antedating (?) "Katy, bar the door" (1890)

[Wilson Gray]

Got damp in the basement, but it didn't get wet! Larry, will you
*please* stop reminding me how old I am?! Have a little mercy. Yes, it
was back in the mid-'Sixties in Los Angeles that I saw the Stanley
Brothers. At that particular time and place, the blue-grass sound was
so hip that *everybody* was diggin'  it. Well, not to the extent that
the previous sentence may imply. Once you get past the Stanleys, my
knowledge of blue-grass diminishes to the level of "I know it when I
hear it." Off the top of my head, I know only the ancient "Mountain
Dew" and the strange "Finger poppin' Time," WRT song-titles.

-Wilson

On 10/10/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: antedating (?) "Katy, bar the door" (1890)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3:26 PM -0400 10/4/07, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >I don't know. I merely assumed, as your quote notes. I further assume
> >that the determination of "more marked" v. "less marked" takes far
> >more experience than I have, i.e. for all practical purposes, none
> >whatsoever, since I avoid eye-dialect BE as written by whites on GP
> >and, WRT eye-dialect WE, Erskine Caldwell, MacKinlay Kantor, and Manly
> >Wade Wellman are about as far as I care to go, though I enjoy hearing
> >all Southern and Southern-based dialects, whether white or black,
> >especially the drawled and r-less varieties, spoken or sung. If you
> >haven't heard "Finger-Poppin' Time" done by the the black Midnighters
> >and the cover by the white Stanley Brothers, you're missing a treat,
> >if for no other reason than the stylistic contrast between the two
> >versions.
> >
> >FWIW, I've paid money to hear the Stanleys in person.
> >
> >-Wilson
>
> Not too recently, I trust, given that (while Ralph is still going
> strong) Carter died 40 years ago, which had deleterious consequences
> on his crosspicking technique...
>
> LH
>
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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
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