Happy Land:
Musical Tributes to
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Produced by Butch Baldassari and Dale Cockrell
“There is one thing that will always remain the same to remind people of little Laura’s days on the prairie, and that is Pa’s fiddle.”
—Laura Ingalls Wilder
Embedded in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories are references to 126 separate songs and tunes. Happy Land is the first in a series of musical tributes to Wilder (1867-1957) for her efforts to illuminate, explain, and capture the place that music-making once occupied in the family life of ordinary Americans.
This first installment of the Pa's Fiddle Recordings pays homage to the spiritual aspect of life on the prairie.
In her famous series of eight Little House books, Laura traces her own family’s history, against the musical background of her father, Charles “Pa” Ingalls (1835-1902), who missed few opportunities to sing and play his fiddle. Whether it's parlor songs, stage songs, minstrel show songs, patriotic songs, Scottish and Irish songs, hymns, spirituals, fiddle tunes, singing school songs, play party songs, folk songs, a Child ballad, broadside ballads, Christmas songs, catches and rounds, or cowboy songs--all are threads in the harmonic tapestry woven by “Pa’s fiddle.” Carefully wrapped, stowed in a cushioned-by-pillows box, it accompanies the Ingalls family through all their adventures, symbolizing the endurance of the family unit in an often wild and threatening frontier world.
Includes these familiar and popular tunes. Click the hyperlinks shown to download and play mp3 audio files (requires your computer to have an mp3 player):
* The Girl I Left Behind Me (Jep Bisbee) [Recorded by Thomas A. Edison, 1923]
* The Girl I Left Behind Me (Pat Enright)
* Sweet By and By (Andrea Zonn)
* The Blue Juniata ( Riders in the Sky)
* Oh! Suzanna (Keith Little)
* Roll the Old Chariot Along (The Princely Players)
* Highland Mary (Deborah Packard)
* The Arkansas Traveler/The Devil's Dream (Pa's Fiddle Band)
* Captain Jinks (Riders in the Sky)
* Oft in the Stilly Night (Deborah Packard & John Mock)
* The Big Sunflower (Doug Green)
* Happy Land (Peggy Duncan Singers & Pa's Fiddle Band)
* Barbara Allen (Deborah Packard)
* Nelly Was a Lady (Dave Olney)
* Uncle Sam's Farm (Doug Green)
* Promised Land (Harpeth Valley Sacred Harp Singers)
* On Jordan's Stormy Banks (Walnut Grove Church)
* The Devil's Dream (Jep Bisbee) [Recorded by Thomas A. Edison, 1923]
