(no subject)
My mother used to sing a scrap of song that her aunt and uncle, Sue and John, apparently used to sing when they worked in the fields or garden -- this would have been rural northern Kentucky, early 20th century. Since they wouldn't have worked in the fields together after adulthood, I assume they were kids or teenagers at the time. Thus it must have been the nineteen teens (I believe they were born around the turn of the century) or very early 20s.
Since my mother wasn't born at the time they sang it, of course, I guess my grandmother Charlotte (Sue and John's little sister) remembered the song and sang it for my mom, and she sang it for me. It was kind of a sprightly tune, very 19th-century-America sounding. It was called 'Sal Skinner' and the words were:
Yonder comes Sal Skinner,
how in the devil d'ye know?
You can tell her by her apron strings,
shoestrings draggin' on the floor, god damn 'er,
shoestrings draggin' on the floor.
My mother, and her mother, always thought that Sue and John made this song up themselves.
BUT. One day, listening to classic rock on the radio, I heard Creedence Clearwater Revival's song 'The Midnight Special.'
I was slightly familiar with it (and creeped out by it) due to John Landis' film Twilight Zone: The Movie which I saw as a kid, but I'd never heard the whole song before. And I almost drove off the road when I heard these lyrics:
Yonder come Miss Rosie,
How in the world did you know?
By the way she wears her apron
And the clothes she wore.
That's so close they absolutely have to be related. "Yonder comes [a woman], how the ____ do you know? By her apron [strings]," etc. And "floor" rhymes with "wore," though neither rhyme with anything else in their own respective stanzas.
Researching 'The Midnight Special' I learned it was an American folk song, recorded and popularized by Leadbelly in the late 1930s. Which would have been long after Sue and John sang 'Sal Skinner' working in the fields.
So they have very similar lyrics, yet a totally different melody (assuming that the CCR version resembles the original, which I guess it may not). I wonder if 'Sal Skinner' is the proto-'Midnight Special'? Or an offshoot? Presumably they have a common ancestor, at least.
I have the weirdest feeling that some professor somewhere might LOVE to have this information. But who, and where?
In one of my ten or twelve "could have been" occupations, I'd love to have studied folk music and lyrics, and go chasing them all around Appalachia or something. Just this sort of thing. Whatever one calls that field of academics.
Since my mother wasn't born at the time they sang it, of course, I guess my grandmother Charlotte (Sue and John's little sister) remembered the song and sang it for my mom, and she sang it for me. It was kind of a sprightly tune, very 19th-century-America sounding. It was called 'Sal Skinner' and the words were:
Yonder comes Sal Skinner,
how in the devil d'ye know?
You can tell her by her apron strings,
shoestrings draggin' on the floor, god damn 'er,
shoestrings draggin' on the floor.
My mother, and her mother, always thought that Sue and John made this song up themselves.
BUT. One day, listening to classic rock on the radio, I heard Creedence Clearwater Revival's song 'The Midnight Special.'
I was slightly familiar with it (and creeped out by it) due to John Landis' film Twilight Zone: The Movie which I saw as a kid, but I'd never heard the whole song before. And I almost drove off the road when I heard these lyrics:
Yonder come Miss Rosie,
How in the world did you know?
By the way she wears her apron
And the clothes she wore.
That's so close they absolutely have to be related. "Yonder comes [a woman], how the ____ do you know? By her apron [strings]," etc. And "floor" rhymes with "wore," though neither rhyme with anything else in their own respective stanzas.
Researching 'The Midnight Special' I learned it was an American folk song, recorded and popularized by Leadbelly in the late 1930s. Which would have been long after Sue and John sang 'Sal Skinner' working in the fields.
So they have very similar lyrics, yet a totally different melody (assuming that the CCR version resembles the original, which I guess it may not). I wonder if 'Sal Skinner' is the proto-'Midnight Special'? Or an offshoot? Presumably they have a common ancestor, at least.
I have the weirdest feeling that some professor somewhere might LOVE to have this information. But who, and where?
In one of my ten or twelve "could have been" occupations, I'd love to have studied folk music and lyrics, and go chasing them all around Appalachia or something. Just this sort of thing. Whatever one calls that field of academics.