Guy And Candie Carawan

Guy and Candie Carawan hardly need an introduction, especially if you've read this issue's feature on the Highlander Center. Knoxville Voice visited them on a hot day at their cabin in the cool, shady woods near the Highlander Center and listened to them tell the stories behind songs that have been important to them and so many other people, alondg with some fun old-time music, It was an honor and a treat to sit with them for a highly informative, history-heavy listening session.

Pete Seeger
“Keep Your Eyes on the Prize”
from We Shall Overcome (1963)

Guy: This song used to be called 'Keep Your Hand on the Plow.' A woman named Alice Wine, who lives on John's Island in the Sea Islands up the Carolina Coast, said to me when we lived there, 'Young man, I know a better way to sing that song. I say, keep your eyes on the prize.' It wasn't too long before that song was being sung all over the country as 'Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,' and she couldn't believe that something that came out of her mouth could spread all over the country.

Candie: She was the sparkplug that got the whole citizenship education program going in the Sea Islands, instrumental in voter registration.

Guy: We lived there for a few years, recorded people and helped them play at festivals. A woman named Septima Clark was a schoolteacher there and was fired because she was involved with civil rights, so she became the director of education at Highlander. I was her driver in those days.

Florence Reece
“Which Side Are You On”
from Coal Mining Women (1997)

Guy: (immediately) Florence Reece.

Candie: Guy recorded that in her living room. She was such a good friend to Highlander. When Highlander moved to Knoxville in 1961, Florence was a neighbor, and she and her husband were always willing to come out and talk to people and teach them songs. This song has spread all over; when we were traveling, we heard it in China, and people in Latin America sing it, and that was thrilling to Florence to think she could have authored something that touched so many people.

Guy: There were people in the music business in New York who were friends of Highlander, like John Hammond, who would say when something ought to be copywrighted and protected because it might sound like an old, traditional song, but it might be bringing in royalties for somebody. They wanted us to be careful because sometimes credit wouldn't be given to the people it came from.

Candie: The best example of this is 'We Shall Overcome,' which through Pete [Seeger ] and his manager and other people was copywrighted in the early ‘60s, and all through the years since, the royalties have gone into a fund, and groups working in the freedom movement can apply for small grants.

Paul Robeson
“Joe Hill”
from Don't Mourn – Organize! (1990)

Candie: (piano intro) Joe Hill. (voice comes in) Oh! Paul Robeson.

Guy: My mom took me to see him when I was a kid. She had no idea that he would be involved with people who would be called Commies or associating with people with nefarious ideas like labor unions or civil rights. This wasn't when I saw him; this was later on.

Candie: I'm sure it was because your mother wouldn't have taken you to see him if that was the case. I think when you went to see him he was singing Othello.

Nina Simone
“Mississippi Goddamn”
from In Concert (1964)

Candie: That's gotta be Nina Simone. It's interesting, that particular song is on our minds right now because we had published two books of freedom songs, and one big section is about Mississippi, and her song is included in our songbook, and they're about to be re-issued for Highlander's 75th. I was literally reading the words to her song today, going over the words to make sure there were no mistakes… It wasn't so much that we heard her in those days, but people in the movement knew her.  People in the movement were very selective about what they pulled from pop culture, but definitely this song was one of them.

Bob Dylan
“Only a Pawn in Their Game'
from The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964)

Candie: All right, Bob Dylan. Those songs he wrote in the early ‘60s were just amazing, and I think this one helped people think a little more deeply that people who commit that kind of violence [the murder of Medgar Evers] are part of the fabric that they come out of. It's a good song. I can think of a personal connection: Guy did a documentary album about Greenwood, Miss., and it just so happens Medgar Evers is on that album because he spoke at this mass meeting there, and very shortly after, he was killed. (She digs through a crate and pulls out a few records.)

Guy: We recorded six albums like that for Folkways. (Guy hands me a record.) This is the first one I cut, and that was when I met Candie. She was at a sit-in in Nashville in 1960.

E.C. Ball
“Warfare”
from High Atmosphere (1965)

Guy: Who is this?

KV: E.C. Ball. It's off the High Atmosphere album.

Guy: I've heard of him.

Candie: I've heard of him, too, but I'm not familiar with the recording.

KV: Are you familiar with the song?

Candie: Some of the words... a lot of these songs, some of the words overlap, floating stanzas I think they're called.

Guy: Does that album have Roscoe Holcomb on it, too?

KV: No, but Dillard and Lloyd Chandler are on it. John Cohen recorded it.

Guy: I've known John Cohen for about 40 years.

