I've gone to a pre-blues folk song for my song of the moment. There are a number of Diamond Joes out there: one, a Texas cowboy song collected by the Lomaxes in Our Singing Country acquired from J.B. Dillingham; another, a variation of "The State of Arkansas" that was popularized by Cisco Houston, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Bob Dylan, and these days in countless bluegrass interpretations. This latter Diamond Joe looks in fact like it may have originally been composed for a Lomax radio show, "The Chisholm Trail", by Baldwin "Butch" Hawes, husband of Bess Lomax Hawes, Alan's sister. The show featured Cisco Houston in the cast. (See http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/RcDJoe1.html for the story.)
But the Diamond Joe I'm looking at comes from two versions recorded 10 years apart, one sung by Big Charlie Butler for John Lomax in 1937, and the other recorded by the Georgia Crackers for OKeh in 1927.
Charlie Butler was recorded on Lomax's '37 visit to Parchman Farm, where Butler was serving time for attempted murder after attacking a man with an axe. Despite that nasty business, he seems to have had a clean prison record and eventually served as a gateman trusty. (Whether that's a good thing is another story.) But his version of Diamond Joe is one of the great unaccompanied vocal performances in field recording history, IMO:
Sharing some of the melody and a similar refrain, but taking a more rollicking approach, is the Georgia Crackers 1927 version:
(That photo isn't the Georgia Crackers)
The Georgia Crackers were Paul Cofer (fiddle) and Leon Cofer (banjo), along with Ben Evans on guitar, and Weenie old-time fans will know of course that Paul and Leon also recorded as the Cofer Brothers. Several songs in their recorded repertoire come out of black musical traditions, including a Furniture Man-themed song, and versions of Deep Elum Blues (as Georgia Black Bottom), and I'm Gonna Start a Graveyard of My Own (as The Coon From Tennessee). Their music is raw and exciting -- and as the above title shows, sometimes dealing in racist stereotypes. For those who like their music gamey, says Tony Russell in Country Music Originals. They're memorably described here as "two skinny-headed peckerwoods with cheap suits and Christopher Walken hair." Document's Georgia Stringbands Vol. 1 collects both Cofer Brothers and Georgia Crackers material. It's a great record.
Despite Diamond Joe being documented by sociologists/musicologists prior to these two versions, there aren't many other recorded performances of the song available to us. The earliest were captured by Robert Winslow Gordon, the founder of the Archive of American Folk Song in the Library of Congress, recorded on cylinders in 1926 in Georgia. They are not available online that I can find (they're listed as "archive only" at the LoC). I'd be very curious to hear them - musician and writer Stephen Wade has much higher security clearance and discusses them in his book, The Beautiful Music All Around Us, noting they resemble Butler's version melodically, and it looks like lyrically they bear some similarity to the Georgia Crackers' version.
Prior to these, Howard Odum published lyrics for Diamond Joe in 1911, and E.C. Perrow published another version in 1912. I'll post lyrics in a separate reply.
The common refrain that runs through each version in some form or another is:
Diamond Joe, come a-git me
Diamond Joe, come a-git me
Diamond Joe, come a-git me
Diamond Joe
John Lomax returned to Parchman in 1939 and liked Charlie Butler's Diamond Joe enough to have him sing it again. The American Folklife Center has an alternate version from 1939 online:
catalog information: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.afc.afcss39.2681b1/default.html
MP3: http://memory.loc.gov/afc/afcss39/268/2681b1.mp3
It's a similar performance, though not as perfectly shaped as the version captured two years earlier. Butler does briefly talk though, saying he learned the song in prison in the field.
I finally picked up Stephen Wade's The Beautiful Music All Around Us mentioned above, prompted in part by my selecting this song for SOTM, since Wade devotes a chapter to Charlie Butler and Diamond Joe. I haven't read the rest of the book yet, but if it is anything like the Butler chapter, it's going to be a very enjoyable read. Wade traces the song's mysterious history as much as is possible, since the song sort of defies explanation, at least any definitive nailing down of source and subject. Howard Odum called it a love song sung by a woman, others have suggested it's a reference to the Diamond Jo steamboat line -- a tempting but unproven theory originated by Art Thieme that doesn't quite fit. For more on this see http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=59040 and Wade's book.
Alan Lomax recorded Bessie Jones, of Georgia Sea Island Singers fame, singing the song in 1961. If anyone is able to make you forget Charlie Butler for a moment, it's Bessie:
There's a Lomax interview with her about the song on the Cultural Equity site:
http://research.culturalequity.org/get-audio-detailed-recording.do?recordingId=23016
The song, she says, is "About a person in trouble..." and a call to be rescued by Diamond Joe. "There's a lot of verses to it. And it's pitiful too, Diamond Joe."
The other version that has really caught my ear and which is a much more recent performance is Dan Gellert's arrangement of the Charlie Butler version on 4-string gourd banjo:
http://youtu.be/0KNF8EoMeIM?t=2m7s
(you'll have to fast forward to the 2min 7sec mark. Or just enjoy Dan's Glendy Burk as well!)
It looks like Dan has the banjo tuned dBEA.
There is a lot more information about alternate versions and histories of Diamond Joe in Wade's book. The Georgia Crackers' version influenced Tex Logan, whose version made its way to Jerry Garcia's Acoustic Band. Dylan also performed the Georgia Crackers' version in Masked and Anonymous, having previously recorded the Butch Hawes/Cisco Houston/Jack Elliot version in the '90s.
