“No More the Moon Shines on Lorena”
Recorded Saturday, August 6th, 2011.
Key: probably A
In the Carter family Venn diagram, this one falls right at the intersection of ”uncomfortable” and “baffling.” Sara sang, and now Fran’s singing, in the voice of a male slave whose lover was sold downriver. And, it contains the lyric “the possums laying on the wild bananas.” I can’t think of a place where possums and bananas gang together.
Fran wasn’t keen on resurrecting this song; some things really should be left in the dustbin of history. But we resolved to record every single Carter song, even the offensive and terrible ones. Fran initially balked at singing—we considered doing it as an instrumental or fobbing it off on someone else—but in the end he gritted his teeth and did it as straight as possible. He did leave off the last verse, though, with its reference to “darkies’ chains.”
“Lorena” hasn’t been recorded much since the Carters did it in 1930, for obvious reasons. Roots rocker Alex Chilton covered it in the 70s, adopting a tongue-in-cheek style that’s even more cringe-worthy than the original. It just doesn’t work to make fun of this stuff, as tempting as that might be.
It’s also tempting to condemn the Carters for “Lorena,” but every musician back then had minstrel bits in their repertoires. In fact, many of the songs that are beloved by old-time musicians today are bowdlerized versions of minstrel songs. A lot of well-meaning lefties singing along on tunes like “Sweet Sunny South” would hesitate to sing the original lyrics and their description of ”ol’ massa .”
It’s pouring sheets of rain this Sunday morning in Brooklyn. Unable to do our regular Sunday-morning activities, we tried to entertain the boy by watching a replay of yesterday’s Cubs-Braves game. Fran was thrilled at the outcome, but I have to say, I have a little sympathy for Zambrano. After that many home runs, I wouldn’t even have had the presence of mind to aim at Chipper Jones—I would have just laid down on the mound and cried.
