What does an old fiddle tune have to do with
Rev. John Berry’s service in the War of 1812?
During this year’s off-season, some of us will be swapping tunes that go back to New Salem days – or have a strong connection with New Salem – in a series of workshops on the folk music of our period. One of our first tunes will be the “Eighth of January.”
It’s an old fiddle tune I like to play on the mountain dulcimer at New Salem, but it’s only one of several tunes we’ll swap. When we had similar off-season workshops in 2006 and 2007, we came up with a variety of music – and had a wonderful time comparing our different styles for sharing our music with visitors. Norm Waltzer has tablature for a great fiddle tune called “Illinois Cotillion,” and I’ll have a couple of songs from Carl Sandburg’s “Songbag” (1927). We’ll meet, at least the first time, at 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 7 at the Visitor’s Center.
Back to “Eighth of January.” According to Andrew Kuntz in the online Fiddler’s Companion, an indispensible source of information, it commemorates Gen. Andrew Jackson’s victory in the Battle of New Orleans Jan. 8, 1815, at the end of the War of 1812.
“This victory, by a small, poorly equipped American army against eight thousand front-line British troops (some veterans of the Napoleonic Wars on the Continent), came after the peace treaty was signed and the War of 1812 ended, unbeknownst to the combatants,” Kuntz says. “The victory made Jackson a national hero, and the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans was widely celebrated with parties and dances during the nineteenth century, especially in the South. Around the time of the Civil War, some time after Jackson's Presidency, his popular reputation suffered and ‘Jackson’s Victory’ was renamed to delete mention of him by name, thus commemorating the battle and not the man.”
As with so many fiddle tunes, its precise origins are obscure. And there’s a much more recent vocal arrangement to the same tune, written in 1958 1936 by a high school history teacher from Arkansas named James Morris (Jimmy Driftwood), who wrote it in an effort to get his students interested in history. It worked. [Ed. note: Don't know where I got that wrong date from.] In fact they loved it, and he later recorded it as “The Battle of New Orleans.” His song was covered by all-around country, rockabilly and honky-tonk virtuoso Johnny Horton, whose version was the top country-and-western song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1959. [Ed. note: OK, it must have been recorded in 1958.] There was even a British version, by skiffle band leader Lonnie Donegan. And it’s been covered ever since by artists from Johnny Cash to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
So Jimmy Driftwood’s version is the one most of us know, but the old fiddle tune is widely attested, with a lot of variants, and it surely traces back to the 19th-century celebrations of Jackson’s victory.
When I have my dulcimer with me in one of the Berry-Lincoln stores, I like to play “Eighth of January.” It’s a cheerful tune, and if visitors are interested, I’ll tell them William Berry’s father fought under Jackson at New Orleans on the 8th of January in 1815. The Rev. John McCutcheon Berry is known to us, of course, mostly as the pastor at Rock Creek Cumberland Presbyterian Church and father of Abraham Lincoln’s partner in the stores. But R.D. Miller’s history of Menard County fills in his back story.
“When twenty-two years of age he made a profession of religion and joined the Cumberland Presbyterian church,” Miller says. “He was a soldier in the war of 1812 and participated in the battle of New Orleans. The Logan Presbytery [of Tennessee and Kentucky] licensed him to preach in 1819, and in 1822 he was ordained by the same body. He removed to Indiana in 1820 but returned to Tennessee for ordination. Soon after his ordination he came to Illinois and settled in the limits of Menard county, on Rock creek, near where the Cumberland Presbyterian church there stands.”
Berry was one of the founders, in 1828, of the Sangamon Presbytery. He was remembered as quite a singer, too, in his day. Alice Keach Bone, who wrote a centennial history of Rock Creek church in 1922, never forgot the camp meetings of her youth.
“Prominent among the preachers on the platform was Rev. John M. Berry,” she wrote. “He would give out the hymn, read it, line it, and, in a strong voice, lead the singing himself, the people joining in one after another.” She recalled his leading the congregation in “On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,” “How firm a foundation” and “There is a fountain filled with blood” at Rock Creek campground. “Then came an earnest, heartfelt prayer and, sometimes, another song,” she added. “After this he announced the text and began to preach. He did not time his sermons, neither did the people turn uneasy glances toward their camps.”
Berry was not immune to the religious prejudices of the day, but he was remembered as a forceful preacher and a man of strong conviction.
“As Mr. Berry was the first Cumberland Presbyterian preacher in this part of the state, it is due to history and to the cause to say something more of him,” Miller said in 1905. “As said before, his education was limited, owing to the circumstances surrounding him when he was young, but his natural gifts, in every respect, were far above the average. He was independent in his manner of thought, gentle and kind, but uncompromising and unmerciful in his opposition to everything that he thought to be wrong. He was charitable in his feelings to the views of others but unyielding in his convictions until he was convinced by the force of argument. As a speaker, he was plain, solemn and unassuming, making no effort at rhetorical display or dramatic effect, but possessing a commanding presence and a voice full of force and persuasive attractiveness it is not surprising that he exerted a wonderful power over men.”
For more information about the workshops, contact Pete Ellertsen by email at
No comments:
Post a Comment