Shirley Collins :: Pretty Polly

Shirley Collins first album in 38 years, Lodestar, is out next month via Domino Records. The album features songs from the 1500s to the 1950s, from the American, British and Cajun canons. “Pretty Polly”, culled from the set, came to Collins attention in 1959 while touring the south doing field recordings with Alan Lomax. Collins, in her own words, below . . .

A song found throughout England and the US. This version is the one  I recorded from Mrs Ollie Gilbert in Timbo, Arkansas, in 1959. Alan  Lomax, with whom I was working, had settled down to talk and drink  with Oscar  Gilbert, a fine singer, fiddle player, maker of moonshine,  and known as the fightingest man in the county. I’d been banished to  join the womenfolk — but I had the recording machine with me, and  took down several songs  from Oscar’s wife Ollie, a good singer in true  Ozark mountain style, and a great source of songs. “Pretty Polly” remained  a favorite of mine for over fifty-five years; I could never quite get out  of my head her use of  Nunited  instead of  United  and the way she fitted  in ‘I’m a Nunited States soldier from George Washington I came’ in a line  that didn’t quite have enough notes.

Related: Alan Lomax :: Cultural Equity’s Video Archives