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Jimmie Driftwood Sings Newly Discovered Early American Folk Songs - The Wilderness Road (CD)

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(Omni Recording) 31 Tracks The folklorist, teacher and performer Jimmie Driftwood wrote over 6000... more

Jimmie Driftwood: Sings Newly Discovered Early American Folk Songs - The Wilderness Road (CD)

(Omni Recording) 31 Tracks
The folklorist, teacher and performer Jimmie Driftwood wrote over 6000 songs in his extraordinary life.
Here you can hear his first two LPs for RCA Victor Records, 'Sings Newly Discovered Early American Folk Songs' (1958) and 'The Wilderness Road' (1959).
Probably the most famous song would be 'Battle of New Orleans', closely followed by 'Tennessee Stud', but beyond that there are numerous highlights.
Remastered from the original RCA Victor master tapes 2013.
All original recordings, 20-page full-color booklet with exclusive liner notes and rare photos. The original groundbreaking albums in their entirety.

Article properties: Jimmie Driftwood: Sings Newly Discovered Early American Folk Songs - The Wilderness Road (CD)

Driftwood, Jimmie - Sings Newly Discovered Early American Folk Songs - The Wilderness Road (CD) CD 1
01 Battle Of New Orleans Jimmie Driftwood
02 Unfortunate Man Jimmie Driftwood
03 Fair Rosamond S Bower Jimmie Driftwood
04 Soldier S Joy Jimmie Driftwood
05 Country Boy Jimmie Driftwood
06 I M Too Young To Marry Jimmie Driftwood
07 Pretty Mary Jimmie Driftwood
08 Sailor Man Jimmie Driftwood
09 Zelma Lee Jimmie Driftwood
10 Rattlesnake Song Jimmie Driftwood
11 Old Joe Clark Jimmie Driftwood
12 Tennessee Stud Jimmie Driftwood
13 Razorback Steak Jimmie Driftwood
14 First Covered Wagon Jimmie Driftwood
15 The Maid Of Argenta Jimmie Driftwood
16 Bunker Hill Jimmie Driftwood
17 Song Of The Cowboys Jimmie Driftwood
18 Peter Francisco Jimmie Driftwood
19 Four Little Girls In Boston Jimmie Driftwood
20 Slack Your Rope Jimmie Driftwood
21 Run Johnny Run Jimmie Driftwood
22 Arkansas Traveler Jimmie Driftwood
23 Damyankee Lad Jimmie Driftwood
24 The Land Where The Blue Grass Grows Jimmie Driftwood
25 The Widders Of Bowling Green Jimmie Driftwood
26 Mooshatanio Jimmie Driftwood
27 Jordan Am A Hard Road To Travel Jimmie Driftwood
28 I M Leavin On The Wagon Train Jimmie Driftwood
29 The Song Of Creation Jimmie Driftwood
30 He Had A Long Chain On Jimmie Driftwood
31 The Bear Flew Over The Ocean Jimmie Driftwood
Jimmie Driftwood The Battle Of New Orleans Tennessee Stud What Color Is The Soul Of A Man... more
"Jimmie Driftwood"

Jimmie Driftwood

The Battle Of New Orleans

Tennessee Stud

What Color Is The Soul Of A Man

Rooted in the folk music of his native Ozark Mountains, Jimmie Driftwood was a prolific, engaging singer-songwriter. Two of his songs, The Battle Of New Orleans and Tennessee Stud, became standards in the American folk and country music repertoires.

Born James Corbett Morris on June 20, 1907 in Richwood, Arkansas, he absorbed the folk tales and stories of the mountain men, homesteaders, Native Americans and Civil War veterans who settled in the region around Mountain View. His great-grandmother also taught him songs from her Carolina childhood. As a youngster he was given an unusual handmade guitar made by his grandfather. Its neck was made from a fence rail, its sides shaped from an ox yoke, and its front and back came from a bed headboard. While it didn't have much tone, Driftwood used it throughout his performing career.

Graduating from high school in 1928, he attended John Brown College in Siloam Springs. During the height of the Depression he left college and traveled through the Southwest, settling in Phoenix, Arizona, where he sang on a weekly radio show. Returning to Arkansas in 1935, he began teaching elementary students in Timbo, 12 miles west of Mountain View. Finding his students had difficulty grasping historical events, Driftwood wrote his lessons in rhyme and set them to music. In 1936 he fit his poem about the Battle of New Orleans to the fiddle tune Eighth Of January.

In 1936 Driftwood married Cleda Johnson. For next two decades he concentrated on teaching while attending night classes at Arkansas State Teachers College. In 1947 he bought a 150-acre farm in Timbo. After receiving his degree in education in 1949, Driftwood became principal of Snowball School in Searcy County.

