Old Joe Clark is a folk song, a mountain ballad that was "sung during World War I and later by soldiers from eastern Kentucky." An early version was printed in 1918, as sung in Virginia at that time. Joe Clark was born in 1839, a mountaineer who was murdered in 1885. There are about 90 stanzas in various versions of the song. The tune is in mixolydian mode.
Read more about Old Joe Clark: Recordings, Modern Adaptations
Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or clark:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“I don’t go that fast in practice, because I need the excitement of the race, the adrenalin. The others might train more and be in better shape, but when I’m racing, I put winning before everything else. I don’t stop until the world gets gray and fuzzy around the edges.”
—Candi Clark (b. c. 1950)