Lesley Riddle meets A.P. Carter, and the world changes

This is the third of three consecutive entries that look at the influence Lesley Riddle exerted on The Carter Family's musical repertoire, and on the development of country music.

Lesley Riddle (on right) with Brownie McGhee

In 1927, the year before A.P Carter met Lesley Riddle, the Carter Family recorded their first songs. The recording industry was still in its infancy and copyright restrictions had not been fully formalized or understood. A.P. had not much interest in legal or corporate matters, anyway.

Ralph Peer, on the other hand, was very interested in copyright. He had offered RCA his services for an annual salary of $1, provided he could retain the song copyrights. At this early stage even the top executives at RCA did not recognize their value, and granted Peer his wish. When Peer, at the legendary 1927 "Bristol Sessions," discovered the Carters, he gave them fifty dollars per recording.

In a 1959 recorded interview, Peer stated that he received royalty earnings of a quarter million dollars for three months in 1928 alone. That would be the equivalent of five million dollars today. You can hear him in the short video below.

Before meeting Peer, A.P. Carter was a farmer in Poor Valley, Virginia. When he had free time he loved to disappear, to walk the mountain trails, work odd jobs, meet strangers, listen to their music. And so, when Ralph Peer asked him to collect songs that the Carters could record and copyright, A.P. was doing something he already enjoyed.

This pursuit took him, in that first year, to the black section of Kingsport, about 80 miles from Ashville, North Carolina. Somebody had told him that John Henry Lyons had a song he should hear, “Motherless Children Sees a Hard Time.” Lesley Riddle, a young black guitar player, was visiting John Henry when A.P. showed up.

Lesley (friends called him Esley) played a few songs for A.P., including the traditional song  The Cannonball which A.P would record and copyright in 1930: “Oh listen to the train/Coming down the line/Trying to make up/For all of my lost time/From Buffalo to Washington.”

Probably excited by Riddle’s extended repertoire, A.P. invited him to his home in Maces Spring, Virginia, where Esley stayed a week performing songs for the Carter Family. Esley showed Maybelle his manner of playing bottle-neck guitar, and his picking styles. He later told Mike Seeger that he didn’t actually teach Maybelle anything, “she would just watch and learn. She was that good.” Esley later said that he rarely heard the Carters play for him; they were more interested in the songs he knew.

This was the start of a long friendship and collaboration between Esley and A.P. They embarked on about fifteen song-collecting journeys together between 1928 and, possibly, 1936, sometimes for as long as three weeks.

Esley had an excellent musical memory. While A.P. would write down the lyrics, Esley would work out the melody on guitar and later play it back for Sara and Maybelle.  The Carters then developed their own arrangements. None of them could read musical notation, but they would (usually minimally) modify the lyrics and add their own interpretations to the tunes.

Between 1927 and 1941 the original Carter Family recorded over 240 songs.

In the chart below I perused copyright records, looking for songs the Carters copyrighted between 1927 and 1931. (The list should expand if you click on it.)

A (probably partial) list of songs copyrighted under the name A.P. Carter
between 1927 and 1931. By 1941 the list grew to over 240 songs.

While Ralph Peer had many clients, including Jimmie Rodgers, he made millions of dollars from the Carter copyrights alone. The Carters made $50 per recorded side, and a 0.5 cent royalty on each song sold. Which would be a large figure in those days - enough to afford land, cars, fancy clothes ... but it did not come close to Peer's earnings. Riddle received no song writing royalties from his ventures with A.P. across Appalachia. There is a rumor that either A.P or Maybelle gave Esley a new artificial leg in way of thanks.

I doubt any of them thought much about this at the time. Ralph Peer was certainly happy with the arrangement. The Carters were thankful for the money and the security it afforded. A.P. Carter and Esley Riddle acted out of friendship for each other. For instance if, while going to a restaurant during their travels, Esley was refused a place in the dining room, A.P. would walk out. Friendship knew no colour, and they enjoyed each others' company.

