OH, MISS LULIE GAL: THE GREAT ELIZABETH COTTEN HOLDS FORTH ON AN UNFORGETTABLE ONE-VERSE SONG.

Behold “Oh, Miss Lulie Gal,” a stirring folk blues recorded by Elizabeth Cotten in 1967. Once you hear the song, you will find yourself repeating the lyrics. Cotten’s voice and banjo will nourish you on those blue-gray days when you encounter a tinge of sadness and when you dwell in that tinge (willingly!) as long as you possibly can.

According to the original LP liner notes and CD re-release, Elizabeth Cotten learned “Oh, Miss Lulie Gal” as an “old banjo song” from her brother, before she started playing guitar. This would have likely taken place in her childhood, either in the very final years of the 19^th century or the first decade of the 20^th century. We cannot say where her brother acquired the song, but he may have learned it in a work setting or from the “tunes of the itinerant musicians [who] strolled by” the front porch of the family’s North Carolina home. My own research (for my next book about “In the Pines”) suggests that it may date back to 19^th-century railroad laborers.

“Oh, Miss Lulie Gal” is a prime example of an African American one-verse folk song. It could have been repeated by workers or dancers, literally, a few hundred times in a row to facilitate manual labor or a celebration. Even as the song could have stood alone during a folk blues performance, a singer could have just as easily grafted it onto other material, where it would have floated amongst additional “snatches of song,” thereby enabling numerous, uncountable variations. The eventual prevalence of the recording era, or the organization of songs to fit onto 78 rpm discs, likely diminished the glorious, improvisational one-verse song environment. But here it lives on.

Consider the spare lyrics:

          Oh, Miss Lulie gal I don’t want to go
          Take* me down a pallet and I’ll lay down on the floor.

          Oh, Miss Lulie gal I don’t want to go
          Make* me down a pallet and I’ll lay down on the floor.

          [humming outro]

          *In the first verse, I hear “take,” while in the second verse, I hear “make.”

Here, we find a simple, two-line AB structure, although I could easily envision a rendition in which the first line was repeated and the third, as part of a typical AAB blues stanza, offered a resolution to the “problem.”

The “problem” being that the “suitor” apparently does not want to leave. But rather than lay down together with “Miss Lulie,” he is either going to fix himself a pallet or ask Miss Lulie to fix him a pallet, and then he will sleep on the floor. There is a nuanced, implicit rift in the air. Like that poor gal Liza Jane, among others, Miss Lulie Gal, Lula Gal, or simply Lula, represented a ubiquitous love interest, perhaps a gal who didn’t always say “yes” to a proposal or agree to be on intimate terms. Alternatively, the fellow could’ve been facing an unpleasant journey and decided to sleep rather than confront the potential difficulty that lay ahead.

We can also discern that Miss Lulie Gal doesn’t live in opulent surroundings. The lyrics suggest a humble shack or one-room home. They also imply that visitors may have to sleep on a pallet, or a makeshift wooden platform that rises very little off the ground. In addition to its complex situation, “Oh, Miss Lulie Gal” conjures a hardscrabble folk environment. Many poets and musicians could stand to learn a thing or two from this economical presentation of situation and setting. 

Though Cotten plays banjo in this piece, she is most famous for her guitar playing. As a left-handed woman, Cotten essentially played a right-handed guitar upside down and backward. As the Folkways liner notes state, she “fretted the strings with her right hand and picked with her left, the reverse of the usual method. This meant that the bass strings were picked by her fingers while the treble (melody strings) were picked with her thumb which accounts for the unique clarity of her bass strings and the mellow sound of her treble.” I believe that this style is known, quite humorously, as “Cotten picking,” and it is virtually impossible to duplicate.

And, I found a way to bring Elizabeth Cotten and this little tune into my next book, about “In the Pines.” The name Lula does come up in connection with “In the Pines,” and even if it’s just for one sentence, I wanted to celebrate the drama of this one-verse folk blues and the virtuosity of its singer. Forgetting the potential suitor to-do, what we all may be thinking is, what a joy it would be to wake up on that pallet and hear the sound of Cotten—perhaps through an open window—playing her banjo or guitar, and singing and humming on one of those blue-gray days, with a tinge of sadness in the air.


discography and sources of information

Elizabeth Cotten (banjo, vocals). “Oh, Miss Lulie Gal.” Side II, Band 7. Elizabeth Cotten, Vol. 2: Shake Sugaree. Folkways Records FT 1003-B. New York (1967).

1967 Folkways LP liner notes. 2004 Folkways CD re-release liner notes.

Wikipedia page for Elizabeth Cotten.

Research for next book; coming soon!