Betty Smith

Partial Transcript: (01:02-03:10)
I’m Betty Smith and I live at, a, Highland Farms in Black Mountain. I’ve only lived there six years. Before that, I lived for many years up on Bluff Mountain in Madison County in a house that we built ourselves.

Ah, we, I was born in Salisbury but I don’t remember Salisbury because my parents moved away, moved to High Point. This was during the Depression. Um, I’m almost…I will be 89 next month so you know that when I came along it was the time of the Great Depression and people were looking for work wherever, so I grew up in High Point.

Now, a, um, I married, a, my high school sweetheart after he got out of the Air Force and we got, we got transferred to Georgia, and we said, “How do we get back to North Carolina?,” and so we bought a piece of land up on Bluff Mountain and a we, we just built on it, on the house, when we could so when he retired, that’s where we went and lived for over 20 years after he retired in one of the most wonderful places in the whole world.

A, Bluff Mountain is about nine miles from Hot Springs in Madison County. And it is, it is the Bluff Mountain that we worked so hard to save and may have to again. But, a, if I could be there, I would be, but I am in a good place in Black Mountain now.

Interviewer
(03.12)
I want you to back up a little bit and have you talk a little bit about growing up in Madison County. Give me one second; Brenda might be back so…
(Brief interruption; door opens and closes; muffled voices.)
I guess not; I thought I heard her.

Betty Smith
(03:4-06:04)
I actually didn’t…I grew up in High Point, but my parents—my dad—grew up in Rockingham--in Randolph County, and he was a ballad singer. And then my mother’s mother (she was from Rockingham County, which is up against the Danville region, you know, up that way) and they…there was is my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who knew ballads, so you know actually I think that any rural area, that’s where, where you heard ballad singers, even in the Eastern part of the state.

I’ve done a lot of schools down there and, and I would meet people and they know the same ballads because I think that what happened when, a, well, nobody talked about mountaineers or anything until sometime after the Civil War, I guess, and then when industrialization came and roads and railroads and then rural areas sometimes kind of got shut off from towns, so it doesn’t have to be just mountains—it can be any rural area that kind of got left behind, but, a, I doubt if people still call themselves “mountaineers”—it’s just, and, a, I think, a, that is the reason though that, that a lot of the, of the songs and stories and all were…that they persevered because they weren’t rarely hearing other kinds of music. And they weren’t, a, so the ideal place to preserve is, is a community where they’re completely cut off, but there, there isn’t any such thing anymore.



(06:06)
There really hasn’t been that in—since print, I guess (chuckles)—but, but that is, that’s usually the place where, where people remembered. People have to remember, I mean that’s what, that’s how we know what we know—traditional—a, it’s sometimes called a, a “literature of the mind”—it’s the things that people brought with them from wherever they came from, that were things of the mind and the spirit, and it’s not just music and stories; it’s, it’s how, how you find, how you cook and preserve food; how you, a, weave and sew and spin; and how you, a, treat people who are sick—all those things—all the things that we know now began in oral tradition. That’s how people from one generation to the next, that’s how the next generation learned how to do all the things that, that you have to do to survive. But, um, we’ll be talking more today about the music, but, a, it’s true of almost everything we know.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer
(07:50)
Tell me about, more about, your family, your mom and your mother’s mother and your—starting with the matriarchal line in your family.

Betty Smith
(07:58)
Well, my dad was a wonderful singer. He, he sang shaped notes from the time he was a young man. He was in this group that sang shaped notes, and I have letters, where, to my mother where he would say, “Oh, we went up against Guilford College” or something, you know, we went up, but I don’t think that there were any prizes. I think that they just were singings, and, a, he also, a, knew a lot of ballads. His, a, my grandmother’s grandfather was Isaac Lane(?) and I don’t know if you know The Ballad of Omi Wise(?) A, but the two ballads that are most often thought of as North Carolina ballads are Tom Dooley and Omi Wise(?). (09:00) And Omi Wise(?) was a story, true story, as is Tom Dooley, somewhat true, a, of a, a young girl by the name of Naomi Wise(?), who, who was drowned in Deep River in 1807, and, a, my grandmother’s grandfather was, a, the sheriff who arrested Jonathan Lewis, who drowned little Omi in Deep River, and so that was probably one of the first ballads that I remember learning cause everybody in the family seemed to know that one.

