Down in the Valley Project

After listening to the various versions of "Down in the Valley" and "Birmingham Jail" by each of the singers, I decided to incorporate different pieces of each song into my watercolor painting that I found significant in the story the singers tell. Each song version has a slightly different line in each stanzas but the majority of the song versions have similarities. In the Darby & Tarlton version of "Birmingham Jail," they say "hear the train blow" rather than "hear the wind blow;" however, they still say "send me a letter, send it by mail, send it in care of Birmingham Jail" just like Burl Ives' "Down in the Valley" (and several others). The key points I captured in the painting are the quality of the train rolling through the valley where it would be heard, and a woman or the jailed man's lover on the caboose of the train with her hair blowing. This was to twist the stories into one. The mystery of the painting, which I also find in the songs, appears where the woman is either tossing her letter to Birmingham Jail or if she accidentally let it fly out of her hands.

Since she is so close to the jail, it may seem as though she is obviously intending to throw it to the jail, but then the viewer may ask why she didn't mail it or properly deliver it? It evokes a sense of indecision for the woman. Maybe she decided not to mail it and as her train traveled by she was looking at the jail that she never sent the letter to and the valley's wind blew it from her hand. Her pose indicates that she may not have wanted the letter to blow away... or maybe that is the normal reaction anyone would have if something blew away from them out of a train? If so, she may find herself overjoyed that the forces of nature made the decision for her to let the letter go. The man sitting with his guitar outside of Birmingham jail is one of the Darby and Tarlton singers. The unknown of the intentions of the woman mirror how I felt and thought when listening to "Down in the Valley" and "Birmingham Jail."

Whether the song is sung to "hear the train blow" or to "hear the wind blow" both give a feeling of quietness or loneliness in the setting of the song. According to Alan Lomax, "gentler folk were sometimes troubled by the vast landscapes" that encompassed them, which was a major factor in the production of "lonesome tunes" (Lomax, xvii). I find "Down in the Valley" and "Birmingham Jail" to be very lonesome songs as the different versions incorporate loneliness through themes of solitude in a jail, wondering if a lover loves them back, and listening to the sounds the valley creates like train whistles and wind. I wanted to capture these expressive qualities of the song in my painting, where the valley surrounds the scene and the train holds the woman and expresses her uncertain and mysterious feelings.

The personal component I added was the1920s car in the back and the choice of the caboose being in the picture. I figured the car would belong to the guitarist since he is either Darby or Tarlton who recorded the song in 1927. Both machines are personal because this reminded me of Plasticville. My dad and I set up a big train platform with a plastic town in the middle of it every Christmas, which reflects the train and car. Maybe I am the woman riding on the caboose? I was pleased that my personal component tied in with the cultural stream of the song's context, that of a quaint town with a jail in a valley that a train passes through. The train may be a main daily attraction for people to see and hear run through their lives in the valley.

I also tried to listen to each of their "voices" and understand why they sing the songs the way they did. Solomon Burke's voice as he sings "Down in the Valley" epitomizes what Lomax describes as African singers' tendency to be "animated and expressive" while singing with "playful" voices (xx). This version shows a lot of contrast to the Darby & Tarlton version of Birmingham Jail where the two white singers sing with a more "tense throat" and have "rigid bodies" from what the photo depicts (Lomax, xix). Then there is the voices of the couple in the Andy Griffith show where they give the song a loving quality through the melody and lyrics. It is interesting that the songs are all from the same roots but have developed their own meaning from the voice that sings it.