Book description
Louisville native John Jacob Niles (1892-1980) is considered to be one
of our nation's most influential musicians. As a composer and balladeer,
Niles drew inspiration from the deep well of traditional Appalachian and
African American folk songs. At the age of sixteen Niles wrote one of
his most enduring tunes, “Go 'Way from My Window,” basing it on a song
fragment from a black farm worker. This iconic song has been performed
by folk artists ever since and may even have inspired the opening line
of Bob Dylan's “It Ain't Me Babe.” In I Wonder as I Wander: The Life of
John Jacob Niles, the first full-length biography of Niles, Ron Pen
offers a rich portrait of the musician's character and career. Using
Niles's own accounts from his journals, notebooks, and unpublished
autobiography, Pen tracks his rise from farm boy to songwriter and folk
collector extraordinaire. Niles was especially interested in documenting
the voices of his fellow World War I soldiers, the people of Appalachia,
and the spirituals of African Americans. In the 1920s he collaborated
with noted photographer Doris Ulmann during trips to Appalachia, where
he transcribed, adapted, and arranged traditional songs and ballads such
as “Pretty Polly” and “Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair.”
Niles's preservation and presentation of American folk songs earned him
the title of “Dean of American Balladeers,” and his theatrical use of
the dulcimer is credited with contributing to the popularity of that
instrument today. Niles's dedication to the folk music tradition lives
on in generations of folk revival artists such as Jean Ritchie, Joan
Baez, and Oscar Brand. I Wonder as I Wander explores the origins and
influences of the American folk music resurgence of the 1950s and 1960s,
and finally tells the story of a man at the forefront of that movement.
Ron Pen, associate professor of music and director of the John Jacob
Niles Center for American Music and the Appalachian Studies Program at
the University of Kentucky, is the editor of The Ballad Book of John
Jacob Niles and of Jean Ritchie's Folk Songs of the Southern
Appalachians.
