December 2, 2010

So, we've finally finished our journey through Faces of Kentucky, the Kentucky history textbook. Jessie and TJ are each going to blog about their favorite subject in the book. Jessie chose to write about one-room schoolhouses and what it was like to go to school in the early days of the Commonwealth. TJ wants to write about Kentucky musicians and songwriters. Here goes:

Jessie writes:

So when schools first started in Kentucky there was a lot of danger, violence and just lots of bad stuff happening. But everyone thought that kids should be taught even if there was danger everywhere. So kids started having school in forts and then rough schools. Adults back then had a different view of school. They thought that schools shouldn't be public, which means they shouldn't be paid for by the State. So many private schools called academies started. So the education of Kentucky wasn't going so well. But after all this, one room schools that were public started showing up. Those schools were not very good schools because there could be fifty students and only one teacher in each school. Also because there was a lot of school violence such as kids bringing guns and knives to school. But that is not new now in our schools. Lots of one room schools were not built very well. One school was made out of logs, so the cracks in between the logs were very poorly filled. So the cold wind would blow through regularly. One boy recalled, "The ink could not keep from freezing." Mainly the only furniture in the schools were benches with no support on the back, a coal or wood stove to keep the school warm, a desk for the teacher, a water bucket for water. If they ran out of water they either had to get it from a well in the school yard, or from a stream or spring far from the school. Sometimes the schools would have a black board. The black board would be a wall thats painted black or just a plain black board.  So a man named Robert J. Breckinridge observed that many of those schools were only getting $15 dollars from the state. So Breckinridge got a tax passed so that the schools got all the money they needed.

TJ writes:

When the Europeans came to Kentucky, they brought music with them. They sang songs to other people, but by memory. Kentuckians have used a lot of folk songs that were like the songs that the Europeans sang. The people such as John Jacob Niles,  from Louisville and then central Kentucky, Mary Wheeler from, Paducah, and Jean Ritchie from Perry County in Eastern Kentucky wrote down the songs that the Europeans sang. They didn't want these songs to be forgotten. These songs told the people about families, and times long ago.

Kentucky didn't just play folk music. They began to write new songs and music. One of those people that wrote original music was Stephan Collins Foster. He wrote My Old Kentucky Home," and "Oh! Susanna." The song called "Oh! Susanna" is "the birth of pop," and he wrote many songs that we sing today. He wasn't really connected to Kentucky except for the title of the song, "Happy Birthday."

 

In the the next century, music from Kentucky started to become popular in the USA (United States of America). Country music became very popular, and people from Kentucky made it popular. 7 people at least whose hometown was in Kentucky or made their home Kentucky made it to the CMHF (Country Music Hall of Fame). The 7 people that went to the CMHF included, "Red" Foley from Madison County; "Pee Wee" King, who lived in Louisville; Merle Travis from Muhlenberg County; "Grandpa" Jones from Henderson County; Loretta Lynn from Butcher hollow; and the Everly Brothers from Brownie, Kentucky.