100 Years Ago: Wood River Resident Sings Folk Songs on KMOX

Mrs. Irene Elder Meyer, Wood River resident and a star of the Camerata Chorus in Alton, sang on St. Louis radio station KMOX as part of a special program on April 14, 1926. KMOX broadcast from the Mayfair Hotel (now known as the Magnolia Hotel St. Louis), located at North Eighth and St. Charles Streets.

“The seventh program of the Song Cycle, to be broadcast from Station KMOX, the Voice of St. Louis, will take listeners to the Vermont Mountains, a section brought into close association during the past few years, as the birthplace of President Coolidge.”

Some of the songs sung by Irene Elder Meyer on the Song Cycle show were “Daily Growing,” “Posey Boy,” “The Frog,” “The Little Pig,” “The Bird’s Wooing,” and “The Banks of Dee.” These songs had been collected and published by Edith Barnes Sturgis and Robert Hughes in the 1919 book Songs from the Hills of Vermont, which you can see here:https://archive.org/details/songsfromhillsv00sturgoog

Edith Barnes Sturgis was a published poet, and her husband, Warren, was the head of Latin at the Groton School in Massachusetts. They had a summer home in West Dover, Vermont, and got to know local mason, James Atwood, when they hired him to restore their chimney. Atwood sang constantly while he worked, and the songs delighted Edith Barnes Sturgis. She noted that “James has always sung, and is above everything else a Folk-Singer, just as his father and grandfather were before him.” Many of the songs were not Atwood's creations, but old folk songs of the British Isles, which were passed down to Atwood by his ancestors. Barnes Sturgis eventually transcribed around fifty songs sung by Atwood, his wife Mary, and their friend Aunt Jenny Knapp. Thirteen of them made it into the Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Robert Hughes, a music teacher at Groton, arranged the music and provided historical notes.

You can listen to the song “The Banks of the Dee” sung by Tony Barrand and Keith Murphy here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UXnDGUtNvw They recorded On the Banks of Coldbrook: Atwood Family Songs from the Hills of Vermont in 2010 and many of the songs Irene Elder Meyer sang in 1926 are on their album.

Sources

“Mrs. Irene Elder Meyer to Sing on Program at KMOX.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), April 14, 1926.

Potter, John. “History brought to light through song.” Brattleboro Reformer (Brattleboro, Vermont), September 1, 2010.https://www.reformer.com/local-news/history-brought-to-light-through-song/article_ccf5bd5b-8d02-5ee2-935e-91318326b4f0.html

Sturgis, Edith B. 1919. “Songs from the Hills of Vermont.” Edited by Robert Hughes. New York: G. Schirmer.

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