“The Coo Coo is a pretty bird, / She warbles as she flies,
She never hollers “Cuckoo” / ‘Til the Fourth of July.”
Clarence “Tom” Ashley, “The Coo Coo Bird” (The Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 3).

It is a haunting piece, this “Coo Coo Bird”. Clarence Ashley sounds ancient, or ageless; the verses he sings are disjointed and mysterious, their connection clear perhaps only to the singer. Add to this the banjo played in the ‘frailed’ manner (so unlike the slick sounds that come out of Nashville today) and you have a piece that will either convert you or send you howling from the room. Needless to say, I am a convert.

“The Coo Coo Bird” is perhaps the best introduction to this Anthology. It was already old when Ashley recorded it in 1929 (I find it dated as far back as 1769), and is an obvious import from the British Isles (cuckoos are not an American bird). At that time the song might still be heard in homes around Ashley’s rural North Carolina, radio and recordings having not yet tamped out the oral traditions of a relatively isolated area. As Greil Marcus suggests in his Anthology essay, “The Coo Coo Bird” is also a fitting metaphor for the American people: The cuckoo lays its eggs in other birds’ nests, just as the British settlers nested on American soil, bringing with them their traditions and ways.

The Anthology displays the diversity of America in the songs and tunes it brings together: There are Cajun tunes, Shape Note songs, fiddle tunes and sermons in song from African-American preachers, all recorded before World War II. Child Ballads rest alongside songs bringing news from the recent folk memory. The past and the (then) present rub shoulders, and one culture nests against another.

Luc Sante writes, “[The Anthology] is an essential element of American culture, deserving a place on the narrow shelf between Huckleberry Finn and Walker Evans’s American Pictures. Every twelve-year-old should have a copy.” I wish I’d had this as a teenager, wondering what more I could do with the violin I played. Listen to it well. Listen to it again. There is much to be discovered and enjoyed in this quirky collection, and much to be learned from its reflection of America as it was a lifetime ago.

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