Liza in the Summertime
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-09-19

Day 185 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

Sandburg writes: "The arrangement of air and words here is based on a song heard by Charles Rockwood of Geneva, Illinois, during a residence in North Carolina mountains. Lines from old British ballads mingle with mountaineer lingo as in the word “mountings;” black influence is not absent.

This may be an instance of a song that starts among people who have a tune, who want to sing, who join together on an improvisation, reaching out for any kind of verses, inventing, repeating, marrying Scotch lyrics with minstrel ditties; in the end comes a song that pleases them for their purposes. Its mood varies here from the lugubrious to the light-hearted. The way to sing it is "as you like it."