Dillard Chandler
| Dillard Chandler | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 16, 1907 |
| Died | January 1992 (aged 84) |
| Genres | Appalachian Folk |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | circa 1963–1992 |
| Labels | Smithsonian Folkways |
Dillard Chandler (April 16, 1907 – January, 1992) was an American Appalachian Folk singer from Madison County, North Carolina. His a cappella performances on compilation albums were recorded by folklorist and musicologist John Cohen.
Chandler grew up in an old log cabin in the isolated mountain community of Sodom, North Carolina. This section of the North Carolina mountains is particularly rich in ballads, and noted folklorist Cecil Sharp transcribed several "Old World" ballads sung to him by several of Chandler's relatives in 1916. Chandler described the hills he lived in as being too rugged for a car to access. Often, his walk to school would be made impossible by footlogs being washed away by a creek. Chandler said that as soon as he became old enough, he left school to work in the logging industry. He was illiterate.
During the American folk music revival in the 1960s, John Cohen traveled to Western North Carolina to research and record traditional ballad singers.Old Love Songs & Ballads from the Big Laurel, North Carolina and Dark Holler: Old Love Songs and Ballads are compilation albums of these recordings.
The subject matter of the traditional songs is often dark; there are themes of murder, revenge, infidelity, and abandoned children. The origin of Chandler's songs range from 16th century Spanish ballads, to a tale of a hanging in nearby Burnsville, to a prison song from Gastonia.Allmusic writes that Chandler sings with "deft precision, often with the song's strong sexual undercurrents intact".
The New York Times describes Dark Holler as "traditional songs about love and murder usually traceable to England, a century or more before, but sung in a style rooted in the region: the singers all stretch out, irregularly, on vowels of their choosing, and add upturned yips to the end of stanzas".
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