Word: ballads
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...loggers clapped and yowled. They regaled Louisiana audiences with Creole songs. In their 7,500-mile, 21-State trip they warmed U.S. hearts with songs that were part of their soil and blood. Last week, when a dirt-stained bus rolled them from Greensboro, N.C. into Manhattan, the American Ballad Singers had wound up their first U.S. tour...
...Ballad Singers was Elie Siegmeister, a dark, merry, 33-year-old Brooklyn composer (May Day for orchestra, We Want the World for chorus, Hip Hip Hooray for NRA, an operetta). Elie Siegmeister talks with a touch of Brooklynese, teaches composition and piano for a living, bicycles to Coney Island for exercise. When he gets interested, he gets interested. When he got interested in balladry eleven years ago, he pored over thousands of songs in the Library of Congress, picked up many a ditty by word of mouth. He now knows 800. He trained his Ballad Singers-six professionals-to sing...
...Ballad Singers' repertory goes back to the Pilgrims, and comes as up-to-date as Bataan. While the troupe's bus rolled through New York State, Siegmeister wrote a Ballad of Douglas MacArthur, which he sandwiched into his programs...
Inspired by a poem of Katherine Garrison Chapin, the wife of Attorney General Biddle, the ballad has been orchestrated by William Grant Still, who is considered to be the foremost Negro composer in the country. Still, the author of the Perisphere Music for the New York World's Fair, has dedicated this piece to President Roosevelt...
Written in 1939, the ballad was described as "a portrayal of the emotions of a militant democracy under challenge," and expresses confidence in the strength and future of America...