Includes fourteen-page booklet with notes on songs.
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This sentimental jewel dates back at least to 1887, when the verses appeared in Wehman’s songster, published periodically in New York during the late-nineteenth century. The song was credited, at least once in that period, to J. M. Waddy, dubbed at one time “the best colored basso that this musical race has produced.” Waddy, who mainly performed Negro spirituals, probably made this song, extolling rural domesticity, a part of his concerts, too. But Sandra Graham, expert on nineteenth-century jubilee singers, finds the claim that he wrote it unlikely. Its composer, a person of obvious talent, remains obscure.
“Cabin with the Roses at the Door” entered the old-time music repertory when Kentucky fiddler Leonard Rutherford and singer-guitarist John Foster, of Tennessee, recorded it for Brunswick in 1930. That original recording was re-issued on a Rounder LP.
I bought the LP early on and greatly enjoyed it. But it was my late friend Craig Johnson whose singing inspired me to learn the song, sometime in the 1970s, when we both lived in Ann Arbor and spent all our time at the old Ark Coffeehouse. My words mostly duplicate Craig's version, varying slightly from Rutherford and Foster's original.
Thank you to Sandra Graham for sharing her knowledge of J. M. Waddy.
lyrics
Oh, the light is fading fast and I’m thinking of the past,
I am sitting with my darling by my side.
She’s an old and wrinkled dame, but I love her just the same,
As the sunny day she came to be my bride.
Well, I think I see her now with a smile upon her brow,
As she vowed to be mine forever more.
Had no golden pastures wide, but I took her home with pride
To the cabin with the roses at the door.
Oh, the dear old cabin, my old cabin,
It’s my home on my own native shore.
I will heave my latest sigh, I will live and I will die,
In the cabin with the roses at the door.
Well, we labored and we toiled, and we found the grateful soil
Paid us back for our work a hundred fold.
We had money and to spare for our poor little share,
So we envied not the planter and his gold.
Still we had our times of grief; resignation brings relief,
But ’tis hard till the bitterness is o’er.
And we both were sorely tried when our little darling died,
In the cabin with the roses at the door.
Oh, the dear old cabin….
So we’ve simply journeyed on, though the boys and girls are gone,
To the city midst the trouble and the strife.
They have left us here alone in this cabin that’s their own,
Where so patiently we wait the close of life.
To each other, all in all, some sweet stories we recall,
Of the little ones who’ve gone on long before.
And we’re happy, though we know that we haven’t long to go,
In the cabin with the roses at the door.
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