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Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Frank Proffit Sings Folk Songs

 

Down In The Valley

Frank Profitt Sings Folk Songs
Recorded by Sandy Paton
Edited by Frank Warner
Cover Design by Ronald Clyne
Photo by J. C. Brown
Folkways Records FA 2360
1962

From the cover of the lyric insert: Frank Proffitt has been our friend since 1938 when we met him at the home of his father-in-law, Nathan Hicks, on our first visit to "the Beech" – Beech Mountain in the Blue Ridge section of the Appalachian chain in the northwest corner of North Carolina. We began our serious collecting experience with Frank, who taught us two songs on that first visit. One of them – Dan Doo – he sings on this recording. Over the years, he gave us many more – maybe a couple of hundred – more than any other person we have sung with. Frank Warner has sung Frank's songs, and talked about Frank, from one end of America to the other (and on a number of recordings), and we are proud and happy that now Frank's own voice can be heard singing the songs he learned from his father, his mother, his aunts and uncles, and from other folks in  his music-rich area. Frank has a tremendous storehouse of these songs, and he sings and plays them in the heart-stirring mountain style that creates a feeling deep in one's bones – as if long-forgotten pioneer memories were there to be awakened.

Beaver Dam Road
Cindy
Bo Lamkin
Julie Jankins
George Collins
Ninety And Nine
Down In The Valley
Baby-O
Old Abe
Poor Ellen Smith
Dan Doo
John Hardy
Groundhog
Johnson Boys

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