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Little Birdie

from Bring Me Home by Peggy Seeger

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NOTE BY ELISABETH HIGGINS NULL:


"Little Birdie" is a well-known staple of American bluegrass and old-time music that, according to the Traditional Ballad Index ,was first collected by Frank C. Brown in 1909, as part of his collection of North Carolina folksongs. Peggy says she first heard a recording of the song played by Roscoe Holcomb from Daisy, Kentucky as collected by John Cohen. She then started playing it with her brother Mike, singing it in harmony but following his text and having him play the banjo. Holcomb was first recorded in the late fifties, but Peggy began consciously to sing "Little Birdie" like Holcombe did in the early 1970s. She remains fascinated by Holcomb's unusual banjo tuning for this song and there are echoes of his shifting rhythmic accents and driving pulse in her own version. The instrumental breaks and the turnarounds at the ends of her phrases show her own special taste for counter-melody, however, and her signature melodic improvisations are much in evidence. The banjo's tempo is swift as her voice stretches out the words in a sustained legato characteristic of much Appalachian singing.

The words she uses are not the same as either those of Holcomb or her brother Mike Seeger. She has not replaced them so much as she has expanded them with lines from other variants. Her "Little Birdie" is an accumulation of traditional floating verses that migrate from song to song. It shares some of its verses with "East Virginia" (or "Dark Hollow"), "I Wish I was Single Again," "Single Girl," and has been compared to and associated with "Kitty Kline." Frequently there is a thread of adultery running through the common verses. Both Mike Seeger's version (Southern Banjo Sounds, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW40107, 1998) and Pete Seeger's version (Pete Seeger's Children's Concert at Town Hall, Legacy 2000, reissue) are laments that mourn transient love, pure and simple. Peggy's version is decidedly female and adds floating verses that express a complex variety of sentiments: anticipation, perhaps for someone deceased ("I know that my little lover is a-waiting in the sky"); jealousy (the singer would prefer to be in darkness rather than to know that her lover would be someone else's darling); despair over being saddled with marriage and parenting responsibilities; nostalgia for the single life; and blame for much of her trouble on someone else. All of these verses exist in a related form elsewhere, but through her process of selection and interpretation, Peggy has made them uniquely her own.

lyrics

LITTLE BIRDIE

words, music: traditional USA
(banjo tuning from the playing of Roscoe Holcombe, Daisy, Kentucky;
from 5th string downward: E-lowC-G-A-D)

Little birdie, little birdie,
Come sing to me your song;
Got a short time to stay here
A long time to be gone.

Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes your wings so blue?
It's nothing but that old grievin',
Grievin' over you.

Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes you fly so high?
Well, I know that my little lover
Is a-waiting in the sky.

Well, I'd rather be in deep darkness
Where the sun don't never shine,
Than for you to be another one's darling
And to know that you'd never be mine.

Well, I'd rather be a little birdie
Sailing over the deep blue sea
Than for to be a married girl
With a baby on my knee.

A married girl sees trouble
Single girl sees none.
You've caused me so much sorrow
Lord, you caused me to do wrong.

Fly down, fly down, little birdie,
Sing to me your song.
O, sing it now while I'm with you
I can't hear you when I'm gone.

credits

from Bring Me Home, released January 22, 2008

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Peggy Seeger Oxford, UK

Peggy is one of the most influential folk singers on either side of the Atlantic. She is Pete Seeger’s half-sister and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s daughter; her first life partner was the English songwriter Ewan MacColl, who wrote First Time Ever I Saw Your Face for her. She has made more than 22 solo recordings to date. Please check ewanmaccoll.bandcamp.com for other albums featuring Peggy. ... more

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