Clarence Ashley was among the folk and blues singers “rediscovered” during the 1950s and 1960s. Ashley, known as “Tom,” began performing in the early 1900’s, singing and playing banjo or guitar. He played with artists such as Doc Watson and lived to see his influence on a range of singers, even sharing a stage with Bob Dylan at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. He is known for his performances of songs such as “The Cuckoo” and “Little Sadie.”
Ashley was born in Tennessee on September 29, 1895, and he died in North Carolina on June 2, 1967. You may have first heard his voice on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music records, where one of the songs he performs is “The Coo Coo Bird.”
The song, also with other titles such as “The Cuckoo” and “The Cuckoo is a Pretty Bird,” is an English folk song. The song begins with the bird, which is often associated with spring and with infidelity, and then goes on in various versions to lament about luck in love or gambling. Ashley’s version focuses on the latter.
I’ve played cards in England;
I’ve played cards in Spain;
I’ll bet you ten dollars,
I’ll beat you next game.
In the video below from the DVD “Legends of Old Time Music,” Ashley performs his version of “The Cuckoo.” Also, at the beginning of the clip he is interviewed about his music career. Check it out.
Another song that Ashley recorded, but with a darker tone, is “Little Sadie.” Ashley recorded the folk ballad in 1928. The singer, named Lee Brown, tells about killing a woman (in some versions his wife), fleeing, getting caught, and ultimately being sentenced by a judge: “Forty-one days and forty-one nights / Forty-one years to wear the ball and the stripes.”
Music critic Greil Marcus, writing in the liner notes for Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971), noted, “There’s something horribly laconic about Ashley’s 1929 recording of “Little Sadie.” Crinklingly ominous banjo notes trace a circle in which every story goes back to its beginning and starts up again, a circle in which every act is inevitable, worthless, and meaningless, a folk nihilism long before existentialism caught on in Paris.” Below is Ashley’s version of “Little Sadie.” Check it out.
Bob Dylan recorded a version of “Little Sadie” that appeared on his Self-Portrait (1970) album. And two more versions appear on Dylan’s Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971), which was released in 2013. On the latter album, Marcus found Dylan’s “In Search of Little Sadie” to be “a revelation.”
Marcus traces this Dylan version as the voice of a blustering killer, not caring (as in the character in Ashley’s version). But then the murderer finds fear in what may happen to himself.
In The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, author Michael Gray notes that it is most likely that Dylan’s versions of “Little Sadie” were because of his knowledge of Ashley’s recording. He also notes that Dylan would have known Ashley’s recording of “The Coo-Coo Bird” from the Anthology of American Folk Music.
Dylan’s versions of “Little Sadie” are not on Youtube, but perhaps the most famous descendant of Ashley’s song is Johnny Cash’s version of “Cocaine Blues.” Singer-songwriter T.J. “Red” Arnall wrote “Cocaine Blues” as a reworked “Little Sadie” and recorded the song in 1947. Here, Cash performs “Cocaine Blues” in 1968 at Folsom Prison.
I do not believe anyone has yet connected the subject of the folk song “Little Sadie” to a real person. Some have found evidence that the song originated in an African-American community in the South. Wherever the song came from, singers like Clarence Ashley have kept the tale alive in their own ways.
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