Jimmie Driftwood

Jimmie Driftwood was almost an anachronism in the years he was at his commercial peak, from 1957 through 1961. A schoolteacher by training, he originally started writing songs as a way of helping his students learn about history, and subsequently composed (or collected and re-composed) over 5,000 songs, many of them dealing with some element of America's past and its history, telling old folk tales, or preserving some aspect of the daily lives of the people who sang them. Only one modern figure in folk music remotely approaches his contribution to American song and the popular understanding of its roots, and that is Lee Hays of the Weavers -- Driftwood was never the activist that Hays was, however, being more concerned with teaching than political causes and, thus, never engendered either the blacklisting or the subsequent canonization by the Left that Hays received. And Hays, for all of his leftist sympathies, was never invited to sing before Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev on the occasion of the first visit of any Soviet leader to the United Nations, as Driftwood was. In September of 1959, in the midst of the rock & roll era and the burgeoning boom in folk music, Driftwood had half a dozen of his songs somewhere on the American charts, pop or country. The best known of these was "The Battle of New Orleans," which managed to top both the country and pop charts in a version recorded by Johnny Horton, but also charting in September of 1959 were "Tennessee Stud," as recorded by country giant Eddy Arnold, Hawkshaw Hawkins' version of "Soldier's Joy," Johnny and Jack's "Sailor Man," Horton's recording of "Sal's Got a Sugar Lip," and Homer & Jethro's parody "The Battle of Kookamonga." Moreso than Hays, Pete Seeger, or Woody Guthrie, Driftwood helped pull together elements...