As for Charlie Butler, when the Library of Congress wrote to him at the prison early in 1943 for permission to issue "Diamond Joe", the letter was returned with the message "gone free left no address."
I've done a version on banjo myself that started from Dan Gellert's and went off in a somewhat different direction. I haven't had a chance to record it yet, but will try to get something on here in the next couple days.
But the Diamond Joe I'm looking at comes from two versions recorded 10 years apart, one sung by Big Charlie Butler for John Lomax in 1937, and the other recorded by the Georgia Crackers for OKeh in 1927.
Charlie Butler was recorded on Lomax's '37 visit to Parchman Farm, where Butler was serving time for attempted murder after attacking a man with an axe. Despite that nasty business, he seems to have had a clean prison record and eventually served as a gateman trusty. (Whether that's a good thing is another story.) But his version of Diamond Joe is one of the great unaccompanied vocal performances in field recording history, IMO:
Sharing some of the melody and a similar refrain, but taking a more rollicking approach, is the Georgia Crackers 1927 version:
(That photo isn't the Georgia Crackers)
The Georgia Crackers were Paul Cofer (fiddle) and Leon Cofer (banjo), along with Ben Evans on guitar, and Weenie old-time fans will know of course that Paul and Leon also recorded as the Cofer Brothers. Several songs in their recorded repertoire come out of black musical traditions, including a Furniture Man-themed song, and versions of Deep Elum Blues (as Georgia Black Bottom), and I'm Gonna Start a Graveyard of My Own (as The Coon From Tennessee). Their music is raw and exciting -- and as the above title shows, sometimes dealing in racist stereotypes. For those who like their music gamey, says Tony Russell in Country Music Originals. They're memorably described here as "two skinny-headed peckerwoods with cheap suits and Christopher Walken hair." Document's Georgia Stringbands Vol. 1 collects both Cofer Brothers and Georgia Crackers material. It's a great record.
Despite Diamond Joe being documented by sociologists/musicologists prior to these two versions, there aren't many other recorded performances of the song available to us. The earliest were captured by Robert Winslow Gordon, the founder of the Archive of American Folk Song in the Library of Congress, recorded on cylinders in 1926 in Georgia. They are not available online that I can find (they're listed as "archive only" at the LoC). I'd be very curious to hear them - musician and writer Stephen Wade has much higher security clearance and discusses them in his book, The Beautiful Music All Around Us, noting they resemble Butler's version melodically, and it looks like lyrically they bear some similarity to the Georgia Crackers' version.
Prior to these, Howard Odum published lyrics for Diamond Joe in 1911, and E.C. Perrow published another version in 1912. I'll post lyrics in a separate reply.
The common refrain that runs through each version in some form or another is:
Diamond Joe, come a-git me
Diamond Joe, come a-git me
Diamond Joe, come a-git me
Diamond Joe
John Lomax returned to Parchman in 1939 and liked Charlie Butler's Diamond Joe enough to have him sing it again. The American Folklife Center has an alternate version from 1939 online:
catalog information: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.afc.afcss39.2681b1/default.html
MP3: http://memory.loc.gov/afc/afcss39/268/2681b1.mp3
It's a similar performance, though not as perfectly shaped as the version captured two years earlier. Butler does briefly talk though, saying he learned the song in prison in the field.
I finally picked up Stephen Wade's The Beautiful Music All Around Us mentioned above, prompted in part by my selecting this song for SOTM, since Wade devotes a chapter to Charlie Butler and Diamond Joe. I haven't read the rest of the book yet, but if it is anything like the Butler chapter, it's going to be a very enjoyable read. Wade traces the song's mysterious history as much as is possible, since the song sort of defies explanation, at least any definitive nailing down of source and subject. Howard Odum called it a love song sung by a woman, others have suggested it's a reference to the Diamond Jo steamboat line -- a tempting but unproven theory originated by Art Thieme that doesn't quite fit. For more on this see http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=59040 and Wade's book.
Alan Lomax recorded Bessie Jones, of Georgia Sea Island Singers fame, singing the song in 1961. If anyone is able to make you forget Charlie Butler for a moment, it's Bessie:
There's a Lomax interview with her about the song on the Cultural Equity site:
http://research.culturalequity.org/get-audio-detailed-recording.do?recordingId=23016
The song, she says, is "About a person in trouble..." and a call to be rescued by Diamond Joe. "There's a lot of verses to it. And it's pitiful too, Diamond Joe."
The other version that has really caught my ear and which is a much more recent performance is Dan Gellert's arrangement of the Charlie Butler version on 4-string gourd banjo:
http://youtu.be/0KNF8EoMeIM?t=2m7s
(you'll have to fast forward to the 2min 7sec mark. Or just enjoy Dan's Glendy Burk as well!)
It looks like Dan has the banjo tuned dBEA.
There is a lot more information about alternate versions and histories of Diamond Joe in Wade's book. The Georgia Crackers' version influenced Tex Logan, whose version made its way to Jerry Garcia's Acoustic Band. Dylan also performed the Georgia Crackers' version in Masked and Anonymous, having previously recorded the Butch Hawes/Cisco Houston/Jack Elliot version in the '90s.
As for Charlie Butler, when the Library of Congress wrote to him at the prison early in 1943 for permission to issue "Diamond Joe", the letter was returned with the message "gone free left no address."
I've done a version on banjo myself that started from Dan Gellert's and went off in a somewhat different direction. I haven't had a chance to record it yet, but will try to get something on here in the next couple days.