Liza Jane: A Song History

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"Liza Jane" is less one tune than a large, loose family of songs and fiddle tunes. The Traditional Ballad Index gathers many old-time "Liza Jane" and "Goodbye Liza Jane" texts under one heading. It describes them as courting and work-dodging verses, with lines about planting cane and making molasses, and notes that many of these floating verses also turn up in related songs. The Index considers the song almost certainly minstrel-stage in origin, cites a text in the Journal of American Folklore from 1893, and notes that Cecil Sharp's 1917 collection of Southern Appalachian songs includes three short versions.[1] Other researchers look further back. Dan Gutstein argues that the Liza Jane songs likely began among enslaved people on Southern plantations; in his account, "Goodbye Liza Jane" and some other variants were later taken up by minstrel companies and by soldiers of the Civil War.[2] The sources consulted therefore differ on where the family began.

Eastman Johnson painting of a young woman showing off a new bonnet in a farmhouse kitchen while an old man sits by the fire, 1876

Eastman Johnson, The New Bonnet, oil on academy board, 1876. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A farmhouse scene of the period; the painting has no connection to the song.

Related songs reached print as well. Eddie Fox's "Good Bye Liza Jane," a comic song issued by Lee & Walker of Philadelphia in 1871, is catalogued under minstrel shows, caricatures and ethnic stereotypes.[3] A separate popular song, "Goodbye Eliza Jane," dated by the Ballad Index to 1903, had words by Andrew B. Sterling and music by Harry Von Tilzer; Charlie Poole recorded it in 1930 as "Good-bye Sweet Liza Jane."[4] The African American collector Thomas Talley printed a variant in his 1922 book of Black folk rhymes.[5] Uncle "Am" Stuart's "Old Liza Jane," sung by Gene Austin, was issued on Vocalion in 1924, and Henry Whitter and Riley Puckett both recorded "Liza Jane" around 1925.[1] According to the Tune Archive, two 1920s records did much to spread the tune among early country musicians: the Hill Billies' "Mountaineers Love Song" (1926) and the Tenneva Ramblers' "Miss Liza, Poor Gal" (1927). The Archive also reports that Bob Wills said "Goodbye, Miss Liza Jane" was the first tune he learned to fiddle.[5]

Fiddlers use the name for several different melodies. The Tune Archive lists, among others, an "Old Liza Jane" from Kentucky fiddler Isham Monday, recorded by folklorist D. K. Wilgus in 1959. It notes that the tune's second part is close to "Going Down to Cairo" and "Goodbye Liza Jane."[6] The Archive also lists a "Liza Jane" played by Uncle Jimmy Thompson and recorded for OKeh by the Carter Brothers and Son of Mississippi.[7] A northeastern Kentucky "Liza Jane," often traced to fiddler J. P. Fraley and his influential 1972 album, is placed by the Archive in the same family as tunes called "Little Liza Jane."[8] That overlapping title is a source of confusion: the popular song "Li'l Liza Jane," credited to Countess Ada de Lachau and published in San Francisco in 1916, is treated on its own page here.[9] In the mountain dulcimer world, "Liza Jane" and "Little Liza Jane" appear as separate tunes in Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam.[10]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Liza Jane".
  2. University Press of Mississippi: "Poor Gal: The Cultural History of Little Liza Jane".
  3. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University: "Good Bye Liza Jane. Comic Song.".
  4. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Goodbye Eliza Jane".
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Goodbye Liza Jane (1)".
  6. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Old Liza Jane".
  7. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Liza Jane (3)".
  8. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Liza Jane (2)".
  9. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University: "Li'l Liza Jane. Standard Edition.".
  10. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam DAD Tuning".