When not travelling with A.P., Esley worked as a shoe-shine boy at a barber shop in Kingsport. He continued that career most of his life, coupling it with crossing guard after he and his wife moved to New York. Esley’s employment opportunities were limited by education and physical disability (as you can read in an earlier post, Riddle had lost two fingers in a gun incident, as well as a leg in an workplace accident).

Esley made no recordings until Mike Seeger tracked him down in the mid 1960s, and made several recordings of him over the following years. One album, “Step By Step,” is easily available. Other recordings and interviews are in the archives of the Mike Seeger collection at the American Folklife Centre. The elderly Riddle plays bottleneck slide, he picks intricate melodies, he plays piano. His voice, understated, communicates with the songs, resides within them while not drawing attention to itself.

It was when he started receiving royalties from his work with Seeger that Riddle began to wonder if he should have been compensated for his contributions those many years earlier.

From their earliest recordings in 1927 to their final recordings in 1941 the Carter Family performed their songs with such a deep honesty that they held much of the country enthralled.  The Carters adapted songs of trouble and woe and love and death and family for their contemporary rural audience, who listened and knew they were hearing truths. Life is hard. We are equal, all of us, because beneath and above us lies death. But there is real love in the world. There is community and family and our relationships with each other, and THAT is our saving grace. Motherless children have a hard time ... and don’t we all?? We need each other.

At the beginning of their careers, the Carter Family was made up of four people: A.P., Sarah, Maybelle, and Esley. For those first few years they needed Esley Riddle. It would be a blunder to forget him.

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Lesley Riddle - before he met The Carter Family

Lesley Riddle
photo by Mike Seeger

This is the second in three consecutive entries that discuss the influence Lesley Riddle exerted on The Carter Family's musical repertoire, and on the development of country music.

There are about eight billion people in the world today. In all time, perhaps one hundred ten billion have lived on this planet. There are a minuscule few who escape anonymity.

Sometimes, though, we can build a memory of one of these disregarded. We can recover fragments of documents, recount the words of friends, review the historical landscape for a dent, for an impression of an almost forgotten one.

Lesley Riddle was born on June 13, 1905 in Burnsville, North Carolina to Hattie Griffith and Edward Riddle. Three years later his mother, along with Lesley and his little brother Grady, moved in with her father, a farmer. There were eleven people in that household.

It is uncertain whether his father, Edward, died or left. The 1910 census lists Hattie as a widow.  Census reports can be unreliable, though.  She might have felt it prudent to be checked off on the form as widowed rather than divorced (the choices were limited: Single, Married, Widowed, Divorced).

On Christmas Eve, 1924, a newspaper report mentions an Edward Riddle who was partying in a house behind the Clinchfield Cement Plant in Kingsport, Tennessee. The Kingsport Times reported a shooting: “Oscar Wortham (colored) was shot and instantly killed about 11 o’clock Christmas Eve while he and others were gambling.” Ed Riddle was one of the gamblers and, with a Tom Riddle, declared that the murdered man “did not have any sort of weapon about his body. They further testified that on leaving the body and returning in about 15 minutes, they found a gun in (the murdered man’s) hands.”

It is possible, and reasonable, that Lesley’s father had a job at that same Clinchfield Cement Plant, and that’s who Lesley was visiting when he lost his right leg.

We don’t know much about this, but during a visit to the plant Lesley Riddle tripped and an auger so damaged his leg that it had to be amputated at the knee. During recovery, he focused on playing his guitar.

Not long afterwards, maybe two or three years, he lost two fingers of his right hand. He was nineteen. According to the Kingsport Times, Lesley got into an argument with his step-grandfather which carried on for hours, starting on the morning of July 4, 1924. Had they started drinking early to celebrate Independence Day? Lesley, sporting a 32-caliber Colt automatic, was shooting at his step-father. Lesley got four shots off inside the house (piercing the front door) and the argument continued outside where Lesley shot three more bullets. His step-grandfather then grabbed his double-barrel shotgun and fired a shot to Riddle’s right hand that blew away his pistol.  The Kingsport Times reported, “One finger was torn entirely off by the shot, and it was found necessary to amputate another finger at the hospital where he was taken directly after the shooting affray. ...”

