MOG

Click here to play Alan's Lomax's prison field recording of "Early In The Mornin'"

There are four men holding axes standing around a live oak tree forming a square with their bodies. They are prisoners, inmates of Mississippi's Parchman Farm. It's 1947, and Alan Lomax is recording them with a portable recorder out in the woods.

They will chop this oak down by double cutting. Two of the men standing on opposite sides of the tree facing each other will swing and strike the tree with their axe heads at nearly the same instant, and then the two facing each other on the other axis of the square will take a lick with their axes. The sides will trade strokes till the oak comes down.

With the first axe stroke all four men begin to sing a work song of their collective invention, "Early In The Mornin'". They all have prison names. There's '22', Tangle Eye, Hard Hair, and Little Red, with '22' leading the song. Their alternating paired axe strokes give them their rhythm accompaniment, a slow, measured "whack...whack...whack...whack" sound.

The men are shout singing, "it's early in the morning, when I rise, baby". Each of their voices seem to take different ways till they come together on the sylable right before the next axe stroke.

'22' gives a sobbing gasp at the end of each line at the instant of maximum exertion where he and his partner send their axeheads flying. They repeat an idea four times, each man in their own voice, and come together at the end of the last, all singing the word "Well.." together in perfect unison where they change the idea for the next series.

The second idea is that "he has a misery on his right side". The idea for the third series is "whosoever told it, he told a dirty lie". I guess a complaint about the testimony that put them in this situation. You can hear what they think about it, with the axe strokes after each "he told a dirty lie".

This song is a safety device for these men. It keeps them together. If they take a swing out of turn, one of their neighbors could die. It also gives them the energy to give what needs to be given to do their hard work and keeps their spirits alive, active and limber.

There's such a strong rhythm in their singing, you can dance to it alone.

I've heard similar things but nothing exactly like this. It surely moves me, like the axes that shake the tree.