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🦋 The Music in the Story
In the spring Jack Bondurant saw Bertha Minnix playing the mandolin for the first time at a corn shucking at the Mitchell place in Snow Creek. She held her head cocked low, eyes concentrating on the frets of her mandolin, made in the old teardrop style, the rounded bell of the instrument like a wooden scoop nestled against her narrow waist, the tight lace Dunkard bonnet on her crown and the long black dress to the wrist and ankle.... Jack watched Bertha Minnix's fingers ply the strings, the fret hand moving in quick jumps, her plucking a blur of twitching knuckle strokes, working through "Billy in the New Ground" while people slapped their hands in time....Bertha Minnix set her mouth again, cradling the mandolin to her belly, picking out the chords for "Old Dan Tucker," and the younger men and women standing there swayed and sang along. Get out'a th' way for old Dan Tucker
He's too late t' get his supper
Supper is over an' breakfast fry'n
Old Dan Tucker stand'n there cry'n
Washed his face in the fry'n pan
Combed his head on a wagon wheel
An' died with a toothache in his heel
John loaned me Matt Bondurant's excellent novel about his ancestors in Virginia's Franklin County, The Wettest County in the World as Sherwood Anderson called it, and I'm drinking it in -- mixes very nice with the bottle of bourbon John gave me for my birthday. One thing that's really striking me is the quantity and variety of music in the story, and how strongly it affects my reading and the images of the story in my head. The musical styles represented -- old-time, gospel, popular music from the 30's -- are pretty firmly part of my personal soundtrack.Here are Clarke Buehling and the Skirtlifters performing "Old Dan Tucker" at the Beavers Bend Folk Festival last fall:
posted evening of Thursday, June third, 2010
➳ More posts about The Wettest County in the World
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about Music
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