Interviewer
(09:40)
Do you know—can you sing the first of it?

Betty Smith
(09:48)
Sings. (Songs not transcribed per David Weintraub.)

(10:18)
My grandmother was Adams and, a, so that’s why I know so much about that one. But, um, my dad sang, a he sang a lot of things like “A Guy In Calgory(?)” and he sang “The Little __________,” and, a, then my, my grandmother—my a mother’s mother—a, died when I was 16 and I know more about what people have told me than, a, but the one song that I’ll probably sing today is, was a her baby-rocking song, was, was Barbry(?) Allen. And I don’t even remember learning Barbry(?) Allen. I just seem to know it. I’ve always known it, and I’ve, I’ve met other people who said that, that they just kind of…had just absorbed it, I guess.

You know, one of my aunts came to see me and she said, “You sing that more like mama than anybody else,” and I said that I don’t remember learning it from her and she said, “Well, that was her baby-rocking song, and you were the oldest grandchild so you got more rocking than anybody else did.” But I know she’s taken books and gone through and marked “mama” on them so I know which ones she sang but, a, I just think that a lot of people knew songs back then.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer
(12:13)
Is there a different meaning toward stories or history when it’s put in the form of ballads other than just something in a history book? Does it have a different vibration?

Betty Smith
(12:23)
It does for me because I think that ballads tell stories in a, in a different way. There’s a certain, a certain ballad language and, a, they don’t really tell you everything. You’ve got to use your imagination for some of it, and, but ballads just tell you the story. Now lyrics, they could be a love song, could be a hymn, could be a ____________ they express sentiment, they let you know how they feel, how people feel about things. (13:20) Traditional ballads just don’t do that. They just tell you the story, and, a, that’s what I like about ‘em, they’re…

Now, broadside(?) ballads are a little different. They’re more like, they’re more journalistic. And, a, they were…a lot of ‘em were written about local things that happened and sold on the street in the British Isles and in this country. And they, a, they do, they do express sentiment sometimes, more than you need some (chuckles)…and a lot of them, of those died out but some of ‘em probably got sung by people who knew traditional ballads and they just polished ‘em up and…

A, Doctor Child, who is a Harvard professor, and his…about the turn of the century, he, his, well, his collection is just called the cornerstone of ballad study. But most of it was done in the British Isles and, a, and people, some people have said, well he got some of them wrong because that’s a broadside(?) ballad. Well, it doesn’t sound like a broadside(?) ballad. That’s why he included it, because it, it had all of the characteristics of a traditional ballad, and he called these, he called the ballads popular ballads meaning not, not what we say as, what we mean when we say popular music. It meant from the people, of the people, and, a, so I don’t know I, a. You know the difference, I guess, I mean we, we have people writing songs all the time and some of ‘em will last, some of ‘em don’t need to last, but that’s always been true, a...

Interviewer

Partial Transcript: Interviewer
(16:24)
I wanna bring this back to your family. Ah, what was your first, ah, memory of ballads in your life and, ah, why do you think that, ah, was meaningful?

Betty Smith
(16:42)
I think I first heard my dad sing, sing ballads, but not just ballads. Nobody called him, he just said they were gonna sing “The Dying Cowboy,” you know, don’t even cal it that, just start singing and I think that sometimes collectors called them different things from what, a, people who actually sing them called them. And I just remember him singing.

Interviewer
(17:10)
Yeah, tell me a little bit about you growing up, what it was like growing up in the time that you grew up. What did you do for fun?

Betty Smith
(17:32)
I had two sisters and we, a, we sang as a trio in church and, a, but this was during the Depression and, a, when we lived in Salisbury. My father actually worked for a big furniture company and did, a, interior decorating and all. But then when the, a Depression came along, noboby could afford to do that and so when we moved to High Point—this is all hearsay because I was still too young to know about all this, but, a, um, I think he, what he did was he got a job with the Police Department. And my dad was a very gentle, soft-spoken man. I never heard him raise his voice in my life (18:40) and, I, you wouldn’t think he could do that but he was very good at it. And so that he stayed in law enforcement for the rest of his life, but, a, yeah, it…

One thing, my mother was the oldest of eight children and so I had two uncles who weren’t much older than I was. Just a few years older, so that when I was born they said that Alfred, the youngest one, ran down the road to Uncle Will’s store yelling, “Mama’s grandma and me and papa’s grandpa.” And so those, I, my grandparents lived on a farm. And my parents were the first ones to move to town. Ah, and so in the summers we were down, we were on the farm a lot.

