Hi! Looking for “the pdf” and in the large print book says you’re searching for lyrics. What many people don’t yet realize is that you can get the lyrics to almost any song by typing its title in quotation marks into Google. Sometime it helps to add a fragment of lyrics or just a few key words.

“Old Dan Tucker” yields a wealth of information, starting with a detailed Wikipedia article! One could spend an entire afternoon mining this rich load of musical (l)ore!

BTW, this does not diminish the value of the songbooks. I’ve got hundreds of songs organized in GBC bound books on two sided pages, large type, one song per side, but I was still happy to buy the Big Print Songbook. From the contents, I suspect Carl and the family did something I’ve always wished I had the time to do—go through the entire Carter Family repertoire to determine which songs were not under the control of the estate of Ralph Peer and assigns! That alone more than makes it worth the price of admission.

Yes, well, the lyrics are on this site! No need to go googling. I was pointing out a possible omission. I am also being a little lazy. We use a custom song book in a binder at our jam session with just songs that we play and I often use the pdfs to print out songs that will go in the book. I will end up copying the Dan Tucker lyrics into a word process and get them all doctored up… But before I ever do this I always stop by the Abbott Family site and see if the pdf is available. Thanks guys!

LOL! I should have looked first!

Maybe this will be more useful :-)

If the text on the web page is highlighted by dragging the mouse over it, it can be copied and then pasted into Word, say. Select the entire song by pressing Crtl-A. Then, the font can be increased or decreased by pressing Ctrl-] and Crtl-[, respectively. I keep pressing Ctrl-] until the lyrics spill onto a second page. Then, Crtl-[ to bring it back to one page, then save. It’s faster than typing the instructions for doing it.

—Jerry

Thanks Jerry. I am actually a software engineer and pretty good with computers and the internet.

Hi guys,

Culley, you’re right, Old Dan Tucker got left by the wayside. We’ll get a PDF up there one of these days. Actually, sooner or later all of the PDFs will be redone in a slightly better-looking way, to match the formatting of our next, ultra-secret songbook project (you heard it here first, folks). I’m not sure who the “Bruce” who is promoting the song is… I barely know the song, and have never really pulled it out in a jam, which is a main contributing factor to its omission.

Jerry, yes, the internet is amazing. I especially like the Library of Congress’s 1800s sheet music collection. Wish our site would have come up in your search for Old Dan Tucker lyrics, but oh well… :-) And you are right, we got the Bear Family’s complete Carter Family box set (In the Shadow of Clinch Mountain)... 12 CDs and an exhaustively-researched book by Charles Wolfe. It turned out to be a great investment in terms of song research.

Glad you guys are enjoying the site and songbooks. Remember that you can listen to the songs on our site as well! Just hit the black box on the song page.

Best, Luke

A couple of years ago Bruce Springsteen put out an album of folk songs:

http://bruce.orel.ws/seegersessions/

It is very well done! Not particularly bluegrass with horns and drums and stuff but a great album.

I have that Carter Family boxed set too—it is over the top! Good for research but how much Carter Family can one really listen to?!?

Can’t wait to see the new songbook project! Maybe some new additions to the traditional song series too? Hint, Hint?