"You Shall Be Free" by Bill & Belle Reed
Added 2021-12-03 13:01:02 +0000 UTCfB♭FB♭C ~ gCGCD (aka Hook & Line tuning). I learned "You Shall Be Free" from a 1920s recording of Bill and Belle Reed. Almost nothing is known of the duo beyond their stage names, yet they were libeled by the owners of Dust-to-Digital in a recent New York Times interview.
While the song does contain numerous racial epithets, it does not contain any reference to lynching, as was falsely claimed by April and Lance Ledbetter. I contacted the Ledbetters and NYT to explain their error and request a correction, to no avail
The verse in question:
"Some folks say a ****** won't steal
But I caught three in my corn field,
One had a bushel the other had a peck
One had a roasting ear around his neck."
"... One had a crib tied around his neck."
This was misquoted by the Ledbetters as:
"... One had a rope tied around his neck."
The Reeds never "jubilantly harmonized about a lynching," as the Ledbetters maintain. In truth, the verse references traditional maize agriculture. Red roasting ears were a prize shown off during corn-shucking parties, and a "crib" is a small manger used to feed livestock.
- "As they husked, and as the piles of yellow corn grew larger, the young men kept a lookout for a mutation, a red ear of corn. Not quite as hard as searching for a needle in a haystack, but only one or two of the ears out of the gigantic pile would be red. It was however the true prize, because the man who found a red ear of corn got to kiss a girl of his choosing." https://forgottenstories.net/2012/09/02/looking-for-a-red-ear/
- "Hence, the colonials used finding a red ear of corn as a courtship ritual, and those who found red corn were permitted to the publicly kiss the person of his/her choice, an activity that would normally be scorned by the Puritans." https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-did-red-ear-corn-signify-463080
- "The kiss was actually part of a longstanding tradition during the time of the annual corn-shucking. Tradition said that any boy who found a red ear of corn could kiss the girl of his choosing." https://leelofland.com/a-red-ear-of-corn-a-kiss-and-mass-murder/
Download 8.5" x 11" tablature 👇
Comments
Yes. I think this is where all the variations in old traditional banjo tunings come from. Early pickers were self-taught, and using fretless banjos, so they'd rather retune than fool with chord shapes.
Clifton Hicks
2022-01-08 13:36:27 +0000 UTCThanks, Ah, I get it (light bulb goes off). Because if I never play the string open and I am always noting it that is way less efficient than just changing the note of the open string where I can more often play it open. I think I got that right ha.
Doug Link
2022-01-08 04:19:42 +0000 UTCActually I checked and he calls it double C
Doug Link
2022-01-07 09:25:53 +0000 UTC
