Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line cover

Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line

Various Artists

Compilation · 2015

Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line is a clothbound book with two CDs, published by Dust-to-Digital (DTD-40) on August 21, 2015, and compiled by Henry Glassie, Clifford R. Murphy and Douglas Dowling Peach. Reed was born Ola Belle Campbell in Ashe County, North Carolina, in 1916, and moved with her family to the Rising Sun area of Cecil County, Maryland, in 1933.

The first disc comes from folklorist Henry Glassie’s recordings of 1966 and 1967. Glassie, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania, heard Reed and her brother Alex Campbell on a broadcast from Campbell’s Corner, the family store in Oxford, Pennsylvania, and went there in January 1966. His twenty-four selections range from Reed alone with her banjo, as on “Uncloudy Day” and “Train 45,” to performances with Alex Campbell, Burl Kilby and John Miller. They include two performances of her own “I’ve Endured.” The tapes had been held at Indiana University’s Archives of Traditional Music.

The second disc, recorded by Murphy between 2008 and 2014 in Rising Sun, Childs, North East and Port Deposit, Maryland, in Newport, Delaware, and in Oxford, turns to musicians of the same border country, among them Hugh and Zane Campbell, Burl Kilby, David Reed, Burton and Liz DeBusk, and Linda Weaver. Danny Paisley, son of Bob Paisley of the Southern Grass, sings “The Old Swinging Bridge” and other songs with Ryan Paisley on mandolin and T. J. Lundy on fiddle. Murphy was then working as a folklorist for the Maryland State Arts Council.

Tracklist

  1. 1 Uncloudy Day alt version 2:28
  2. 2 My Home's Across the Blue Ridge Mountain 2:33
  3. 3 Bringing in the Georgia Mail 2:03
  4. 4 Reuben alt version 2:53
  5. 5 The Worried Man Blues 2:04
  6. 6 The Worried Man Blues 2:31
  7. 7 The Ranger's Command 3:47
  8. 8 Big Kid's Barroom 3:04
  9. 9 The Miller's Will 3:57
  10. 10 Black Jack Davy 1:57
  11. 11 John Hardy alt version 3:29
  12. 12 Single Girl Married Girl alt version 2:46
  13. 13 Kitty Wells 2:14
  14. 14 Little Orphan Girl alt version 3:15
  15. 15 I’ve Always Been a Rambler alt version 2:47
  16. 16 Undone in Sorrow alt version 3:20
  17. 17 You Led Me to the Wrong 3:52
  18. 18 Absalom My Son, My Son 0:50
  19. 19 Amazing Grace alt version 2:57
  20. 20 Six Feet of Earth 2:32
  21. 21 All the Dark Places 2:43
  22. 22 I'm Going Through 4:38
  23. 23 I’ve Endured alt version 2:34
  24. 24 I've Endured 2:35
  25. 25 Undone in Sorrow 2:45
  26. 26 Plucking the Strings 1:45
  27. 27 Cherokee Shuffle alt version 3:39
  28. 28 I'm Longing for a Love I'll Never Know 2:21
  29. 29 Sally Goodin alt version 3:19
  30. 30 Story of Tom Moore, the Gravedigger 1:17
  31. 31 Footprints Left Below 3:15
  32. 32 Leave It There 3:13
  33. 33 Six Hours on the Cross 3:59
  34. 34 John Hardy 1:05
  35. 35 Cherokee Eyes 2:53
  36. 36 High on a Mountain alt version 2:38
  37. 37 Fiddle on the Wall 4:02
  38. 38 Rachel 1:46
  39. 39 The Old Swinging Bridge alt version 2:57
  40. 40 John Hardy/John Henry 1:25
  41. 41 Stolen Love 3:21
  42. 42 The Buzzard and the Monkey 1:18
  43. 43 The Pussycat and the Bulldog 0:43
  44. 44 Preacher and the Bear 1:04
  45. 45 Turkey in the Straw alt version 3:09
  46. 46 Ryestraw 1:13
  47. 47 The Butcher Boy 3:10
  48. 48 Simple Man 2:28
  49. 49 1,000 Light Years Away 1:50
  50. 50 I Feel Like Traveling On alt version 2:26

Share Playlist