Tennessee Ernie Ford's Civil War Albums Back in Print!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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With the possible exception of the Star Wars soundtrack and the original My Fair Lady cast recordings, my favorite record was Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Sings Civil War Songs of the South: Stonewall Jackson’s Way, Bonnie Blue Flag and above all else Lorena (which was such a favorite of my father’s that it was almost my sister’s name) were all just perfectly done. I’ve never heard better (and what’s really irritating is when I’ll hear an upbeat version of Lorena- UPBEAT?! The song was said to have been so somber that Northern troops who could hear it from the Confederate camps cried! It’s not a freakin’ polka!

Anyway, we have our trials and our tribulations but we go on somehow.

My last Christmas gift to my father was the companion album, Tennessee Ernie Ford Sings Civil War Songs of the North, which I nearly fainted when I found in the $1.98 cut-out bin of Gaylord’s Department Store. I was easily impressed as a kid. It was a good album too (always nice to hear the other side’s music), though it was odd hearing Ernie’s beautiful southern baritone/bass singing Marching through Georgia or a bitterly humorous anti-Southern version of Dixie.

The SOUTH album was hopelessly scratched (my father listened to it for a decade before I did [and had a terrible habit of putting one record on top of another to play them]) and the NORTH, while newer and not as played, developed some problems, then the records went out of print, then records went the way of flickers and CDs took over and it was never released. Tennessee Ernie made a bunch of insurance commercials and died (though his son’s alive and in a Dolly Parton video). And his Lorena was a memory.

BUT NOW THEY’RE BACK! YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

It’s a two CD set that’s an import from a British company but I’m assured that unlike DVDs they’ll play on American players. I’ve ordered them and am literally counting the days. Huzzah! Huzzah!

Totally pointless, but t’will be a great nostalgic keepsake as well as some of my favorite American folksongs sung by a fellow with the perfect voice for it.

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That’s pretty cool. It’s always a rush to find something you thought you had lost. I’m like that in used bookstores, just browsing along them something leaps out at you.

Speaking of Civil War music, when Ken Burn’s did the documentary The Civil War all the soundtrack music was period music, except for the haunting main theme titled Ashokan Farewell.

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The companion CD (featuring vocals of the instrumentals from the miniseries) is a great Civil War album too. My favorites are any pieces by Kathy Mattea or Richie Havens.

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I taped off the television an hour program of that. I liked the a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. Each performer also got a chance to give a little info on the piece they were singing too.

One guy did a verse of “Lorena”. I had, in a book of poetry, all four stanzas, and I can’t agree more that it’s melancholy! No way no how it could be tortured into an upbeat ditty.

There’s a small town here in Kansas named Nicodemus, settled in the 19th century by freed blacks slaves. In the Civil War soundtrack there is some music that didn’t make it onto the show or the CD, a period song titled “Wake Nicodemus Today”. It’’ about an old slave who died before having a chance to be freed, and how he asked to be buried in a tree facing west, so that he could be waked up when the other slaves finally got to leave.

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Is it on iTunes? Nothing really counts unless it is on iTunes.