House Carpenter

[jonathanatpsu]

I just found this and thought it was neat. Listen to it:

http://folktunes.org/wiki/The_House_Carpenter_-_Clarence_Ashley

[mandoplayer15]

Cool! lol thanks

[Jimmie]

You might want to look through this thread that I posted here almost three years ago:

House Carpenter discussion (http://www.nickelcreek.info/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1025)

There's a brief reference there to some Nickel Creek music that you may not have heard before.

Unfortunately, some of the links from 2002 no longer work today. Here's a revised version of one of the broken links:

Contemplator House Carpenter page (http://www.contemplator.com/child/carpentereng.html)

And here's yet another version: DayPoems House Carpenter (http://www.daypoems.net/poems/2505.html)

And here's one from Dava Para and Cathy Barton, collected in Arkansas.

Arkansas House Carpenter (http://www.bartonpara.com/discog/missouri/house.htm)

This one is interesting, with a few verses that I've not seen elselwhere:

House Carpenter (http://www.robingreenstein.com/iow/lyrics_housecarpenter.html)

Finally, these seem to be the texts actually collected by Francis Child in the late 1800s:

Child 243 (http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch243.htm)

Note that these versions have a wide range of endings, including some where her cloven foot lover destroys the ship in a flash of fire.

[lambchop]

If ya ask me that woman sounded like she had a bad cold! [lolol]

[Jimmie]

Originally posted by lambchop
If ya ask me that woman sounded like she had a bad cold! [lolol] Which woman? Clarence Ashley? He was 35 years old when that recording was made. Ashley quit performing when he was about 40, and had to be coaxed out of retirement in the 1960s when the folk revival came along. His performances in that decade not only helped to preserve some great old appalachian music, but also introduced us to a (relatively) young man from the same part of North Carolina - Doc Watson.

Ashley died in 1967.

[jonathanatpsu]

Thanks Jimmie, those were some cool sites. I didn't realize it was such an old song.