James Brown, Singer

P264_James-Brown-w-Helen-Creighton-at-1st-MFF-1958 — P00264: James Brown with Helen Creighton on stage at the First Miramichi folksong Festival in 1958.

James Brown was an important resource for Sandy Ives’ work on both Larry Gorman and Joe Scott, as he knew many songs by each of the great woods poets. Brown worked in woods of Maine for many years and learned this song in Lily Bay, ME (on Moosehead Lake) around 1900. He was also a popular singer at the Miramichi Folksong Festival for many of its early years. Ives described his singing style as traditional, but individual, “a sort of pulsating staccato that made a line sometimes sound as though there were rests between each syllable.”