And also I loved school and when I was too little to go to school, my two uncles would take me to school with them to a one-room schoolhouse, and my grandmother would make me a (20:00) sausage biscuit and a pint jar of chocolate milk and I went to school. But I guess I, I know I was no trouble because I loved to go to school and besides she had all ages in there anyhow, so that was my first experience going to school was with Albert and Jack, but, a, I went to first grade in a little red schoolhouse. Everybody talks about little red schoolhouse, but I actually did go and, a, to, a little red schoolhouse. And that was in High Point, and, a, but a…

Interviewer
(20:44)
What kind of chores did you have as a young child?

Betty Smith
What kind of chores? Oh, well, we all had, we all had… My dad said that with three girls in the house, my mother should never have to wash dishes, so we always did that, but, no, we had to dust and, and you know, we all had to take our turn with housework.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer
(21:10)
Did you have a garden or farm?

Betty Smith
(21:15)
Wonderful gardens. My dad, no matter where we lived, we always had a big garden. He could make anything grow, and he and my mother, in time, when they got older, got very involved with the North Carolina Wildlife Association, and they had wild flowers which you would not believe all across the back of their, their land and, ah, he would take one little sprig of something, and he would have a whole garden. But yeah, they, he, we had wonderful vegetable gardens, too. They were, both of them, really good at gardening. Well, they grew up on farms, and so in the summers at my grandmother’s, well, on the farm they had, they had a lot of people to feed so we, we were, we were always stringing beans, picking beans, stringing beans, working, you know, to help get food on the table, and I remember that. No, you didn’t sit around idle all the time.

Interviewer
(22:44)
Was the, a, as you were working in the field, or stringing the beans, or shucking the corn, was there, did the music come in during those times, as part of that work?

Betty Smith
(23:00)
I don’t, ah, I remember that, a, they, they, a… They raised tobacco. In the tobacco barns they cured it with heat curing, and said there were, they would have fires outside of the, you know, on the outside wall of the barn and we would sit around there at night and roast corn and, and mostly just tell stories, though.


Interviewer
(23:35)
What kind of stories did you tell?

Betty Smith
Well, a, I don’t, I don’t know that there wee any special kind, but, you know, sometimes you would hear about, a, when they lived. My grandfather one time did experimental farming for the Government, so they got sent to South Carolina; they got sent to, to Eastern North Carolina, where my grandmother said no, she couldn’t stand, al the heat and the…all from there so their farm was in Rockingham County, and, a, they always came back home. But we would hear about, you know, when they lived in South Carolina or near Rocky Mount or whatever, but, a it was just, a, mostly I think, a just talking about the family, what happened in the family.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer
(24:44)
You talk in some of the things I’ve seen written about you, or things you’ve written, about the value of these gatherings, family gatherings and community gatherings. Can you talk some about that?

Betty Smith
(24:58)
A, well, we always had a, yeah, we always had family gatherings that a, now, a. Sometimes, well they went to a church in down…my grandparent’s church was, was one of these rural churches, you know, and so there were…and we went to church when we were there, you know. It, a, now my dad, a, my dad was from Randolph County and he went to a church, Old Union Church and, a, we went every year we went to reunions at Old Union Church.

That church was a…that church was started, um, by people around the time of the Revolution, and, a, and I have a history of some of the people who, who were, a, who started it as a non-denominational church and as long as he lived my dad always went back for the reunions and that’s when we saw people that we hadn’t seen since last year (26:30), you know, and it’s how I think that we have a really good family, a, genealogy and history of the Adams family because all of the Adamses from the time that they came from Ulster in the 1700s are buried at Old Union Church, and they lived…the only one I can’t find the tombstone for is the first one. There were three Adams brothers who came and one of ‘em was George and he was my ancestor and I think it probably was not a regular tombstone, probably stones that…and, but other than that every last one of them are in that, in that cemetery.

