Question on a classic bluegrass song

[sunjamr]

I think most people – even those who are not country music fans – have heard the song “Wildwood Flower”. It’s very old, coming from the mid-1800s at least, but maybe made famous to most of us by the Carter Family in the early 1900s. For those who want to learn bluegrass flatpicking, it’s often the first song learned.

I’ve heard it since I was a kid, but there is something about it that has always bothered me: I’ve always had problems with the timing on this song, because it seems to me like many people insert an extra bar into it on the verses. Where my brain wants to hear 4 bars, they add a kind of “dud” 5th bar. The lyrics are:

I will twine with my mingles of raven black hair
With the roses so red and the lilies so fair

To me, each of those lines should have 4 bars, not 5. I hear “twine” as beat 1 bar 1, “mingles” as beat 1 bar 2, “raven” as beat 1 bar 3, and “hair” as beat 1 bar 4. Then – to me – “roses” should be beat 1, bar 5, but it usually (but not always) follows the dud 5th bar and ends up as beat 1 bar 6.

Am I the only person who has ever noticed this unusual departure from standard musical tradition?

Sunjamr Steve

[sunjamr]

And here is the earliest known recording, which sounds quite horrible to my modern ears. But still, big respect to them as ancient musicians:

Sunjamr Steve

[Jean-Michel G]

Hi,
I am with you; I much prefer not to add that extra bar…
But I think it depends on the tempo. I’ve heard a really fast “Library of Congress” performance of this song, and the extra bar is almost inevitable; otherwise it sounds extremely rushed. And also, people need to breathe from time to time…
But at a more moderate tempo (the way I like it best, to be honest), that extra bar is a tad redundant…

[sunjamr]

I think you hit the nail on the head: The singers need to take a breath, because the bluegrass guys play it so fast.

I’ve also heard some really old recordings of various blues masters, and some of them seemed to insert extra bars whenever they felt like it. I always figured alcohol was involved, since a lot of that went on. Jimmy Reed (famous for the song “Big Boss Man”) was an alcoholic and so drunk during most of his performances that his wife had to stand behind him and tell him the words. You can hear her voice faintly in the background telling him the next words on many of his recordings.

Sunjamr Steve

[JohnStrat]

You may have heard of li’l Jimmy Reed whom I have been privileged to meet on a couple of occasions. His story was that knew Jimmy Reed’s music as a kid and became proficient in playing it. Well one time Jimmy was so drunk he could not play the set at all and the band asked this young boy Leon Atkins to stand in and he played it so well it set his career in motion and so he became known as Li’l Jimmy Reed and he’s about 6’3″ or more still touring and in his 80s. He tours with the UK’s Bob Hall one of our best keyboard artists and Bob’s wife who plays bass. He’s a great guy and a fine musician and entertainer. If he’s coming your way any time I can say it will make a great blues show if you grab a ticket.

https://www.liljimmyreed.com/

JohnStrat

[Jean-Michel G]

I didn’t know that anecdote about Jimmy Reed, but I’m not surprised…
And even without being drunk those old blues guys often had a very sloppy rhythm…

But rhythm can be surprisingly complex and uneven.
I recently watched this video by Nahre Sol who discusses some rhythmic peculiarities in folk music.

[Author]

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