Folk Songs of Florida

For this collection, Alton Morris selected 243 folksongs gathered in the late 1930s from more than a hundred singers in 49 of Florida's 67 counties. Headnotes identify each song's source and its historical or social context. Among the distinctions of Morris' book are the large proportion of texts attached to transcriptions of the tune to which they were sung and the unusually unbiased nature of his selection procedure. The result is a collection that more truly than most reflects the complete singing traditions of a regional cultural group, in this case Floridians primarily of Anglo-American extraction.