Audio file
Title: Commentary by Vera Hall on Rich Amerson, spiritual and secular songs, and her widowhood
Date recorded: May 1, 1948
Contributor(s): Performer: Lomax, Alan; Performer: Hall, Vera Ward; Recordist: Lomax, AlanBelongs to: New York City 5/48
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Date recorded: May 1, 1948
Contributor(s): Performer: Lomax, Alan; Performer: Hall, Vera Ward; Recordist: Lomax, Alan
Subject(s):
Genre: interview/commentary
Culture: African American, Southern U.S.
Instruments: voice
Setting: Alan Lomax's apartment, 3rd Street
Language: English
Location: New York City, New York, United States
Physical form: Reel to Reel
Tape number: T814
Track Number: 1
Archive ID: T814R01
Note: (The audio here was transferred from cassette which Lomax, presumably, transferred from the original reel, which does not survive.) Hall learned blues and other secular songs from Rich Amerson, a friend of her parents. She was a child when Rich started to come around her house and she would sit in his lap and watch him sing. She sings both spiritual and secular songs. The church tried to give her a hard time for it, but she explains that she wants to share the songs with others and teach them the words and the melodies. She says that her heart is in the spiritual songs and not in the blues. On weekends she and other church members will go to the clubs to hear music and watch people dance and have a good time. Vera believes that religion should not make one emjoy life any less. Some Saturday nights she likes to smoke, drink, play the record player and have a good time. The church leaders do not know about this or they would turn her out of the church. She first began to drink when she married Nash Riddle. She was fifteen and met Nash in Tuscaloosa on the Blue Front Street. He was a brown skinned man with a few freckles in his face, and he wrote to her parents and asked for permission to marry Vera. They wanted to see him, so he came down to Livingston. They were both very nervous, but her father gave his approval. They got married in Birmingham when Vera was 16. After they married Nash let Vera go back home for two weeks to be with her family. Nash worked at a filling station in Tuscaloosa. After she finally went to live with him, she fell in love with him and got to where she never wanted to leave him. He was soon shot and killed.
About the session: This session of oral history and songs represents the only time that Vera Ward Hall left her home state of Alabama. She was invited to New York by Alan Lomax to perform in the Fourth Annual Festival of Contemporary American Music at Columbia University in the City of New York, May 10th through May 16th, 1948, sponsored by the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University. Vera performed on Saturday, May 15th, 8:30pm, at the McMillin Theater. The concert was entitled "Ballads, Hoe-Downs, Spirituals (White and Negro), and Blues," with performances by Texas Gladden, Hobart Smith, Jean Ritchie, Brownie McGee, Vera Hall, Dan Burley, Pete Seeger, and narrations by Alan Lomax. These recordings were made not at the concert, but during the remainder of Vera Hall’s stay in New York with Alan Lomax. Lomax is joined by his wife Elizabeth, their daughter, and an unidentified couple, who can be heard throughout the session. This session is comprised of tapes recorded at 15 IPS, probably used as working sequences for a possible LP. Alan Lomax used an echo box to produce the effect heard on Vera Hall's voice. These recordings have been compiled into an individual session because they were not recorded as candid interviews, but as conscious attempts at professional recording for commercial release. One of the tape boxes is given a date of Sunday, May 23rd, and this date has been assumed for the entire session.
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