[Granville-Hough] 29 Oct 2009 - Country Sangs

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:47:41 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: 29 Jan 2009 - Country Sangs

COUNTRY SANGS. SullivanÆs Hollow had a long tradition of good singers 
and singing masters. Singing masters went around the area holding 
singing schools during the summer, in which they imparted the 
fundamentals of following shaped notes. In an ordinary church hymnal 
today, the notes are round or oblong, and their place on the scale 
determined how they were sung. Square notes was the country name for 
shaped notes, and you picked up the tone from shape of the note, though 
you could also pay attention to the scale. There were eight notes to the 
scale, do, ra, me, fa, so, la, te, do. In my time, song books were 
available in round or shaped notes, and everyone could read the words 
and learn to follow the notes.
There was an older way to do singing, coming from the days when few 
persons could read and write, and it depended on memory and an 
enthusiastic song leader. Though I never learned much about Sacred Harp 
music, I did get to attend a Sacred Harp Sang when I was a teen-ager. It 
came about this way: my grandfather, Jim Richardson, read in the Smith 
County Reformer that his old chum from boyhood, ôSi Barfoot,ö was to 
lead a Sacred Harp Sang at one of the old churches, probably Hardshell 
Baptist, in the Strong River section of the county (up near Scott and 
Rankin counties.) He wanted to go but he could no longer drive. I was 
about sixteen and could drive well enough to follow the road to the 
church. I was not a singer, but I was willing to take ôGrandpaö and 
listen to him sing, as I had never heard him sing a single note. We got 
to the unpainted longleaf-pine timber church, and Grandpa met several of 
his old buddies, all in their early eighties. Soon they all settled down 
to singing. There were no songbooks. Si Barfoot (really Bearfoot, or 
Barefoot, I suppose) walked back and forth reading the words, which 
sounded like psalms, then blew the pitch pipe for the key, and everybody 
sang the words, using about four notes. It was more like a chant than 
the church music to which I was accustomed. Apparently the songs were 
well known, and my grandfather took part as I had never heard before. As 
the temperature and the tempo rose in the church, I looked around and 
discovered behind me one of my Mize grade school classmates, Douglas 
Gibson, who had brought his father, ôOld Man Ed Gibson,ö to the sang. 
Doug motioned me to go outside with him which I did, and we had our own 
reunion, as I had gone to Magee High School and he to Mize. We let the 
old folks have their day and we had ours. We did not learn any more 
about Sacred Harp Singing, but we did catch up on all our mutual 
activities. I never saw Douglas again, but he was a great friend.

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The subject of Country Sangs came up recently in a meeting of our 
Lutheran Promise Keepers, and I could relate some history I experienced 
before we had electricity and the few people who had radios had to use 
batteries and erect high poles to pick up the signals. We began to get 
different forms of music by radio. The first Catholic mass I ever heard 
was by radio from a New Orleans church. What we really liked were the 
Saturday programs from Grand Ole Opry and the Sunday singing of new 
gospel songs such as "When the Saints Go Marching In," As soon as we got 
electricity, everyone tried to get a radio so we could hear the new 
songs. Soon we had communities organizing country sangs to take part in 
the new music. My uncle, Coley Richardson, became a regular performer 
over the Jackson radio, and his gravestone is marked with the key of C. 
Regular church ministers became alarmed and condemned the country sangs 
as works of the Devil. What has happened in our Lutheran Congregation is 
that we have two campuses, one in the basketball court of our grade 
school, and the other in our regular church adjacent to Leisure World. 
At our grade school in Aliso Viejo, we play and sing the new Christian 
songs heard and seen on TV stations, and we clap, wave, more or less 
dance, and keep time. In our Leisure World location we play and sing 
with profound dignity the more conventional songs, the very ones I first 
heard by radio in the 1930 decade. Of course, we have songbooks at the 
Leisure World location and we can even get back as far as the Doxology. 
Many of my elderly church associates who come to our Aliso Viejo 
services are baffled by the new music and never come back. It doesn't 
sound or look Lutheran to them Well, I suppose I am the only one in the 
church who had a son get his college degree in music in Rock and Roll 
Guitar and who composed his own graduation lyrics.. And I suppose I am 
the only one who still does not know one note from the other unless they 
are shaped