Jasper Robertson

Jasper Robertson, singer, Burnsville, North Carolina.

Cecil Sharp collected four songs from Jasper Robertson in September 1918: When Adam was created, The Crucifixion, The Mouldering Vine and a song pertaining to the American civil war, Hick's Farewell.

"He is about 65 years of age, is a preacher, and makes his living by riding through the mountains on horseback and peddling a patent nerve-medicine 'compounded of 17 herbs'. He sings no love songs but incidentally has a large stock of these moralising, didactic religious songs, which must have been prevalent sometime in the 18th and 19th centuries I imagine."

Note in Cecil Sharp's MSS tune book, 29.9.18

References

Mike Yates, Cecil Sharp in America: collecting in the Appalachians, Musical Traditions Article MT047, 1999 - includes a photograph of Jasper Robertson.