And still he played his guitar, developing a picking style that suited the remaining fingers of his right hand. In 1928 he was playing music with friends in Kingsport, North Carolina when A.P. Carter walked through the door.


More about Riddle and the Carters next time.

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The Carter Family, Ralph Peer, copyright ... and, oh, Lesley Riddle

This is the first of three consecutive blog entries that feature The Carter Family and a one-legged, eight fingered black guitarist who travelled with A.P. Carter and should have a featured place in the development of Hillbilly / Country music.

A.P., Sara, and Maybelle Carter
The original Carter Family

The Carter Family, immensely popular musicians a century ago, helped usher in “Country Music.” At the time it was labelled “Hillbilly Music.” They have a fascinating history, including, from 1938 to 1940, a stay near the Mexico border where they performed live on a radio station owned by Dr. John R. Brinkley. Listeners tuned in to hear the Carter Family and, incidentally, listened to ads for Dr. Brinkley’s male impotence cure. Brinkley had erected a very powerful, high-tower radio antenna on the Mexican side of the Texas border. It was said you could hear the programs by putting an ear to metal pasture wires in Saskatchewan. Brinkley made a fortune by enticing men to travel to his “hospital” near the radio station, where goat gonads were implanted in their scrotums. Patients could choose - or even bring - their own goats.

The Carter Family was managed by music publisher Ralph Peer, from the time he “discovered” them in 1927. Not long before, Peer had signed a contract with the Victor Recording Company through which he received an annual salary of one dollar but, “my publishing firm would own the copyrights, and thus I would be compensated by the royalties resulting from the compositions that I would select for recording purposes.”

In order to make money Peer needed clients who wrote their own songs (and who would sign over to him ownership of their material). This worked well for his client, Jimmie Rodgers, who wrote his own material. But the Carters - Alvin Pleasant (A.P.), Maybelle, and Sara - were not songwriters. They were expert at interpreting Appalachian songs they had been brought up with. Peer instructed them to find and modify already existing songs. These would be copyrighted as new songs, with A.P listed as the composer of both words and melody. The royalties did not come directly to the Carters, though. The money was funneled through Ralph Peer. He gave the Carters a portion of the funds, enough to keep them loyal.

Because of this arrangement with Ralph Peer, A.P. Carter went on many journeys through Appalachia in search of songs they could add to the Carter's copyrights. A.P. found the material in people's backyards and kitchens and front porches, where they played the songs of their ancestors. He found them in hymnals and songbooks. The old songs that survived in the Carters' home state of Virginia and surrounding territory were raw material.

The original Carter Family made over 240 records between 1927 and their break-up in 1943. Almost all of these were based upon songs they did not write themselves (you can count exceptions on the fingers of one hand).

As an example, "Bury Me Beneath the Willow" was based upon a traditional folk song called "Under the Willow Tree."

Here is the opening verse and the chorus from the original:

My heart is broken, I am in sorrow
For the only one I love
I ne'er shall see his face again
Unless we meet in heaven above

Chorus: Then bury me beneath the willow
Beneath the weeping willow tree
And when he knows that I am sleeping
Then perhaps he'll come and weep for me

Here is the opening verse and the chorus from the Carter Family variation:

My heart is sad and I'm in sorrow
For the only one I love
When shall I see him, oh, no, never
Till I meet him in heaven above

Chorus
Oh, bury me under the weeping willow
Yes, under the weeping willow tree
So he may know where I am sleeping
And perhaps he will weep for me

Many, maybe most, Carter songs were like this. The cash machine kept dinging for Ralph Peer, and the Carters received a bit of the profits. Enough to keep them loyal.

For a few years A.P travelled through Appalachia in search of "new" songs he could transcribe and copyright. For much of this time he travelled with his friend Lesley Riddle. Riddle was an innovative guitarist with a prodigious musical memory (A.P. had neither). Riddle taught A.P. to play guitar - but A.P. never progressed beyond rudiments. Riddle taught Maybelle a picking method which became famous as "the Carter scratch," which became the basis for Johnny Cash's musical style. In the Appalachian homes they visited, A.P. scribbled down the lyrics while Riddle memorized the melody and the chord changes, and then taught them to Maybelle and Sara. Riddle (who we shall revisit in an upcoming entry) was black and, due to his association with the Carters, one of the formative personalities in Country music. He is not much remembered today, though. I wonder why?

