Tracklist Reveal

6/25/20: “Darling Nellie Gray” by J. W. Myers (1903)

Darling Nellie Gray by J. W. Myers (1903)

CD 4, track 6

 Benjamin Russell Hanby’s 1856 lyric about a slave whose beloved has been torn away from him by white traders became popular on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line and both sides of the Atlantic. By 1859, Southern newspapers were denouncing it as abolitionist propaganda. This 1904 cylinder by baritone J. W. Myers helped keep it alive for later generations.

 

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