"Aunt" Ollie Gilbert was renowned as the Singer of Songs.
This Ozark Folk Center 50th Anniversary Legacy Photo is in memory of Ollie Gilbert.
Love, granddaughter Susan Kemp, member of the Committee of One Hundred.
Ollie Eva Woody Gilbert, affectionately known as "Aunt Ollie" was born in the Hickory Grove community of Stone County, Arkansas on October 17, 1892 to Mary Minerva (Balentine) and James Franklin Woody. Her eye was injured as a child, so her parents educated her at home. Her brother made a banjo out of a gourd, squirrel hide and horsetail hair for them to share. She learned to play the banjo and sing the old folk songs passed down through generations of her Scottish and English ancestors.
Aunt Ollie with Governor Rockefeller.
Ollie married Eual Oscar Gilbert in 1909 and they went on to raise eight children. Most of their life they resided in Timbo, Arkansas, with a brief time sharecropping in Okemah, Oklahoma, the birthplace of Woody Guthrie. The family enjoyed visitors in their home. Oscar was the musician of the family, singing and playing the banjo. Ollie entertained the children and grandchildren with her songs and stories, but never in front of company. Oscar and Ollie were first recorded by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins in 1959, as well as Max Hunter.
When Oscar died in 1960, Ollie was asked by neighbor James Morris (Jimmy Driftwood) to join him and other local musicians as they traveled all over the State and Nation, singing old Scottish and English ballads learned from their ancestors. Ollie had barely been out of Stone County, but this new adventure had her performing at the Stone County Courthouse Hootenannies, the Arkansas Folk Festival in Mountain View, the Ozark Folk Festival in Eureka Springs, and the 1964 Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. In 1965, Ollie performed in three concerts at the UCLA Folk Festival and the Cow Palace in San Francisco. In 1970, she sang at the National Mall in Washington D.C. for the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife. Ollie continued to perform throughout Arkansas and locally until her health failed her in the late 1970s.
In addition to Alan Lomax recordings Southern Journey and Gospel Ship, Ollie was also recorded by Max Hunter on Max Hunter Collection of Ozark Folksongs. John Quincy Wolfe recorded her singing at the 1963 and 1964 Arkansas Folk Festival and Leo Rainey recorded her album Aunt Ollie Gilbert Sings Old Folk Songs to Her Friends. She was also interviewed by Studs Terkel in 1964. In 1972, Ollie was recorded on the album Music of the Ozarks by National Geographic. In 1977, Ollie appeared in a documentary series All You Need Is Love - The Story of Popular Music. That same year she was featured in the publication Some Remarkable Women of Arkansas by Pearl W. Shoudel.
Ollie would be the subject of other publications through the years, including Songs of the Ozark Folk by Leo Rainey in 1972, Ozark Folksongs by Vance Randolph in 1982, Folktales in the Ozarks: Ollie Gilbert and the Balentine Family by Frederick Danker in 1992, When I Get Straightened Around: Aunt Ollie Gilbert, Ozark Folk Singer by Charlie Coil in 1995, Hill Folks: A History of Arkansas Ozarkers and Their Image by Brooks Blevins in 2002 , Our Own Sweet Sounds by Robert Cochran in 2005, Encyclopedia of Arkansas: Ollie Eva Woody Gilbert by Freda Cruse Harrison in 2021 and Ballad Hunting with Max Hunter by Sarah Jane Nelson in 2023.
Ollie Gilbert was an encyclopedia of folk songs and stories shared around the country and through the ages, but to me she was “Granny”. My memories of Granny Gilbert go back to my early childhood, visiting her in the dogtrot house in “downtown“ Timbo. She cooked on a wood stove and drew water from a stone well in the kitchen. Chicken and dumplin’ was her specialty, but first she had to wring the chicken’s neck and pluck and singe the feathers. She sang old folk songs as we sat on the porch and shelled peas. She showed me how to fold paper to cut an accordion of dolls and stick the tail of a lightning bug on my finger for a “diamond ring”. At night, I would sleep with her on a featherbed heaped with quilts made from worn out clothing. As we snuggled under the covers, she would delight me with scary ghost stories of witches, princesses and lost children. My grandsons still sleep in that brass bed when they come to visit me.
After my grandpa died, and at the request of Jimmy Driftwood, she devoted time and talent to her music career. She started writing the titles of hundreds of songs she knew by memory on rolls of adding machine paper, which she bound together with old stockings cut in strips. At one time, Max Hunter estimated she had over 900 song titles without repeating one. I am so grateful to be the guardian of those lists today.
We moved to Mountain View before I graduated from high school, so I was able to contribute to her career by making dresses for her (photo, at left, shows Ollie in one of those dresses). I took an Arkansas Folklore class my junior year at the University of Arkansas. My teacher was Mary Parler, wife of folklorist Vance Randolph. She was overjoyed to learn that Ollie Gilbert was my grandmother. I had no idea of her notoriety. That class gave me the opportunity to grow even closer to Granny by writing down the words to her songs and stories, as well as learning about her life from childhood on.
Even as her health failed in the years to come, Granny kept singing and writing down her songs. I was blessed to have her in my life for so many years. On September 17, 1980 an angel band bore her away on snow white wings to her immortal home.
Entry by granddaughter, Susan Kemp.
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