AMAZING GRACE, HOW SWEET IT SOUNDS
(MY OLE MISTUS PROMISED ME)
Sung by: Joe Pat

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(Dr. Wolf: “What about this flat music that you were talking about?”
Mr. Pat: “Flat music. Let’s see. Was I talking about no whooping? I’ll blow ‘Amazing Grace, How Sweet It Sounds’.”)

Amazing grace, how sweet it sounds,
So . . . that farmer down.

My old mistress, she promised me,
Before she died, she would set me free.
Lived so long, ‘til her head got bald;
Got out of the notion of dying at all.

(Dr. Wolf: “That’s a hymn, too, isn’t it?”
Mr. Pat: “Yes.”
Dr. Wolf: “But the way you play it, it’s not a sacred song.”
Mr. Pat: “Right. Right. Yeah.”
Dr. Wolf: “You changed it around just a little bit.”
Mr. Pat: “Yeah.”
Dr. Wolf: “Joe, did you ever sing the hymn as well?”
Mr. Pat: “No.”
Dr. Wolf: “You made kind of a hoedown tune out of it. Let’s see, do you do anything like sort of blues kind of things on there?”
Mr. Pat: “No, no blues. . . . had a whistle, I could blow the blues, but I don’t have a . . . to do it on. I make a set of whistles, I could do any kind of blues, but I don’t have . . . No, I ain’t got no whistles. I used to have some reeds, you know, cut to . . . whistles, blowing . . . just like . . . You take a whistle, these here, these different from a whistle. These here are flat reeds, whistle tuned up for the blues.”
Dr. Wolf: “Now, flat means just what, exactly?”
Mr. Pat: “Just like a . . . like a guitar or fiddle, like a fiddle, you know. . . . Tuned like fiddle strings -- you know -- like that.”
Dr. Wolf: “You can tune these up like fiddle strings?”
Mr. Pat: “Yeah, that the way it is, that way it is, a little easier, but that’s the way they tune up.”
Dr. Wolf: “Play, Joe, play each note one after the other.”
Mr. Pat: “. . . you got one note in there you got to get just right. There’s one note in there.”
Dr. Wolf: “Could you play each one, one after the other, so that we can see what they sound like?”
[Mr. Pat does so.]
Dr. Wolf: “You missed one note there. Did you skip that on purpose?”
Mr. Pat: “Yeah. You can’t use hit either.”
Dr. Wolf: “Why did you skip that one?”
Mr. Pat: “You see . . . See, that’s the main quill. See that, that’s the main quill.”
Dr. Wolf: “That’s the main quill, huh?”
Mr. Pat: “That’s the main quill. Just like you’s playing a . . . just like you’s playing a organ or anything. You’ve got to have a second . . . second . . . or anything you hit a key note, you know. If you hit that key note, you know, you got, when you hit it, it sound, then you . . . back, and it come back . . . double. Double.”
Dr. Wolf: “Yeah, that’s the most important one. Joe, did a lot of people used to play these around here? Did you have a lot of people in the neighborhood years back that used to play these quills?”
Mr. Pat: “Nobody but me and my daddy. That was the onliest ones there was.”
Dr. Wolf: “Did your daddy play them, too, Joe?”
Mr. Pat: “Yeah, my daddy. He was the only quill blower there was in this country. . . . Pa and Uncle Walt, Pa and Uncle Walt about the onliest man come to this country blowing quills.”
Dr. Wolf: “Uncle Walt?”
Mr. Pat: “Yeah, my uncle. Yeah, Pa’s brother.”
Dr. Wolf: “He used to play quills, too.”
Mr. Pat: “That’s right. He had . . . coarse pair, you, and Pa had a fine pair.
Dr. Wolf: “How many quills is the most you’ve ever seen in a set like that?”
Mr. Pat: “Twelve. I just got ten.”
Dr. Wolf: “Some people have twelve?”
Mr. Pat: “Yeah. I ain’t never cut . . . I put twelve in there. Anybody want to make notice, you know, I’d cut me a new pair . . . up on . . . get on . . . say, “How you get on.” . . . help me . . . play the, play the quill. . . . sometime, and sometime I . . .”
Dr. Wolf: “Tell me, Joe. Did . . . did your Daddy only have five quills in his set?”
Mr. Pat: “He had eleven, Pa had twelve, Pa had twelve. And I just cut ten.”
Dr. Wolf: “Why is that?”
Mr. Pat: “I just cut ten. I just always just cut ten, you know. I’d have put twelve in there, I’d going to get me some more. Anybody can blow four and five, you know. Red Davis now, he . . . blues, but he couldn’t blow it in here, he couldn’t blow it in here, you know he’d blow both the blues, you know, like people . . .”
Dr. Wolf: “Does he live around here?”
Mr. Pat: “No.   I reckon he’s a somewhere up in the north part of the country.”
Dr. Wolf: “The north part of the country. Red Davis?”
Mr. Pat: “Yeah. Red Davis.”
Dr. Wolf: ““Around what part of the state would you say? In Alabama, you mean?”
Mr. Pat: “I don’t know where Red is now. He was, he used to stay . . . Ufola (?), but he left . . . you know.”
Dr. Wolf: “Are there any other quill players that you can think of?”
Mr. Pat: “I don’t know no . . . I don’t know nobody else could blow ‘em.”
Dr. Wolf: “Red Davis used to play them a little bit, you say?”
Mr. Pat: “Yeah, he’d blow the whistle.”
Dr. Wolf: “He’d blow the whistle. Are there any other people around that blow the whistle?”
Mr. Pat: “No.”)

Also found in Brown, Vol. III, #417, “My Ole Mistus Promised Me.”

All Songs Recorded by John Quincy Wolf, Jr., unless otherwise noted

The John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection
Lyon College, Batesville, Arkansas
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