Experiencing the Music of the Little House Books

When I was very small, I loved to listen to my mother read me the Little House books. But one thing frustrated me: the frequent use of song lyrics. Occasionally a song would be familiar, such as Yankee Doodle or Pop Goes the Weasel, and we could sing along together, but so often we were left with dull lyrics. Words that seemed so lifeless without their accompanying tunes.

When I was a little older, I discovered The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook, by Eugenia Garson. I was blessed to have a piano teacher who believed her students would be more motivated to practice if they played songs of their own choice instead of following through a sequence of lesson books, and so week by week I learned to play the songs of the Little House books. Knowing the tunes changed everything. Those lyrics came alive and added a new dimension to my Little House experience. Those songs formed a connection between my world and Laura’s, and through them I felt as if I was a mere step away from the merriness created by Pa’s fiddle on those nights so long ago.

Learning many of the songs of the books only created within me an insatiable desire to know more of them. After all, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook only contained about half of the songs included in the Little House series. Over the years, I was able to locate the music for more songs, but one particular song — the one I wanted most to learn — eluded me.

But first Pa played for Laura and Mary. He played their very favorite song, and he sang it. Laura liked it best of all because Pa’s voice went deep, deep, deeper in that song.

”Oh, I am a Gypsy King!

I come and go as I please!

I pull my old nightcap down

And take the world at my ease.”

Then his voice went deep, deep down, deeper than the very oldest bullfrog’s.

“Oh,

I am

a

Gyp

sy

KING!”

They all laughed. Laura could hardly stop laughing.

~Laura Ingalls Wilder, in Little House on the Prairie

That song just sounded like so much fun! A number of years ago, I was bemoaning my failed attempts at learning this particular song to a group of friends online, when one said, “Why, I had that song in my music book when I was a child. I still have the book. I’ll send it to you.” I waited anxiously as the days passed by and turned into weeks. The book never arrived. We both contacted our post offices, but they weren’t able to locate the package. Of all the packages to be lost!

And then along came Dale Cockrell with Pa’s Fiddle Recordings — just imagine my excitement when I discovered that his second CD, The Arkansas Traveler, contained The Gypsy King! Now when I read Little House on the Prairie to my little niece, I can sing The Gypsy King and she and I can laugh together as we try to make our voices sound like bullfrogs.

As welcome as these musical CD collections are, however, they aren’t the only project Dale Cockrell, who is a professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University, is up to. I recently had the pleasure of reading a draft of the introductory essay to The Ingalls-Wilder Family Songbook, and I can tell you that you’ll want to start saving your pennies now for this fabulous publication which is coming our way in 2010.

The Ingalls-Wilder Family Songbook is part of a 40-volume collection being published by MUSA (Music of the United States of America, a project of the American Musicological Society), designed to bring together musical notation and scholarly interpretation to expand the legacy of American music for both study and performance.  The book will feature a scholarly essay on the role of music in the Little House books, the songs themselves, as well as critical study of the music. Extensive research has gone into this project and the sources for the music were carefully examined using a set of strict criteria to provide the most accurate and complete Little House Songbook possible.

So if you’ve ever felt inclined to tap your foot to the tune of Pa’s fiddle, or dance with the Ingalls girls by the warm glow of firelight or out under the stars, be watching for this outstanding songbook sometime next year. And yes, we’ll keep you posted.