During these years he wrote more than a hundred songs, mostly about historical events or local folklore. In 1952 he made a demo tape of several dozen songs and privately pressed a single, but never pursued placing them with a publisher. Hugh Ashley, a friend of Driftwood's who placed songs with Red Foley, Bill Monroe and Porter Wagoner, encouraged the schoolteacher to demo his songs in Nashville. When school let out for summer vacation in 1957, Driftwood and his wife met with Buddy Killen of Tree Publishing. After listening to two stanzas of The Battle Of New Orleans, Killen dismissed him, coldly suggesting he return to Timbo.

Undeterred, he visited Don Warden, Wagoner's steel guitarist, then establishing his own publishing company. Warden liked what he heard and purchased 25 of Driftwood's compositions, including Howdy, Neighbor, Howdy, which became Wagoner's theme song. He also convinced Chet Atkins to sign Driftwood to RCA Victor. With Atkins on guitar and Bob Moore on bass, Driftwood completed his first album during two October 1957 sessions. A mix of traditional material and Driftwood originals, 'Newly Discovered Early American Folk Songs' included The Battle Of New Orleans. Written from the perspective of an American volunteer fighting with Major General Andrew Jackson's army, it offered a light-hearted saga about the British defeat during the War of 1812's final battle.

Johnny Horton thought the song had potential, and invited Driftwood to Shreveport to perform on The Louisiana Hayride. At Horton's request, Driftwood trimmed and slightly sanitized the song for a radio-friendly single. Three days later Horton recorded the revised The Battle Of New Orleans in Nashville. In April 1959 it entered Billboard's pop and country singles charts for extended runs. It clung to No. 1 on the country chart for ten weeks and No. 1 pop for six.

Counting Homer & Jethro's parody The Battle Of Kookamonga, Driftwood placed six songs on the pop and country charts in 1959, including Eddy Arnold's version of Tennessee Stud. The song was inspired by an actual horse owned by his wife's great-great-grandfather, John Merriman. "The great exploits of this horse were legion," Driftwood wrote in 1966. "Seemed that John got into trouble with his sweetheart's folk and rode off to The Arkansas Territory rather than fight his loved one's people. However, after having ridden this wonderful horse all over the Great Southwest and into Mexico, and after having made a sack full of money from racing and filing a notch or two on his gun, young Johnny came back to Tennessee, thrashed his potential in-laws, and carried the girl away to Arkansas."

The honors and awards continued through 1959. Besides appearances on the Hayride, The Grand Ole Opry and The Ozark Jubilee, he sang at New York's Carnegie Hall, the Berkeley Folk Festival, and at the United Nations in a concert for Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev. In August he received an Honorary Doctorate of American Folklore from Peabody College in Nashville.

Under Atkins' supervision, Driftwood recorded six albums for RCA Victor and contributed five songs to a thematic album, 'How The West Was Won.' In 1963 he signed with Fred Foster's Monument Records. For the first album for his new label, he recorded his plea for racial tolerance, What Is The Color Of The Soul Of Man. The song was hardly new at the time; Driftwood intended to sing it at his Carnegie Hall debut in April 1959. "My Nashville publisher begged me not to sing it, believing that my records would be boycotted in many parts of our country," he later recalled. "Since then I have sung it all over America, with as great applause in Little Rock as anywhere else."

By 1963, an aging Driftwood became weary of life on the road. Returning to Timbo, he and two local physicians formed the Rackensack Folklore Society, sponsoring regular concerts that evolved into an annual folk festival in Mountain View. He also became involved in environmental issues, spearheading a campaign to prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from building a dam across the Buffalo River.

He continued performing sporadically until his death in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on July 12, 1998. 

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Tracklist
Driftwood, Jimmie - Sings Newly Discovered Early American Folk Songs - The Wilderness Road (CD) CD 1
01 Battle Of New Orleans
02 Unfortunate Man
03 Fair Rosamond S Bower
04 Soldier S Joy
05 Country Boy
06 I M Too Young To Marry
07 Pretty Mary
08 Sailor Man
09 Zelma Lee
10 Rattlesnake Song
11 Old Joe Clark
12 Tennessee Stud
13 Razorback Steak
14 First Covered Wagon
15 The Maid Of Argenta
16 Bunker Hill
17 Song Of The Cowboys
18 Peter Francisco
19 Four Little Girls In Boston
20 Slack Your Rope
21 Run Johnny Run
22 Arkansas Traveler
23 Damyankee Lad
24 The Land Where The Blue Grass Grows
25 The Widders Of Bowling Green
26 Mooshatanio
27 Jordan Am A Hard Road To Travel
28 I M Leavin On The Wagon Train
29 The Song Of Creation
30 He Had A Long Chain On
31 The Bear Flew Over The Ocean