"O Death", also known as "O, Death", "Oh Death" and "Conversations with Death ", is a traditional Appalachian folk song, listed as number 4933 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The song is generally attributed to the musician and Baptist preacher Lloyd Chandler, but it was likely taken or adapted from folk songs already existing in the region.
The version as performed by Lloyd Chandler and members of the Wallin family:
Oh what is this I cannot see
With icy hands gets a hold on me
Oh I am Death, none can excel
I open the doors of heaven and hell[ This quote needs a citation ]
A modified version with a chorus and different tune, performed by Dock Boggs, Nimrod Workman, Ralph Stanley and others:
Oh, Death
Whoa, Death
Won't you spare me over 'til another year?
Well what is this, that I can't see?
With ice-cold hands taking hold of me
Well I am Death, none can excel
I'll open the door to Heaven or Hell[ This quote needs a citation ]
In 2004, the Journal of Folklore Research asserted that "O, Death" is Lloyd Chandler's song "A Conversation with Death", which Chandler performed in the 1920s while preaching in Appalachia. [1] [2] Chandler's daughter-in-law, Barbara, asserted that "O, Death" was based on Chandler's composition. [3]
However, Chandler seems to have taken the song from another source or at least based it on an older version.
In 1913, the Journal of American Folklore printed a version sung by "Eastern North Carolina Negroes" 1908:
Sinner, I come to you by Hebbin's decree;
This very night you must go wid me.
O-o death! O-o death!
How kin I go wid you?
"Jes' like a flower in its bloom,
Why should you cut me down so soon?
O-o death! O-o death!
How kin I go wid you? [4]
This version seems closer to the version first performed by Dock Boggs than Chandler's "original" version.
Encounters with a personified "Death" featured in traditional English songs which possibly date to the 14th century, [5] including "Death and the Lady" (Roud 1031), which was found in the oral tradition in early twentieth century England. [6] "O Death" bears a strong resemblance to a broadside ballad printed in Ireland in 1870, entitled "A Dialogue Between Death & the Sinner" [7] (pictured).
Country blues 1920s banjo player Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs recorded the song in 1963 after his 'rediscovery' during the Folk Music Revival. [8] A recording from the 1938 National Folk Festival in Washington, D.C. by an unknown singer is held by the Library of Congress. [9] Various folk music artists included "O, Death" on musical collections throughout the 1970s and 1980s. [10] It is sung in the 1976 Barbara Kopple documentary Harlan County, USA by early union activist and coal miner Nimrod Workman, a well known folk music singer from Mingo County, West Virginia. In the 1960s, Alan Lomax recorded the folk and gospel singer Bessie Jones singing "O Death". [11] [12]
Lloyd Chandler's recording of "A Conversation with Death" appears on Rounder Records 1975 release High Atmosphere: Ballads and Banjo Tunes from Virginia and North Carolina , a collection of recordings made by John Cohen.
Among the most famous recordings is Ralph Stanley's version in the 2000 Coen brothers film (and soundtrack album) O Brother, Where Art Thou? , for which Stanley won the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance in 2002. [10] The soundtrack's producer, T-Bone Burnett, originally asked for a banjo rendition emulating Dock Boggs, but Stanley convinced him otherwise with an a cappella performance in the style of the Appalachian Primitive Baptist Universalist church. [13] The song also appears in episode 7 of the second season of television series Fargo , inspired by another Coen brothers film of the same name. The version used in this episode was recorded by Shakey Graves with Monica Martin of Phox.
"O, Death" has appeared twice in American television series Supernatural , both times in connection with the show's personification of Death, portrayed by Julian Richings: the 2010 episode "Two Minutes to Midnight" featured a version by Jen Titus; Lisa Berry performed the song in character as Billie in the 2015 episode "Form and Void". A version by Amy Van Roekel is included in the 2015 horror video game Until Dawn . The version sung by Vera Hall was featured in episode three of the first season of Altered Carbon , a Netflix original. [14]
"St. James Infirmary" is an American blues and jazz standard that emerged, like many others, from folk traditions. Louis Armstrong brought the song to lasting fame through his 1928 recording, on which Don Redman is named as composer; later releases credit "Joe Primrose," a pseudonym used by musician manager, music promoter and publisher Irving Mills. The melody is eight bars long, unlike songs in the classic blues genre, where there are 12 bars. It is in a minor key, and has a 4
4 time signature, but has also been played in 3
4.
"John Barleycorn" is an English and Scottish folk song listed as number 164 in the Roud Folk Song Index. John Barleycorn, the song's protagonist, is a personification of barley and of the alcoholic beverages made from it: beer and whisky. In the song, he suffers indignities, attacks, and death that correspond to the various stages of barley cultivation, such as reaping and malting.
Ralph Edmund Stanley was an American bluegrass artist, known for his distinctive singing and banjo playing. Stanley began playing music in 1946, originally with his older brother Carter Stanley as part of The Stanley Brothers, and most often as the leader of his band, The Clinch Mountain Boys. He was also known as Dr. Ralph Stanley.
Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs was an American old-time singer, songwriter and banjo player. His style of banjo playing, as well as his singing, is considered a unique combination of Appalachian folk music and African-American blues. Contemporary folk musicians and performers consider him a seminal figure, at least in part because of the appearance of two of his recordings from the 1920s, "Sugar Baby" and "Country Blues", on Harry Smith's 1952 collection Anthology of American Folk Music. Boggs was first recorded in 1927 and again in 1929, although he worked primarily as a coal miner for most of his life.