Interviewer
(27:30)
When you had these gatherings, did music play a role in them?

Betty Smith
(27:35)
We always sang, always sang. Yeah, I’ve always thought of my family more as singers. And my mother played piano by ear, and we, you know, we did sing, we’d get around the piano and sing, but I’ve always thought of us as singers.



Interviewer
(28:00)
What did people in the community outside of your family, what would they, a, think about this singing family?

Betty Smith
(28:12)
‘Bout what did the people in the community…

Interviewer
Yeah, how did they view your family was it what everyone else was doing? Was it something different, special, was it _______________, appreciated? How did people respond to all of that?

Betty Smith
(28:30)
Well, just, a, I don’t know that there was any…people were pretty much alike, I think, that, you know, that we weren’t doing anything that other people weren’t doing about going to reunions and, and, a, and singings, and my dad was with a group at one time that had instruments except that he was the singer in the group. This was when he was a young man, and I’ve heard of that group, you know, when I got older and found some evidence of that group, but that he was…I’m the only one who went for instruments. And I loved, I loved playing instruments. But other than that, one sister played violin, one played piano, and I started playing violin, and first, that was the first thing I played.

Interviewer
(29:45)
Did a, what…how did you, ah, evolve from the violin to other things?

Betty Smith
(29:53)
Well, then you could, a, you could take, a, you could take instruments at school, even in elementary school, and, if you couldn’t afford an instrument—which most people couldn’t at that time—a, you could rent one, and so we had a elementary school orchestra and a band and then went on to junior high and high school and played (30:27) a, but it was when I got grown and, a, we used to camp a lot. We…that was only when we were young and the children were young. That was the only way we could do vacations, so, ah, we would sit around and sing, and one night I said, “Ooh, it’d be nice to have a guitar to sing to,” so for Christmas I got a $15 guitar and a free how-to-use-it book. That’s what they said. And it kind of just got me started. And the next thing was, I think, was a, a dulcimer, and then was an autoharp, and then, a. (31:25). I’ve played a little banjo but I’m not, I don’t, I’m not, I don’t do it that much.

But then I found…I went to a lot of festivals. I’ve been going to the Asheville festival, this was my 52nd year, because we used to come every year before we moved up here. And, a, I heard, I heard an instrument called a saltery(?) at the Florida festival. And there weren’t many people in this country who ever played this forerunner of the harpsichord, but I love that, and, a, the man that I heard play it, he, it, had found an old pianoharp(?) and had one, had one built and that’s what I did and, a, so I played that, too, all these years, but I like, I like to sing and I don’t play instruments with everything I sing, but I do with some things.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer
(32:4_)
What is your favorite instrument—do you have a favorite?

Betty Smith
(32:48)
I think mountain dulcimer because I used…now, that’s the easiest thing at my age for me to play and it also, if you’re gonna’ sing with a ballad, it’s the best one because it doesn’t overpower the song and, a, I just, I have, I have a whole group where I live now. I ‘ve had ever since I moved there of people who just wanna’ play music ,so I’ve taught quite a few people. I’ve taught a lot of people to play dulcimer that, a. At the folk school, at John C. Campbell folk school, at big dulcimer weeks at Appalachian and Western Carolina, a, and at Blue Ridge Assembly, but I’ve taught hundreds of people to play dulcimer just simply because I think it is a good instrument for people who’ve never played anything or people who are older and their hands won’t do everything you want ‘em to do. You can manage to play a dulcimer no matter what your handicaps are.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer
(34:08)
What…what got you to started collecting the old songs?

Betty Smith
(34:15)
You know, I think back in the, a, when I started hearing people singing songs, I don’t know when…was it in the 40s, 50s, and I would hear…I heard that song, you know, and, but, once I started I went, once I started, a, really getting interested it, I tend to do that, I tend to just go all the way and so I have probably studied and learned more about traditional music and put in more time than I’ve ever put in on degrees, just simply cause I just love it. Once I got to learning more and more songs, a, the more I wanted to learn. And I learned, I heard other people, if I heard somebody else sing a song I would want to learn that and, a, I can’t tell you why I just, I just have this really passion for, for old music (35:45) and, a, so I‘ve spent a lot of my life just learning more and more, a…

