Murphy NC is a special place for me, though I never spent more than 15 minutes there. It is located 80 miles from my doorstep. It is the closest North Carolina town from where I live in Georgia. When I enter Murphy I give a shout, blow my car horn, and take a deep breath of sweet fresh air ... back in my home state again!
I have lived in Georgia over 20 years, but I still feel like an alien, or a pilgrim at best, whose heart is still in NC. I am a Tar Heel by birth, and though I have lived the majority of my life outside of NC, it will always be home. As James Taylor sings, “I’m Going to Carolina in My Mind.”
At Christmas time I am reminded that Murphy, North Carolina, has a special meaning for a beautiful tune of the season. "I Wonder as I Wander" has its origins in a song fragment collected by folklorist and singer John Jacob Niles while he made a stop in Murphy. Niles wrote, “A girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins.... But, best of all, she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of a song.”
The girl, named Annie Morgan, repeated the fragment seven times in exchange for a quarter per performance, and Niles left with "three lines of verse, a garbled fragment of melodic material—and a magnificent idea." He never saw her again even though he tried to find her.
Ronald Himler illustrated the moment in this drawing. Charles Johnson (vocal) and Bob Ravenscroft (piano) perform this Christmas favorite in the video below.
No comments:
Post a Comment