On my drive to work this morning I was listening to the Leake County Revelers’ 1927 recording of “The Old Hat”, trying to decipher some of the more opaque lyrics. Before walking into the building, I sat down in a break area and talked with one of the housekeeping staff, a black woman of about 65-70 years of age. Without any prompting from me, the topic turned to family history lost to age and time. She told me about her grandmother singing “crazy songs” to her as a child and recited two verses from “The Old Hat” involving a raccoon and a ‘possum almost verbatim from the Revelers recording!
This probably shouldn’t be that surprising. They are somewhat floating lyrics and originated (?) in this area, but it was just so serendipitous and unexpected that it brought tears to my eyes thinking of the paths of history and cultures that led to two people of disparate races and economic status sitting in front of a Mississippi chicken plant in 2026 trading lines from a now-obscure 100+ year old song.
Synchronicity
https://thisjungianlife.com/jungandsynchronicity/
That's a sweet story Barry!
Music
Ah, Music.
Music, the universal language :-)
yea I have had weird stuff before…like I was working on an illustration of a large wide tree and a song came on Spotify where the lyrics talked about “…the branches of a spreading tree…” and I was like !!! That’s happened more than once when drawing, so I think it’s coincidence.
That Jung article is interesting...yes, I would like to believe in the mysterious interconnection of the universe. (Not gonna get into religion here :-)
Edited by - NCnotes on 06/04/2026 07:00:10
Beyond synchronicity/timing, or even the long odds of randomly meeting one of the very few people who are even aware of that song, I was thinking more of the interracial exchange of string band music in my part of the world.
There are recognized "experts" in Mississippi fiddle music who maintain that direct musical exchange between black and white musicians did not exist in the Jim Crow South. Having grown up among rural (and musical) working-class people in a time when the legacy of legal segregation was still blatantly obvious in small towns down here, I know that is not true. I guess our conversation reinforced my feelings on that and brought back a flood of memories of people from a better...and much worse...era.
I follow you on that too Barry... and could site similar examples from growing up in the upper-south
quote:
Originally posted by bacfireBeyond synchronicity/timing, or even the long odds of randomly meeting one of the very few people who are even aware of that song, I was thinking more of the interracial exchange of string band music in my part of the world.
There are recognized "experts" in Mississippi fiddle music who maintain that direct musical exchange between black and white musicians did not exist in the Jim Crow South. Having grown up among rural (and musical) working-class people in a time when the legacy of legal segregation was still blatantly obvious in small towns down here, I know that is not true. I guess our conversation reinforced my feelings on that and brought back a flood of memories of people from a better...and much worse...era.
Perhaps some of the musicians of the time didn't want to acknowledge the exchange of ideas or the influences that shaped their styles, but the direct link across race in music is pretty well documented, even in artwork of the time and before.
I think the recording industry's invention of the term "race music" set up a perception of a dichotomy that wasn't really so distinct.
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