Monday, January 30, 2012

The Carter Family: 'On A Hill Lone and Grey'

Regular readers will remember the series of posts here about William MacEwan during November and December. It was Macewan who popularised 'The Old Rugged Cross', which Joe tells me in decades gone by was regularly sung at social events across Scotland. Below is the Carter Family's version of a (lyrically) very similar piece, recorded in the 1930s. The guitar style (of picking the melody on the lower strings, but with rythym strumming as well), and the dead-flat male harmony sung by AP Carter) is superb. And Scotch-Irish of course. This was written in 1894, whereas 'The Old Rugged Cross' was written in 1913.

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