Re: Bury me beneath the willow lyrics
I'd also agree, and say the Stanleys were covering the Carter Family's Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow version. Here's a quote from Maybelle Carter:
“That was a song we had sang all our lives. We first heard the song at a family get-together and decided to learn it. We did learn the words and sang it at all our family parties and get-togethers. The song became quite popular so when we recorded for RCA Victor in 1927–we recorded “Bury Me Beneath The Willow ” on our first recording session in Bristol , Tennessee. The original version of the song was written by Bradley Kincaid.”
Other sources suggest the song's older, a late-19th-century "heart song" that Kincaid adopted; apparently a sheet music version dates to a year when he was 14 years old, making his authorship unlikely.
Oh, and Smith's Bill Monroe bio suggests that Can't You Hear Me Callin' was written for Monroe's lover Bessie Lee Mauldin, hence the "Bess" in the chorus rather than "best." However, I wouldn't read any implications into the Stanleys' singing, even if it's from the "woman's viewpoint." There are quite a few songs where singers have "crossed genders" in the lyrics; I've heard several male singers do I Never Will Marry without adding the useful gender-swapping "I heard a fair maiden/Make a pitiful sound (or cry)" verse, with the results that they're singing "I'll be no man's wife" on the chorus. And who can forget (not me, surely) Joan Baez lamenting the loss of "faithless Flora" in Lily of the West?
Once you start singing these ol' songs, gotta invoke your poetic license every now and then.
Allen Hopkins
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