I’m not, I’m not really good…I can read music because I started out on violin but I’ve always learned by ear. For some reason if I can hear it I can learn it; you know, I can do it. And I, I don’t really know, I don’t know why that is but I do know that there have been times when I have heard a tune and I heard it just sung once or twice and I never forgot it. I can remember standing in the parking lot at the Hewlett-Packard plant in the Firth-of-Forth in Scotland and a…the plant manager was a ballad singer and a fiddler, and he said, “I’m gonna’ sing you a song to take home with you,” and I can sing that song for you right now, and I just heard it standing in the parking lot but because I liked it, it has stayed with me, and that’s just been the way it is.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer
(37:15)
Why do you think it’s important to collect and to pas on?

Betty Smith
(37:25)
You know, I’m not sure how, you know, how to do, to do that. First of all, you’ve got to know that it’s important. You’ve gotta’ know the value of it. And then you have to know how to, how to pass it on. Now people knew, people who know that were Olive Campbell, a, Bascombe (?) Lunsford. How do they know? How did they know that it was important for them to, to try to preserve this music? And they did it in different ways, but how did they know how to do it and how did they know it was important; but sometimes there’re just people who think it is important, and, of course, it is important because the past is important, is important for the future whether we, you know, it really, it really is.


Betty Smith
(38:40)
Oh, you want to know why you think it’s important. Well, I think that’s the way we’ve learned everything that we have learned in our lives, and I remember a quote from, a, Carl Sandberg, came from, a, Remembrance Rock, and he said if a nation goes down, if a civilization or society perishes, one thing was always, could always be found. They forgot where they came from and they forgot what brought them along. And I think that just kind of says why it’s important.

Interviewer
(39:30)
Lots of young people today, maybe that’s always been the case, but I think more so today than in the past, is this belief that history has no value; that elders are just old people that you put somewhere; that the only thing that’s important is what’s happening now ____________________ watch on the screen _______________________. What would you say to a young person who, you know we call them digital relaters now, people who grew up and that is what they have; that is what they’re exposed to. There wasn’t a time when the television set wasn’t on _____________ or the iPod wasn’t on. Can you tell someone like that why what happened before you has value, if not more value?

Betty Smith
(40:35)
Well, it is true and it’s been going on for even longer than, you know, than we think because I, a, I taught Title I at Head Start and I had so many children who did not know one song. They did not know, like, my dad had a lot of little sayings that he just said, you know. “Here I stand upon a stump; come and kiss me ‘fore I jump,” you know, but he thought everybody needed to know how to sing Where, Oh Where is Pretty Little Suzie, but I had children who did not know any songs except TV jingles and, a, so that’s why I wrote curriculum for 20 years for children (chuckles), for schools to use for children who don’t know any songs and the thing is that…I think that it’s important.

Our heritage is important and I don’t know that, um, I really don’t know how to say to them, you know, that I think that what they’re watching is, is pretty flimsy stuff, you know, I can’t say that, but what I always did was for years I went to schools, even when I wasn’t teaching, and, and we did the songs and they liked the songs once they knew them, they really liked them and, you know, the interesting thing about it is that the history of, of children’s songs is the same story as the history of the ballads and if you, if you look at—take some of the (43:00) of the games that children play, for instance, they’ll be the same on…at one time they were the same on the streets of New York…the, the mountains of North Carolina, the, a, out at Sea Island of Georgia. Now they had different tunes. They might even have different words but those games wee the same (43:31) because children liked them and children, a, children don’t do anything they don’t like. They don’t. I mean, they’re responsible for what we save, a lot of times because children just don’t sing things they don’t like. So if we just let them hear it, if we can just let them know that it’s there, but that’s the problem is that nobody’s, nobody’s singing to them, nobody’s telling them the rhymes, and nobody’s playing the games with ‘em. So, a, I have a little trouble saying, a, that I do know that when, when I’ve had enough time that they, you know, they really…they do like the songs. They’re songs, they wouldn’t…there’s no way they would’ve been carried on in oral tradition for all these years and all these generations if children didn’t like ‘em. And there’s no way that the ballads would’ve been carried on if people didn’t like them. Not everybody, but some people.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer
Let’s go back a moment to, you have a, I think you have maybe ten minutes to, a, wrap it up. I thought what you said as really so important, a, everything you said was important, but, particularly, a, could you say what a difference you might have seen in some of the children you taught once you infused them with this cultural legacy. Did you see changes?