Candie: That part of North Carolina where he recorded Dillard Chandler, we lived up there for awhile and had some interesting experiences up there. Guy was arrested there.

Guy: We had friends who built a log cabin up there. Peter Gott.

Candie: Peter Gott, he's the one who helped John Cohen find a lot of those people like Dillard Chandler. He and his wife were some of the original back-to-the-landers. They were in this isolated community where there was this fabulous music, but a little scary in other ways.

Alice Gerrard and Hazel Dickens
“TB Blues”
from Pioneering Women of Bluegrass (1965)

Candie: That's Hazel. Ah, Hazel and Alice! They're great, great women. Great pioneers of bluegrass for women. Hazel has stayed very close to Highlander; she's been here many times to our music workshops, very much an inspiration to Appalachian women coming along. She cannot come to the 75th because she fell and hurt her leg recently. She's consistent in her music and a real inspiration, and I just consider her a real treasure.

Guy: She's as good as it gets.

Epworth Jubilee Old Harp Singing
“Evening Shade”
from The Year of Jubilee is Come (2002)

Candie: Shape-note singing is a great old tradition, and what's so fascinating is that both black and white communities, in Newport and festivals like that, people who ordinarily would not be meeting each other at home would all end up there together and basically know the same repertoire.

Guy: We've been around shape-note singing. I don't think I've been around deep, religious communities that do it, but we know some younger people who have shape note books. When you get into those older people they have that really stark sound, and it has a really powerful experience to it. Albany, Ga., is where I heard some of the most powerful shape-note singing.

Clarence Ashley
“The Coo Coo”
From The Anthology of American Folk Music (1927)

Candie: I have such a clear memory of Clarence Ashley at the Newport Folk Festival in the early ‘60s. What I liked about those festivals is that, in the early ‘60s, everything was still so segregated, but you'd get up to these festivals, and everybody would be staying in the these big houses together and sitting together, sharing songs. It was very encouraging.

Evan Carawan
“Mystic Highlander”
from A Month of Sundays (1998)

Candie: It's been great to have Evan come along as such a good musician, both on hammer dulcimer but on mandolin as well, and now he's learning the fiddle.

Guy: He plays well.

Candie: Well, I'll tell on him: He started out learning from Guy, but he's self-taught. He started out when he was about 10.

Guy: We did go to Ireland one year, and we left him with the Fury family, so he was around some beer-drinking Irishmen and picked up some things.

Candie: I think he was 11 years old at that point. He's a good musician, and like a lot of folk musicians, he plays by ear.

Ramblin' Jack Elliot w/ Woody Guthrie and Sonny Terry
“Railroad Bill”
from The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack (2000)

Candie: Is that Jack? Tell him about your trip with Jack.

Guy: In 1953, Frank Hamilton and I came from Los Angeles and somehow made it to New York, and we wanted to go south. Jack Elliot said: 'Can I come with you?' So the three of us went, and we had a great summer together.

Candie: I know they came to Highlander the first time Guy ever came to Highlander, because Pete told them: 'Make sure you come to Highlander.' They hung around about two weeks, and Myles [Horton] finally said: 'Well, you guys, we enjoyed having you, but it's really time you moved on.'

Guy: We ate a lot of food and courted a lot of pretty girls. We had a lot of adventures and went a lot of places around the South ‘cause we were given a lot of names and numbers.

Candie: In the end, it was good they took Jack because he was the best busker because he was aggressive, and Guy and Frank were kind of shy. Have you seen the Ramblin' Jack documentary that his daughter made? He talks about that trip somewhat, so it was obviously important to him, but he never mentions who was with him.

Pete Seeger
“We Shall Overcome”
from If I Had a Hammer (1964)

Candie: Not only is this still an important song to people, but through Pete and others, the royalties have generated enough money so that it's still useful to community groups here in the South.

Guy: When I first came to Highlander, one of my jobs was to drive for Septima Clark, from around Charleston, and that's when I first became aware of a lot of songs, and “We Shall Overcome” came out of 'I'll Overcome or I'll Be Alright Some Day,' which was a South Carolina song, and it became a world-wide known song. With songs like this… we held workshops for the song leaders to come together at Highlander and helped 30 or 40 of these people get together, and they all go home with new ideas. Then we saw this thing flower and flower until you had a powerful singing movement all over the South that hadn't been there before.

Candie: That song sounds so familiar to people now, it sounds very simple, and people take it for granted and may think it sounds rather bland, but in the days when it was part of the civil rights movement, it just had so much power because people were just coming together with both fear and excitement about challenging the way things were in the South, and that song really captured it: ‘We shall overcome,' and we're going to do it with love and energy, you know?