Beautiful memories!
I just had the most gorgeous moment. I’m listening properly for the first time to all three volumes of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. And then I heard it. That haunting too-high voice wailing “No sir, no sir, no sir, no sir…”. It’s a track called “The Spanish Merchant’s Daughter” by The Stoneman Family. And I’ve never heard it in full before, but I heard the chorus many a time on the gloriously surreal thewoodcutter.com, probably my all-time favourite ever website and now, like the company that made it, Bullseye Art, sadly deceased and replaced with “Raw Power”, a very much more commercial and less obscene version of Bullseye. There was one point in the beyond-surreal adventure-game-like trip around the island that was The Woodcutter, where the Woodcutter himself ascended into the sky and became part of a kind of religious scene, with this chorus playing over it. So now, even though I may never see The Woodcutter again <sniff> at least I can listen to his inspiring music.