More about Lesley Riddle next time.

Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, the many authors of St. James Infirmary: "What is the meaning of this song?"

Clay sculpture by
P.J. Woodland

I was listening to the CBC radio program, Under the Influence with Terry O’Reilly. As an introduction to a piece on architecture, O'Reilly spoke about Paul Simon’s song “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright.”

O’Reilly reported that Simon wrote this during the much-delayed completion of the Simon and Garfunkel album, Bridge Over Troubled Water. Art Garfunkel was pursuing an acting career, and Simon realized this was the end of their partnership.

He wrote “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright,” which wasn’t about Frank Lloyd Wright. It was a “so long” to Art Garfunkel.

So long, Frank Lloyd Wright
All of the nights we'd harmonize 'til dawn
I never laughed so long
So long, so long

This had me reflecting on Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me, Babe." This is not a song about a girl. It's a response to his fans, who were smothering him with their expectations.

"It Ain't Me, Babe" appeared on Dylan's fourth album, 1964's Another Side of Bob Dylan. By this time he had already released "Blowin' In The Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "The Times They Are A-Changin'," "When The Ship Comes In," and so on.

His fans were ecstatic. "He speaks for us!" "He's the voice of our generation!" "He tells it like it is!," "I believe in him!" Dylan was 22 years old. He saw himself as a songwriter, not as a prophet, and not as a spokesperson for the righteously indignant..

I'm not the one you want, babe
I'm not the one you need
You say you're lookin' for someone
Never weak but always strong
To protect you and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But it ain't me, babe ...

This, of course, started me thinking about "St. James Infirmary." Although SJI was not deliberately written as a cloaked message, it is a song with many interpretations. And many variations.

Rob Walker, in his book Letters From New Orleans (an indispensable read for anyone visiting New Orleans!!!) and a chapter fittingly titled, st. james infirmary, wrote:
"... I couldn't stop thinking about the song. What did it mean? Where did it come from? I began to concoct theories ..."

Concocting theories led to Rob starting the world's first blog dedicated to "St. James Infirmary." That's where we met.

Here's an early recording (October, 1929). The Hokum Boys from a 78 rpm record that shows no author. "Where did it come from?"

Billie Holiday liked St. James Infirmary so much that ...

When I was browsing a favourite website this morning, Expecting Rain, I read some contributions by Scott Miller exploring Billie Holiday’s influence on Bob Dylan, which reminded me of a connection between Holiday and St. James Infirmary.

Billie Holiday was born 111 years ago this month. She really liked St. James Infirmary and wanted something similar but ‘original’ that she could take into the recording studio. The result was a song called Tell Me More based on SJI but with writing credit to Holiday herself. Holiday recorded the song in 1940.

In his book Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon, Donald Clarke quotes songwriter Arthur Herzog. Herzog is recalling the encounter between Billie Holiday, himself, and his songwriting partner Danny Mendelsohn which led to the writing of the ‘new’ song (all of the following is from Donald Clarke’s book):

“Tell Me More” is credited to Lady herself. And on the subject of this song Herzog was grumpily funny in 1971. One evening, Danny Mendelsohn was at his house. “The house was two blocks below 14th and 8th Avenue. And we were four or five blocks away from Café Society. She used to come over sometimes Monday nights, which were her nights off.

I forget where she was living at the time. It made no difference to her because she lived all over the place. She popped up once living a floor under my younger son. He had an apartment on the west 80’s and discovered one day he was living above Billie.

She came rushing in to Danny. She was a great artist. Creative? No. She said to Danny, “Danny, I’ve got a great tune. Take it down for me.”

And she sings da-daing St. James Infirmary. So Danny says, “Yes Billie it’s a great tune but it’s St. James Infirmary.”

“Oh Danny bend it a little for me. Bend it.”

