Sarah Ogan Gunning

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Sarah Ogan Gunning (born June 28, 1910 as Sarah Elizabeth Garland in Elys Branch , Knox County (Kentucky) , † November 14, 1983 in Knoxville (Tennessee) ) was an American singer and songwriter from the mining region in eastern Kentucky. Although best known in the New York folk music scene during the 1930s , she was always overshadowed by her older siblings, half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson and brother Jim Garland. She lived in Detroit in the 1960s and was rediscovered. In 1964 she played at folk festivals in Newport and in 1965 at the University of Chicago .

Life and family

Her father was the miner Oliver Perry Garland and her mother was his second wife Sarah Elizabeth Lucas Garland. He was previously married to Deborah Robinson Garland, with whom he had four children, including Mary Magdalene Garland, later better known as Aunt Molly Jackson. After Deborah's death, Oliver married Sarah Lucas, with whom he had eleven children, including Jim Garland and Sarah Ogan Gunning. The children grew up with little education but with strong family ties and a rich tradition of songs and stories.

In 1925, at the age of 15, Sarah married Andrew Ogan, aged 20, of Claiborne County, Tennessee , who had come to work at the Fox Ridge Mine in Bell County, Kentucky . They had four children, two of whom died during the Great Depression . Living conditions were poor in eastern Kentucky from 1931 and many miners responded to the withdrawal of the United Mine Workers by joining the communist-led National Miners Union (NMU). The violence and rioting that followed caused many NMU leaders to leave the state.

In 1935, with the help of Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, folklorist at New York University , the family moved to New York City for treatment for both of their tuberculosis , even if life on the Lower East Side turned out to be little better than poverty they left behind. In New York they met leading figures in the folk scene, such as Woody Guthrie , Pete Seeger , Burl Ives , Huddie Ledbetter and Earl Robinson . About a dozen songs by Sarah Ogan were recorded by American folklore and music researcher Alan Lomax in 1937 , and Professor Barnicle recorded Sarah's vocal duets with her brother Jim Garland for the Library of Congress in 1938 . Woody Guthrie wrote an article about Sarah's work in 1940 for the New York Daily Worker and expanded it for his American folk song . She was also mentioned in the popular A Treasury of American Song .

Due to Andrew Ogan's worsening tuberculosis, the family moved back to Brush Creek in Knox County, Kentucky, where he died in August 1938. Sara was also often ill during this time, but she managed to survive the New York hardships.

She expanded her repertoire from traditional ballads, classical songs and hymns, which she had learned from her parents, to include her own compositions. The first Down on the Picket Line was based on the anthem Down in the Valley to Pray and was inspired by a National Miners Union strike in Bell County, Kentucky in 1931. In response to the deaths of her husband and two of their children, she wrote Girl of Constant Sorrow , which was based on Emry Arthur's Man of Constant Sorrow . Other songs like I Hate the Company Bosses (original title I Hate the Capitalist System ), An Old Southern Town and Dreadful Memories reflected the hardships and personal suffering she had experienced during the Depression.

In August 1941 Sarah married the metal polisher Joseph Gunning. When the Second World War broke out , they moved to Vancouver and worked in the shipyard where Sarah's brother Jim Garland had already found work. After the war ended, they lived temporarily in Kentucky, but soon moved to Detroit .

One of her best known compositions, I am a Girl of Constant Sorrow , appeared in the American Folksongs of Protest collection in 1953 , and was recorded by Peggy Seeger and Barbara Dane in the 1960s . In August 1963 folklorist Archie Green visited Sarah in Detroit after interviews he had with her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson. Together with Ellen Stekert and Oscar Paskal of Wayne State University , Green recorded Sarah's vocal pieces in January and March 1964 in the studios of the public broadcaster WDET and the United Auto Workers Solidarity House . A selection of these recordings appeared in 1965 on their album Girl of Constant Sorrow on the Folk-Legacy label. She was asked to sing publicly in Professor Stekert's lectures and during a conference with Walter Reuther and Michael Harrington in Detroit in 1964. That summer, she performed at the Newport Folk Festival and sang at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife . She made her most acclaimed appearance at the University of Chicago Folk Festival in January 1965.

Sarah Gunning died during a family reunion on November 14, 1983 in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she had lived since the mid-1960s. She was buried in Hart, Michigan.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Folk Streams “Dreadful Memories” Archie Green on Sarah Ogan Gunning. In: folkstreams.net. Retrieved July 25, 2015 .
  2. ^ Moe Ashe: Disc Company, 1947; Reprinted: Oak Publications, 1963.
  3. ^ Olin Downes, Elie Siegmeister: A Treasury of American Song . Howell, Soskin & Co., 1940
  4. ^ John Greenway: American Folksongs of Protest . University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953, pp. 168-169.
  5. ^ Judi Jennings: Gunning, Sarah (Garland) Ogan . In The Kentucky Encyclopedia , (Ed.) John E. Kleber, Lexington, The University Press of Kentucky, 1992

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gunning, Sarah Ogan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Garland, Sarah Elizabeth (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer and songwriter
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Elys Branch , Knox County, Kentucky
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1983
Place of death Knoxville, Tennessee