Flowers In The Wildwood: Women In Early Country Music 1923-1939

Trikont US-0310

Format: CD, Compilation
Country: Germany
Released: 2003
Genre: Blues, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Country
[Tracklist]
01 Wish I Was A Single Girl Again: Lulu Belle & Scotty
02 Single Life: Roba Stanley
03 I Left Her Standing There: Dezurik Sisters
04 Flowers Blooming In The Wildwood: Coon Creek Girls
05 She Came Rollin' Down The Mountain: The Aaron Sisters
06 Just Another Broken Heart: The Carter Family
07 Round-up Time In Texas: Girls Of The Golden West
08 We Are Climing: Chuck Wagon Gang
09 My Man's A Jolly Railroad Man: Moonshine Kate
10 My Poncho Pony: Patsy Montana
11 Lorena: Joe & Alma (The Kentucky Girls)
12 All The Good Times Are Past And Gone: Fred & Gertrude Gossett
13 Round Town Girls: Wanda & Ruth Neal
14 Home-Coming Week: The Leatherman Sisters
15 Brother-Be Ready For That Day: Grady & Hazel Cole
16 On The Banks Of The Old Tennessee: Mr. & Mrs. J.W. Baker
17 Kentucky Miner's Wife (Ragged Hungry Blues) Pt.1: Aunt Molly Jackson
18 Go To Sleep My Darling: Dezurik Sisters
19 Walking In The King's Highway: The Carter Family
20 My Loved Ones Are Waiting For Me: Southland Ladies Quartette
21 Little Birdie: Coon Creek Girls
22 Big-Eyed Rabbit: Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis
23 How'm I Doin'?: The Aaron Sisters With The Song-O-Pators
24 Prayer: Wisdom Sisters
25 With My Banjo On My Knee Blues: Louisiana Lou
「Credits]
Liner Notes: Rennie Sparks
[Notes]
Women in America began staking a claim in country music long before recording equipment existed. The women country singers are the ones known as the Flowers in the Wildwood and on this disc they sing their old time country music in high sweet voices with only the sparsest of instrumental accompaniment. Though edging out from folk tradition, this music is made by women who were for the most part commercial country singers, because that's who typically made it onto records and the radio, after all. This collection dates from the decade before World War II, with a few precious offerings reaching back as far as the 1920s. These 25 rare recordings, released by Germany's quirky Trikont label, seem untouched by modern technology.

Samantha Bumgarner : First Female Recording Artist

Samantha Bumgarner (right) at Asheville Mountain Music Festival, August 1938

Samantha Bumgarner (1878-1960) was a fiddle and banjo player from North Carolina who, in 1924, became the first woman to record hillbilly music. In doing so, she opened the doors for all the great female hillbilly and country musicians who followed. Imagine for a second a world without Brenda Lee, Iris Dement, Jean Shepard, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Norma Jean, Skeeter Davis, Sue Thompson and Tammy Wynette, to name a few. Not a pretty place.

Photo by Ben Shahn (1937) LOC

In April 1924, accompanied by guitarist Eva Smathers Davis of nearby Sylva, Bumgarner traveled to New York City where, on the 23, she and Davis recorded ten songs both together and solo. According to County Music Magazine, that record was also the first release by female musicians in the hillbilly genre. were also the first recordings of a five-string banjo. Although today the Cashville country scene has little use for anything but this week’s disposable pap, The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum there does feature the 78s of her initial recordings, which were:

Big-eyed Rabbit (Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis) Cindy in the Meadows (Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis) Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss (Samantha Bumgarner) The Gamblin' Man (Samantha Bumgarner) Georgia Blues (Samantha Bumgarner) I Am My Mother's Darlin' Child (Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis) John Hardy (Eva Davis) Shout Lou (Samantha Bumgarner) Wild Bill Jones (Eva Davis) Worried Blues (Samantha Bumgarner)

[via Amoeblog : Read more...]