3. SHE'D A LOT OF OLD SONGS
(interview)
Previously unreleased.

Alan Lomax: Your mother?

Jeannie Robertson: My mother she'd a lot of old songs. She wasn't what you would call a singer, but she had the airs to the songs.

Alan Lomax: When would she sing a song like that?

Jeannie Robertson: Well, my mother woulda sing a song like that when she had no worries or nothing. When she was just cleaning about the house when we were little, you'd have heard her singing these songs.

Alan Lomax: Well, you didn't understand all that when you were a little girl. You couldn't have understood what all these sad love songs could be about. How did it impress you when you were a little girl?

Jeannie Robertson: Well, they impressed me so much. I had a keen ear for to get them. None of the rest of the family hardly sings. I mean, my mother when she sang those songs, she also told them to you like a story, you know. She interested you to listen to them.

Alan Lomax: How would she do that?

Jeannie Robertson: She just made a little story - she turned the song into a story, you see.

Alan Lomax: She would tell you about a girl that this and that happened to?

Jeannie Robertson: Yes, she told us about the girl it happened to.

Alan Lomax: Do you remember how she explained it when you were a little girl?

Jeannie Robertson: Well, I can hardly remember.

Alan Lomax: Just try a little bit.

Jeannie Robertson: She'd have just told us that this girl had been in love with a chap. Well, I should say, she was in love with a man and he was in love with her. And finally, after she had fell with a child to him, he deserted her. And she was broken-hearted over him, because she still loved him, you see. And he'd tooken up with another girl and throwed her over. You know, she made it into a story. She made the song into a story.

Alan Lomax: She wouldn't tell it about any special girl?

Jeannie Robertson: No, no. Just the song she spoke about, and of course, we was all ears. You know, maybe some of them didna listen, but I used to listen.

Alan Lomax: Would you imagine yourself in the story?

Jeannie Robertson: No, I never imagined myself in a story, but I liked to hear it. That was one thing that I did like to hear, was an old song turned into a story. And really, these songs did come from true things, ye see. I mean, they were usually made up, but it was really true. It was really true happenings - these old songs was really made up of true happenings.

Alan Lomax: You mean, she could tell you the facts and the backgrounds back of some of these songs?

Jeannie Robertson: Yes she could. Because these songs actually did come from the real thing. They were songs that were really made up over things that really happened. Old songs always really are.