The Old Man Below: A Song History
"The Old Man Below" is a traditional song that the sources consulted here know only from the fiddling and singing of Gaither Carlton, Doc Watson's father-in-law.[1] Carlton came from Wilkes County, North Carolina, taught himself fiddle and banjo, played with G. B. Grayson, Clarence Ashley and Al Hopkins, and made no recordings until the 1960s, when he appeared on records with Watson.[2] Smithsonian Folkways' 1990 edition of The Doc Watson Family lists the song as traditional, with Carlton on fiddle and vocal, and its notes remember him as a gentle man who held a large store of old songs, though measles in adulthood had damaged his voice.[1] The song was not among the fifteen tracks on the original 1963 Folkways LP of that name; it is one of five Carlton pieces the 1990 reissue added from the original recordings that Ralph Rinzler, Eugene Earle, Archie Green and Peter Siegel made between 1960 and 1965 and in 1976.[3][1]
Winslow Homer, A Country Store, Getting Weighed (from Every Saturday), wood engraving, 1871. A rural American country store in 1871, a nod to the old-time country world the song comes from; the engraving has no connection to the song.
The words make a comic courting story: a young man calls on the girls at an old man's house, battles with a meal he can barely cut, is warned to flee when the old man arrives armed, and stands his ground, before the song closes on the old man's homely clothes.[1] John Cohen hears in it puzzling phrases, frontier scenes and "remnants of 19th-century comedy," and he reports that the novelist Charles Frazier counted it among the strangest songs he had ever heard.[4]
In 2012 the New York string band the Dust Busters, with Cohen on banjo, took Carlton's recording as their source for the title track of their Smithsonian Folkways album Old Man Below, keeping close to his arrangement but adding banjo, Jew's harp and fiddlesticks around Walker Shepard's fiddle and voice.[4] Shepard's note ties it to "Come All You Virginia Gals," a number sung by Cousin Emmy about how a suitor ought to dress.[4] Don Pedi has set it for solo mountain dulcimer and voice, in DAD tuning, in Mountain Dulcimer Mother Goose, a downloadable book of easy old-time children's songs that its listing pitches at young listeners and older ones alike.[5]
Sources
- Smithsonian Folkways: "The Doc Watson Family" (SFW 40012, liner notes, 1990).
- Blue Ridge National Heritage Area: "Gaither Carlton".
- Smithsonian Folkways: "The Doc Watson Family" (Folkways FA 2366, liner notes, 1963).
- Smithsonian Folkways: "Old Man Below" (The Dust Busters with John Cohen, liner notes, 2012).
- Don Pedi: "Mountain Dulcimer Mother Goose - Old-Time Songs & Nursery Rhymes For All Ages".
- Image: Winslow Homer, A Country Store, Getting Weighed (from Every Saturday), wood engraving, 1871. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.