ABSTRACT
This past summer I spent traveling through the South with my father* collecting the secular songs of the Negroes, work songs, “barrel-house” ditties, bad-man ballads, corn songs. Our singers classed all these songs, to distinguish them from recorded music and from written-out songs in general, as “made-up” songs. So it was that when we visited the Smithers Plantation in the Trinity River bottoms near Huntsville, Texas, and tried to explain our project to the plantation manager, we described the songs we wanted as “made-up.” This genial person called in one of his renters, a stalwart fellow who went by the name of “One-Eye Charley.” While One-Eye stood just inside the door, his body taut as if he were ready to run and could scarcely control himself, sweating in the extremity of his fear and embarrassment, the manager said:
