Life Flows On in Endless Song: Folk Songs and American History

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Preface: Chapter 1: Who Was Tom Dooley?: History and Folk Songs 1
Chapter 2: Careless Love: Courtship, Marriage, and Children 14
Chapter 3: "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory": Of God and Country 57
Chapter 4: "Take This Hammer": Work and the Labor Movement 105
Chapter 5: The Man Who Never Returned: Ships, Trains and Other Transportation 150
Chapter 6: Just Lookin' for a Home: Traveling On 190
Chapter 7: Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen: Hard Times and Hard Men 231
Chapter 8: How Can I Keep from Singing?: Huddie Ledbetter and Woody Guthrie 277
Coda: Thinking about Folk Songs 307
Bibliography and Discography 321

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Life Flows on in Endless Song explores American folk songs as a frame for the American experience. Robert V. Wells discusses how folk songs emerged from particular historical circumstances and evolved as they migrated from one region to another. Crafting a thematic map of four centuries of American history, Wells investigates how songs embody shifting attitudes toward the institution of the family, war and religion, work and the labor movement, transportation in America, and slavery and Jim Crow. He also considers modern folk heroes Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie. Featuring a selective discography of key recordings, this book offers an accessible model for using folk songs as a richly evocative reflection of the American past.

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The best, most up-to-date survey of this topic in print, this is a book for those interested in the intersection of music/song and historical events and figures. Recommended

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