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I Ain't Playing Pretty Polly

from When I Wait For You by Dirk Powell

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about

I grew up playing and singing “Pretty Polly”… I was really proud to have learned a unique version of it in the “overhand” banjo style from my grandfather in Kentucky. One evening I was singing it during a soundcheck and heard the words “he stabbed her through the heart and her heart’s blood did flow” coming out of my mouth… and I just stopped cold in the middle of the verse. I thought about my grandmother, my mother, my daughters. I thought about pervasive violence against women and the way men are given the bulk of the story in songs like these, and often some kind of twisted romantic glory or sympathy… and I said to myself, “I’m never singing this song again.” I will not give any more energy to the stories of men who hurt, abuse, and kill women. Period. For some people, there are complexities — some say the songs are a needed warning to young people, or just dramatic tales, or that tradition trumps looking at them this way. But, for me... I’m just never singing them again. I’m done. I’ve seen the looks of hurt and confusion on my daughters' faces when violent words like these are accepted or brushed aside. And I've seen fear in my grandmother's eyes as she gave warnings to my sisters about men. Instead, I choose to sing, as I do here, about women like my Aunt Myrtle and men like my Uncle Clyde, who were together from the 1930s to the 2000s. Their relationship was full of love and sweetness and gratitude and respect. Those are the stories I actually know, from my own life, and those are the stories I’m going to tell.

lyrics

I Ain’t Playing Pretty Polly

When I was a young boy, my papaw played me songs
He’d sing that Pretty Polly, and I’d listen all night long
Those sounds went straight into my soul, sitting on his cabin floor
But I ain’t playing Pretty Polly anymore

When Granny was a young girl, she had to hold her own
She told my little sister, don’t get with a man alone
Down in the Willow Garden, wasn’t some old metaphor
So I ain’t playing Willow Garden anymore

Chorus:
I ain’t playing Pretty Polly or Rosalie McFall
I ain’t playing Knoxville Girl, no, none of them at all
No more tales of women killed by drunken violent men
They don’t deserve their stories told, I won’t raise my voice again
I ain’t playing Pretty Polly anymore


Cause I know some stories, men like my Uncle Clyde
He spent seven decades at my Aunt Myrtle’s side
Kentucky teens who fell in love in 1934
They had to leave the mountains to find work in Baltimore
She tended their young family while he fought for them in the war
And she still holds his picture and looks for him at the door
Though she just turned 100 and he passed 12 years before
So I ain’t playing Pretty Polly anymore

credits

from When I Wait For You, track released August 5, 2020

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Dirk Powell Louisiana

Dirk Powell is a musician with deep roots in several rural American styles, including the Appalachian heritage of his Kentucky grandfather, from whom he learned banjo and fiddle, and the strong Cajun traditions of the Balfa family, into which he married at a young age. His most recent collaborations include Americana great Buddy Miller and MacArthur fellow Rhiannon Giddens. ... more

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