Happy Land: Musical Tributes to Laura Wilder
The Little House® books by Laura Ingalls Wilder are famed for their compelling stories of life on the frontier of the 1860s-80s.  By tracing her family’s history Wilder expressed the trials and triumphs of those who attempted to carve a place for themselves and their families out of the expanse of the American West.Too little noted is the music referenced in the books, some 126 separate songs and tunes.  By the Shores of Silver Lake contains mention of 37 songs; These Happy Golden Years is titled after a song; and six of the books close with music making. The music Wilder employed in the service of her narrative is some of the very finest in the history of American music.Throughout, the guiding musical spirit is Laura’s father, Charles "Pa" Ingalls, who sang and played fiddle.  It’s "Pa’s fiddle" that accompanies the Ingalls family through its adventures and comes to symbolize the endurance of the family unit in a wild and threatening frontier world.Happy Land is a selection of Laura’s "old songs."  The producers—Dale Cockrell, a professor of musicology and American music expert, and Butch Baldassari, master mandolinist and producer, were challenged to take the old songs of yesterday and make them new and engaging for audiences today.An old song both starts and ends the recording.  There are no recordings of Pa’s playing (he died in 1902), but in his stead is the music of fiddler "Jep" Bisbee, who was born only eight years after Pa and, amazingly, just fifty miles from Ingalls’ birthplace.Other songs, hymns, and tunes on Happy Land are reinterpreted by some of the nation’s finest and most respected musicians, cognizant of their debt to the past but keenly aware of their responsibilities to the present.