Ozark Folksongs and Ballads

On this early field recording from Folk-Legacy Records, Max Hunter of Springfield, Missouri, sings folk songs collected from the Ozarks. While Hunter learned his repertoire intentionally as a song collector rather than through ancestral transmission, he was dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of his region’s musical tradition. In this recording, Hunter plays from his 1,100-odd collected songs, learned in accordance with strict rules he set for himself—never playing a song he had not learned directly from a traditional singer in the mountains of Missouri and Arkansas, and never changing in any way the text or music of a song as it was presented to him. The songs selected here have a mix of American and English origins, including Child ballads in their Ozark versions, broadsides, and Western outlaw songs, expressively sung and skillfully played without any sort of patronizing mimicry. Today, Hunter’s recordings of Ozark singers are held jointly in the collection of the Springfield-Greene County Library and the Missouri State University, where they have been digitized.

Track Listing

101	Open the Door	Max Hunter	01:26
102	The Dewy Dens of Yarrow (Child 214)	Max Hunter	04:20
103	The Battle Of Pea Ridge	Max Hunter	02:04
104	Pretty Suzie	Max Hunter	03:18
105	Oh Miss, I Have a Very Fine Farm	Max Hunter	03:12
106	The Drunkard's Wife	Max Hunter	02:36
107	Sweet Lovely Jane	Max Hunter	03:07
108	The Blue Ridge Mountains	Max Hunter	04:40
109	Sporting Molly	Max Hunter	01:51
110	Lady Margaret (Child 74)	Max Hunter	05:02
111	How Come That Blood? (Child 13)	Max Hunter	02:31
112	Down By The Greenwood Side (Child 20)	Max Hunter	03:04
113	John Henry (Hardy)	Max Hunter	02:15
114	Down by the Sea Shore	Max Hunter	02:50