The Sunny South: A Song History

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"The Sunny South" was used as a title for several different pieces in 19th- and early 20th-century music publishing, so the name alone does not point to a single melody. In 1846 Keith's Music Publishing House of Boston issued a ballad for voice and piano by L. B. Barnes under that name.[1] Root & Cady of Chicago published Smith Newell Penfield's piano reverie "The Sunny South," Op. 13, in 1871.[2] The collection O'Neill's Irish Music (1915) adds a third, unrelated piece: a G-major hornpipe called "The Sunny South."[3]

Painting of a sunny, palm-fringed Florida coastal landscape

Thomas Moran, Fort George Island, Florida, oil on canvas, 1878. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

Among the sources consulted here, the piece with the strongest record in American folk tradition is the sentimental song usually called "Sweet Sunny South." The Library of Congress holds Alan Jabbour's transcription of a performance by the Virginia fiddler Henry Reed of Glen Lyn, Giles County, linked to an audio recording dated November 26, 1966; the catalogue gives the tune as "Sweet Sunny South" and lists "The Sunny South" as an alternate title.[4] According to the Library's notes, traditional singers took up the song widely during the twentieth century, its melody is kin to "Hicks's Farewell," an older tune found in 19th-century shape-note hymnals, and Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers made a well-known record of it in the 1920s.[4] The song also reached the West Coast: in October 1939 Sidney Robertson Cowell recorded Judge Charles Rasmussen singing it unaccompanied at Lotus, California, for the WPA California Folk Music Project.[5]

The song still circulates among old-time musicians. The community-run North Atlantic Tune List, for example, files it as a song in A and links a 2017 music-camp recording by Riley Baugus on banjo and vocals.[6] Because so many pieces share the title, the sources consulted here do not show which "Sunny South" a particular modern arrangement follows.

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Sources

  1. IMSLP: "The Sunny South (Barnes, L. B.)".
  2. IMSLP: "The Sunny South, Op.13 (Penfield, Smith Newell)".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Sunny South (The)".
  4. Library of Congress: "Sweet Sunny South [music transcription]" (Henry Reed Collection).
  5. Library of Congress: "The Sweet sunny south" (WPA California Folk Music Project).
  6. North Atlantic Tune List: "Sweet Sunny South (song)".