Betty Smith
(46:15)
Did I tell you about the school in, a middle school in Georgia, where I had a whole month and, um, the first day I went through and just talked to teachers who thought there was something that I could help them with, and I found out that they were set up with history, language arts, and music. It, all of the groups were set up that way, and so first, a, I tried to think how I could bring all of those things in, and we actually did that month in Brunswick, Georgia. We did a thing on ballads.

Now, a, first of all we decided we’d do local history and down there they’re pirates and Indians and lots of things and so, a, they had to learn a little more about writing poetry and so they, first we wrote, we learned local history and then we started to write poems that could be set to music, and, a, so (47:50). First I got, um, I got three so I took ‘em home and, a, I, a set down and recorded ‘em so that when they heard ‘em again set to music that it would sound like a recordings on tape and I did that. And this big blond sitting on the front row stood up and said, “Mam, that’s, tha’s cool!” I got so many I had to sit up at night trying to think of tunes to put ‘em to. (48:30) Now some of then went in the, some of them, I said, “I won’t rewrite your poetry but I’ll help you turn it around if we, if it can just be turned around a little bit to get, so that we can get, you know, the music, get it to sing.” And so some of ‘em went in the Costal Museum because they were good enough and, a, they kept a scrapbook of everything they did. They took photographs of everything they did. They made me a scrapbook and them a scrapbook.

They, a, we, I worked with, a, a, I worked with the, the, a, violin students and taught ‘em mountain dulcimer and how to shuffle their bow (?), you know, this, the whole thing was because there was a principal who never said, “I’m sorry but we have to do math today.” Whatever we wanted to do she let me do and they were so excited; and they had written music, they had written a ballad, they knew what ball…see, we had to study what ballads were like (50:00) and how, and how they, you know, how ballads tell a story, and in a month it was amazing what they’d done.

My husband came down and they built a dulcimer on the weekend. The, the shop people made, a, little whimmydiddles (sp?), little dancing dolls, you know, if you, they love it when they, when they find out what it’s like.

Interviewer
(50:32)
Where…do we need to do more in schools today to, to, a, reconnect people, these young children, with their culture, with their heritage?

Betty Smith
(50:45)
We need schools that think it’s important (chuckles) to do it because I’ve found all kinds of schools and some they just think that what they have to do for math and the history and, well, you know what, you can get if they will just get it in, but I’m afraid that they don’t get much music at all. If they get 30 minutes a week, a, they’re lucky, I guess, anymore.

Interviewer
(51:30)
_________, we’ve just got a couple more minutes __________________ take a break and have you catch your breath before we go to Part Two of the day. I guess certainly if you have any things you want to say that I haven’t asked, but my last question is that, if you could be ___________________________________________________________ what is it _______________________________________to you, what is it?

Betty Smith
(52:00)
Well, I just love it, so that’s why it’s important to me. But I saw the, but when children really had a chance and could be creative and, and, be, really learn, you know, could learn the, the songs and the stories and the…that they really love it. It’s just that they don’t hear it and I want them, I want them to be able to hear it, ir it will never, will never take the place of the computer if they don’t hear it.

Interviewer
(52:40)
What do our kids lose if they don’t have access to it?

Betty Smith
What do they lose? You know, I think that, a songs and riddles and rhymes and stories, all those things make them a part of a family, of a community, and I think that’s probably one of the most important things, reasons, to do that is to have in families. It doesn’t have to be big-time ballads. It can be, you know, little songs. My dad used to have all these little songs, you know, just a…and I think that’s the important thing, is, is the feeling that, that you get from knowing what everybody else knows. Everybody in the family and everybody in the community or everybody in the church or whatever, you know. That’s what I think is the most important part.

Interviewer
(54:02)
Just one second.

Betty Smith
(54:10)
Well, I’m probably gonna’ repeat myself a lot today cause now I’m thinking about it, I will probably say…(Betty laughs softly again).

Interviewer
Do you, end with maybe a verse or two of one of your favorites.

Betty Smith
(54:28)
Yeah, I’ll just sing you a verse of Barbry Allen, which was my grandmother’s baby-rocking song.
(Betty sings.)