Willie Moore: A Song History

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"Willie Moore" is a ballad of thwarted love: Annie's parents will not accept Willie as her suitor, she leaves home and dies, and Willie is left to roam in his grief.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index files it as Roud 4816, and its summary raises, as an open question, the possibility that Annie took her own life.[1] A story passed on by one of the folklorist Vance Randolph's informants holds that a Rev. William Moore, encountered in 1936, claimed to be the song's Willie; the claim is unverified, and an Index editor remarks that "one would prefer documentation."[1][2] The sources consulted here do not establish where the ballad began, though Patrick Blackman, writing for Sing Out!, suggests post–Civil War Appalachian roots and sees the Cumberlands as its heartland.[2]

Painting of a lone traveler on a path beside a stone wall and bare windblown trees under a stormy sky

Julius von Leypold, Wanderer in the Storm, oil on canvas, 1835. Shown for its lone wanderer; it has no connection to the ballad.

The Kentucky duo Dick Burnett and Leonard Rutherford recorded it on November 3, 1927, a recording Blackman calls the earliest known version of the song.[2] They recorded it for Columbia in Atlanta, singing together with Rutherford on fiddle and Burnett on banjo.[3] Columbia issued it on record 15314-D, coupled with "All Night Long Blues."[4] Harry Smith later chose the recording for the first volume, Ballads, of his Anthology of American Folk Music.[5][6] Folkways released the Anthology in 1952, and Smithsonian Folkways reissued it on CD in 1997.[6] The Burnett and Rutherford track is on the first disc of that reissue.[7]

Doc Watson sang it and played banjo on Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City, issued by Folkways in 1963.[8] Smithsonian Folkways still carries that live album, with "Willie Moore" credited to Ritchie and Watson.[9] Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione include it, in the keys of D and C, in 30 Old Time Tunes, a pair of compatible dulcimer and autoharp books with demo tracks.[10]

Our book that contains the song "Willie Moore"

Sources

  1. Folklorist (Traditional Ballad Index data): "Willie Moore".
  2. Sing Out!: "Willie Moore".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix W145086. Willie Moore / Richard Burnett ; Leonard Rutherford".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia 15314-D".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Folkways FP 251 (LP). Anthology of American folk music volume one : Ballads".
  6. Smithsonian Folkways: "Anthology of American Folk Music Selected for GRAMMY Hall of Fame".
  7. Mainly Norfolk: "Anthology of American Folk Music".
  8. Mainly Norfolk: "Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City".
  9. Smithsonian Folkways: "Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City".
  10. Neal Walters And Heidi Cerrigione: "30 Old Time Tunes".
  11. Image: Julius von Leypold, Wanderer in the Storm, oil on canvas, 1835. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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