Tom Mindte - The Brown Girl and Fair Ellender

Описание: 2026 Chambersburg PA

My Grandpa, Ed Hohmann, knew of this ballad and could sing a few fragments of it. I asked him if it was about a black girl and he said that it wasn’t, that Brown was her last name “Like the Smith girl or the Jones girl.” I’m still not too sure about that! As a retired fiddler, he couldn’t sing any song all the way through except maybe “Buffalo Gals,” but he wanted me to learn “The Brown Girl.”

Several years later, sometime in the early ‘80s, after my grandpa had passed away, I heard the song on WAMU by Grandpa Jones. I called DJ Jerry Gray and asked about it He said he couldn’t copy it for me but he did tell me which album it was on. I found the album and started to get the song in my head. About the same time, I was visiting Joe Bussard and asked him about the song. He played me a version by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, which he did copy for me. So, having a couple of sources, I decided to add it to my repertoire.

Coincidentally, a friend was taking an audio engineering course at Montgomery College and she asked me to come to their studio and record a folk song. I thought I would do a Carter Family song or something. When I arrived at the studio she and a student of American folklore said they wanted a Child ballad (one collected by James Child during the 19th century). I said “Give me paper and pencil and a few minutes.” So, I pieced together a composite of what I thought were the two versions of “The Brown Girl” that I had been listening to. I recorded the song and it turned out to be a little different than both, but I stuck with it. Thanks for listening.