"Single Girl, Married Girl"
Part 4 (of 5) of a recently re-discovered document that I wrote for an independent study with Dr. John Kimsey while I was at DePaul University in 2008. Works cited available upon request.
If there was a single song that gave birth to country music as we know it, it would be “Single Girl, Married Girl”. The song was one that Ralph Peer specifically requested the Carter Family sing in their first recording session, and it was the song that convinced him that the Carter Family was worth signing to a record contract. However, as in the case of many famous incidents, it is a song that almost did not get recorded. Perhaps the reason that this particular song sealed the deal was because it was the most true to life for the Carter Family (Doman 78).
On the morning of August 2, 1927, the second day of the first recording session in Bristol; Sara and Maybelle Carter showed up to record without A.P. Peer, the record company executive in charge of the recording session, pressed the Carter women to record “Single Girl, Married Girl”, which Sara was hesitant to do. Katie Doman, in her essay Something Old, Something New: The Carter Family’s Bristol Sessions Recordings, suggests two reasons for Sara’s hesitation. First, the lyrics of the song hit her too close to home. She states, “Since her wedding, Sara had certainly taken on more than her share of domestic responsibility. She knew what it was like to care for a home and babies when money was scarce” (78). And second, Sara has been described as very “stoic” and she could have been “simply unwilling to sing something that sounded like a complaint” (78). No matter which reason is correct, or whether it was a combination of both, Ralph Peer somehow convinced Sara to record the song.
There are several other interesting points to note about “Single Girl, Married Girl”. The first of these is that it is one of the closest songs done by the Carters to actually fit the mold of being an Appalachian folk song. While many think of the Carters and their music as being “mountain music” or some other similar name, many of their songs were actually pop songs of earlier generations modified over the years, or directly by the Carters (usually in the lyrics by A.P.). Doman writes that Sara had learned the song from a friend around 1905 and there were variations of the song sung all over Appalachia by 1927. She also points out the structure of the song is “more like the old Appalachian ballads… in that the song does not have a chorus” (79). The ballad, in the classical meaning, usually consists of the following six characteristics: the use of simple language so that anyone can understand; storytelling or narrative form; ballad stanzas where the 2nd and 4th lines rhyme; repetition or the use of a refrain; dialogue between more than one character in the story; and ballads are mostly written in 3rd person narrative (Simpson). “Single Girl, Married Girl” does not conform to the 4-line ballad stanza; it repeats the 2nd and 4th lines, as in the following example:
Single girl, oh single girl
She's going dressed up so fine
Oh going dressed up so file
Married girl, oh, married girl
She wears any kind
Oh, she wears any kind
The song also does not feature any dialogue, but tells a story, consists of simple language, makes use of repetition, and is written in the 3rd person.
The song is also more like folk songs of the time in that it begins with an instrumental break and includes instrumental breaks at other places in the song. However, Maybelle plays the melody on her guitar continually, not just on the instrumental breaks, but also underneath Sara’s singing, as opposed to simply playing chords under the vocals. Doman notes, “This particular recording underscores the Carter Family’s innovation, versatility, and the breadth of their repertoire” (79).
Another interesting point about the choice of “Single Girl, Married Girl” is “the complete lack of sentimentality in the lyrics…There is no pain of separation here” (Doman 79). This is especially important given that it was recorded at the famous Bristol Sessions, known as the Big Bang of Country Music, and that country music has built itself on sentimentality. Country music has a reputation, both legitimate and exaggerated, of songs about home, mothers, romantic mistakes, and dogs, to name but a few, with the singer most often crying over something. While this may be a generalization of a very diverse form of American music, country music is perhaps the lone genre in American music where tough farm boys aren’t afraid to say they cried over a woman or that they love their mother. Though it must be stated that although this is country music’s reputation, or something that often separates it from other forms of American music, country music is not without a plethora of unsentimental music as well – tough attitudes are present in many country music songs from artists from Jimmie Rodgers (“Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas)”) to Miranda Lambert (“Gunpowder & Lead”). However, the other four songs the Carter Family recorded at that first session were all sentimental songs, as much of their later catalog is as well.
“Single Girl, Married Girl” was almost not recorded for several reasons, possibly because it hit too close to home for Sara Carter--but it is very likely that it hit close to home for many women and that is why the song has endured to this day. It was unsentimental unlike their other songs recorded in August of 1927; and it was not a pop song, but a ballad known in Appalachia for years. Perhaps “Single Girl, Married Girl” could best be described as the link between country music as we know it and the romantic idea of its past.