A C1544
Artist: Clyde Case, Jim Knicely, William May, Bonnie McKinney
Album/Event: Folksongs and Ballads
Tracks: Reuben’s Train, The The Wind Had Only Blown the Other Way, Nickety Nackety, Old Sow, Blacked Eyed Susie, Little Bessie, Little Pink;
Darlin’ Cory, Davy Crockett, The Jolly Old Dutchman Welcome, Down by the Riverside, Sweet Sadie, Code of the Mountains, British American Fight
Collected/Recorded by: Gerry Milnes
Date: May 1991; June 1990 and Feb. 1991; June 1990; June 1991
Location:
Notes: Compiled from field recordings; volume 4; Notes from Field Log: Clyde Case, born in 1910 in Braxton County, remembers songs sung by his grandfather, Andrew Facemire. Clyde has taught shape note singing schools and his banjo plyaing can be heard on an old-time banjo anthology tape, Marimac AHS 5, produced by the Augusta Heritage Center. Recorded May ’91. Knicely (1903-1991) was born and raised around Trout, in Greenbrier County. Jim’s songs came from relatives and “woodhicks” from his days spent working in the lumber camps. Jim quit the logging camps in 1928 and went to work in the mines until the mid-60s when he retired to a life on his Friar’s Hill Farm. His wife, dena, can be heard playing the dulcimer on AHR 011. Recorded June ’90 and Feb. ’91. May was born in 1911 in Mingo County, near Breeden, where he still resides. William maintains a large repertoire of ballads, songs, ditties, and Baptist hymns which he usually sings with fiddle or banjo accompaniment. Many of his older songs were learned from a cousin, Sherman Hannah. Recorded June ’90. McKinney, born in 1936, left her native Clay County in the early ’60s to seek work in Ohio. As is the case with many West Virginians who have had to migrate to find employment, she and her late husband, Paul, a dulcimer player, returned at every opportunity to the mountains of West Virginia and what she still knows as “home”. Recorded June ’91.
The Milnes Collection contains audio-visual recordings made and collected by the Augusta Heritage Center’s former Folk Arts Coordinator, Gerald Milnes. Throughout his career with Augusta, Milnes conducted field work to amass a large collection of oral histories, music, and event recordings. He recorded the bulk of the collection from the early 1970s to 2013, but the collection also includes tapes with earlier dates that others sent to him.