"Mary Hamilton", or "The Fower Maries", is a common name for a well-known sixteenth-century ballad from Scotland based on an apparently fictional incident about a lady-in-waiting to a Queen of Scotland. It is Child Ballad 173 and Roud 79.
"Cotton-Eyed Joe" is a traditional American country folk song popular at various times throughout the United States and Canada, although today it is most commonly associated with the American South. The song is mostly identified with the 1994 Rednex version, which became popular worldwide. The song is also an instrumental banjo and bluegrass fiddle standard.
"The Raggle Taggle Gypsy" (Roud 1, Child 200), is a traditional folk song that originated as a Scottish border ballad, and has been popular throughout Britain, Ireland and North America. It concerns a rich lady who runs off to join the gypsies (or one gypsy). Common alternative names are "Gypsy Davy", "The Raggle Taggle Gypsies O", "The Gypsy Laddie(s)", "Black Jack David" (or "Davy") and "Seven Yellow Gypsies".
"Pretty Polly", "The Gosport Tragedy" or "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter" is a traditional English-language folk song found in the British Isles, Canada, and the Appalachian region of North America, among other places.
"Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" is the English common name representative of a very large class of European ballads.
"The Maid Freed from the Gallows" is one of many titles of a centuries-old folk song about a condemned maiden pleading for someone to buy her freedom from the executioner. In the collection of ballads compiled by Francis James Child in the late 19th century, it is indexed as Child Ballad number 95; 11 variants, some fragmentary, are indexed as 95A to 95K. The Roud Folk Song Index identifies it as number 144.
"Fair Margaret and Sweet William" is a traditional English ballad which tells of two lovers, of whom either one or both die from heartbreak. Thomas Percy included it in his folio and said that it was quoted as early as 1611 in the Knight of the Burning Pestle. In the United States, variations of Fair Margaret have been regarded as folk song as early as 1823.
"The Maid and the Palmer" is an English language medieval murder ballad with supernatural/religious overtones. Because of its dark and sinister lyrics, the song was often avoided by folk singers. Child's main text in English comes from the seventeenth century ballad collection compiled by Thomas Percy, supplemented by a nineteenth century fragment recalled by Sir Walter Scott, although both Child and later scholars agree that the English language version(s) of the ballad derive from an earlier Continental original or "Magdalene ballad" that is based upon a medieval legend associated with Mary Magdalene, in which her story has become conflated with that of the Samaritan woman at the well in the Gospel of John. The ballad was present in oral tradition in Scotland in the early years of the nineteenth century but was subsequently lost there, however versions have since been recovered in Ireland, in particular among the Irish Traveller community, with an intervening gap of some 150 years. A small fragment of the ballad has also been claimed to have been recovered in the US, but the veracity of this record is disputed. The "palmer" of Child's title, as included the Percy MS version, refers to a pilgrim, normally from Western Europe, who had visited the holy places in Palestine and who, as a token of his visits to the Holy Land, brought back a palm leaf or a palm leaf folded into a cross. In the ballad the palmer, as a holy man, has the ability to see the Magdalene character/protagonist's past in which she has borne and buried numerous children and to prescribe what fate awaits her in the hereafter, in the form of a set of seven year penances following which she will be absolved from her sins; in Continental versions, and in one variant collected in Ireland, the palmer is in fact Jesus.
"Bonnie Annie" is a folk ballad recorded from the Scottish and English traditions. Scottish texts are often called Bonnie Annie or The Green Banks of Yarrow, English texts are most often called The Banks of Green Willow. Other titles include The Undutiful Daughter, The High Banks O Yarrow, The Watery Grave, Green Willow, There Was a Rich Merchant that Lived in Strathdinah and The Merchant's Daughter.
"The Cuckoo" is a traditional English folk song, also sung in the United States, Canada, Scotland and Ireland. The song is known by many names, including "The Coo-Coo", "The Coo-Coo Bird", "The Cuckoo Bird", "The Cuckoo Is a Pretty Bird", "The Evening Meeting", "The Unconstant Lover", "Bunclody" and "Going to Georgia". Lyrics usually include the line : "The cuckoo is a pretty bird, she sings as she flies; she brings us glad tidings, and she tells us no lies."
High Atmosphere: Ballads and Banjo Tunes from Virginia and North Carolina is a 1975 compilation album released by Rounder Records. The album is composed of Appalachian folk music recordings gathered by musicologist John Cohen in North Carolina and Virginia in 1965.
Lloyd Chandler (1896–1978) was an American Appalachian Folk musician and Free Will Baptist preacher from Madison County, North Carolina.
"Cripple Creek" is an Appalachian-style old time tune and folk song, often played on the fiddle or banjo, listed as number 3434 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
"The Unfortunate Lad", also known as "The Unfortunate Rake", is a traditional folk ballad, which through the folk process has evolved into a large number of variants, including the country and western song Streets of Laredo.
"Rain and Snow", also known as "Cold Rain and Snow", is an American folksong and in some variants a murder ballad. The song first appeared in print in Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp's 1917 compilation English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, which relates that it was collected from Mrs. Tom Rice in Big Laurel, North Carolina in 1916. The melody is pentatonic.
"No, Sir, No" is an English folk song describing a courtship. It has been collected from traditional singers in England and the USA, and in a bowdlerised version was taught to English schoolchildren in music lessons in the 1950s. Alternative titles include "No, Sir", "No, John, No", "O No John", "Yes Or No", "Cruel Father", "Ripest Apples", "Twenty Eighteen", "The Spanish Merchant's Daughter", "The Spanish Captain", "Spanish Lady", "Yonder Sits a Spanish Lady", "Yonder Sits a Pretty Creature", and "In Yonder Grove".
