKeh that same month.[2][3] Bob Cranford and A. P. Thompson sang it for Gennett in Richmond, Indiana, in January 1931, although the Ballad Index dates their Champion release to about 1935, and Bill and Charlie Monroe, recording as the Monroe Brothers, cut it in Charlotte, North Carolina, on February 15, 1937, for release on Bluebird.[4][1][5] The Ballad Index also lists Grandpa Jones's "Kitty Clyde" (King, 1949), an unissued 1927 OKeh recording by the Piper's Gap Ramblers, and several field recordings from the Library of Congress's Archive of Folk Song, among them one by Fields Ward and the Bogtrotter Band.[1][6]

Phyllis Gaskins, who studied with the Galax-style dulcimer builder and player Raymond Melton, includes "Katy Cline" among the tunes in Galax Dulcimer: A Job Of Journey Work, a Fingers Of Steel book that sets its songs for a dulcimer with every string tuned to D, adds DAD instructions, and supplies MP3 demonstration tracks.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Katy Cline"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Katy Cline".
  2. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Gennett matrix X-237. Katy Cline / Ernest V. Stoneman".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "OKeh matrix 74307. Katie Kline / Ernest V. Stoneman".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Gennett matrix 17481. Katy Cline / Bob Cranford and A. P. Thompson".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BS-07024. Katy Cline / Monroe Brothers".
  6. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Discography".
  7. Fingers Of Steel: "Phyllis Gaskins, Galax Dulcimer: A Job Of Journey Work".
  8. Image: Winslow Homer, Minnie Clyde, sheet-music cover, lithograph, 1857. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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