So Danny took out his pencil. Put it in blues time 4:4. Attached a bridge to it and said, “Alright Arthur, give me some words.”

So I popped the first thing that came into my mind “Tell Me More And More And Then Some.” Inane kind of thing. So we scratched this underneath and forgot about it completely.

Six months went by and there’s a record out. “Tell Me More” words and music by Billie Holiday, sung by Billie Holiday, accompanied by the Billie Holiday Orchestra, of which there was no such thing of course. There it was.

“Danny what are we gonna do about this?” This idiot friend has done this to us, and the song isn’t worth a goddamn. I mean St. James Infirmary.”

After she dies Herbie Marks [probably Herzog’s employer/publisher of the Edward B. Marks Music Company] called me up and said, “I seem to remember that you had something to do with this song?” And I’d like to do something with it.

And I said, “Herbie, I can’t prove anything but this song was written by yours truly and the late Danny Mendelsohn.” That’s how it happened. It never made any money.

Herzog is being unfair to their own “hack work.” To say nothing of using the word creative in a very limited sense. Lady had commissioned the song and even told them how to write it. Of course they should’ve got some credit. The song has a strong blues feeling and its lingering resemblance to St. James Infirmary doesn’t hurt a bit — so that it sounds as if you’ve heard it before, but you can’t remember where.

The way the words fall is pleasing and with the arrangements stop time movements and solo from Teddy (Wilson on piano), it’s an unusual love song and a nice record.

Song and Dance: The popularity of the foxtrot and the ongoing evolution of "St. James Infirmary"

 

The versions of “St. James Infirmary” that appeared in Carl Sandburg’s collection of traditional American songs (The American Songbag – ©1927) were written in 6/8 time. They were ballads, or dirges. One of the significant differences between these songs and the recordings that both included and followed the 1928 Louis Armstrong recording was a change in rhythm – to 4/4 time. With this change the song became danceable. One could dance the foxtrot to it.

The foxtrot originated around 1914 in vaudeville, by dancer Harry Fox. As part of his act Fox was executing trotting steps to ragtime music. Referred to as “Fox’s trot” the dance was set to a broken rhythm (slow-slow-quick-quick). Bit by bit the dance moves changed, and with remarkable speed the foxtrot came to dominate the dancehalls and the music scene—becoming the dance phenomenon of the 1920s. And the 1930s. And the 1940s. One could whirl around the dance floor, or one could execute the steps in the crush of a crowded venue, dancing (oh, dear!) close together and more or less in place. (From the Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati: “… there are certain houses appropriate for such dances; but those houses have been closed by law.”)

People danced for the sheer fun of it. They danced for exercise. To aid digestion. To meet people. Dancehalls were ubiquitous. It would not be a great exaggeration to say that dancehalls littered the landscape like coffee houses in the 21st century. The exhibition ballroom dancers Irene and Vernon Castle were among the major celebrities of the day. By daringly including the scandalizing foxtrot in their routines, they sped its popularity. Even tragic songs like “St. James Infirmary” clothed themselves in upbeat danceable rhythms.

Janis Joplin sings St. James Infirmary in 1962

 

December 1962, a folk trio performed in Threadgill’s Tavern, in Austin Texas. An Amex portable reel-to-reel tape recorder caught part of their performance, which included “St. James Infirmary.” The trio, The Waller Creek Boys Plus One, consisted of Lanny Wiggins on guitar, Powell St. John playing harmonica, and Janis Joplin on guitar, autoharp, and vocals.

The three were students at the University of Texas. Joplin was nineteen years old, and five years away from the release of her first album.

A dozen years ago I found a physical copy of this song. It was on a flexi-disc, available from Tokyo. Recently I had it copied as a WAV file, and now as a much smaller MP3.

Here it is, below, along with the clinking of glasses and an abbreviated "Walk Right In." The latter was first recorded by Cannon’s Jug Stompers in 1929 and became a big hit for The Rooftop Singers in 1963.

Janis Joplin at UT in 1962
Photo Daily Texan

Since Blogger does not offer an option for audio postings, to access the MP3 please click here and scroll to the end of the article.