Singing in dialect: Plantation Love Song - by Ruth McEnery Stuart

By Jack Brummet

When I was in 8th grade, my chorus teacher, Adelaide Anderson,  decided I should enter solo contests.  One of the two songs I performed was a dialect song called Plantation Love-Song.  It was a strange choice and was extremely hard to sing the dialect.  I think she chose it for me because she sensed my hillbilly roots.  As uncomfortable as I was singing it, I never had the problem of singing the same song as any other contestant.

I've looked for the song on and off over the years since the Internet cranked but only found it recently, since Google has recently scanned a book that contained the song.

Wikipedia:  "Stuart has been characterized as belonging to the school of 'American local color writing that emphasizes regional characteristics in landscape, way of life, and language.'  Stuart's treatment of blacks forms a significant portion of her corpus and, if potentially troublesome today, 'contemporary critics acclaimed her as providing an authentic representation of African Americans.' "

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