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The Great Depression was a time of misery and hardship in 1933, especially in a small rural town like Murphy.
The Morgan family of traveling revivalists were not spared. In July 1933, they were destitute and camping on the town square of Murphy, where they were cooking, washing, reportedly hanging their laundry from local monuments and in general making themselves a public nuisance, according to one account. Murphy’s police politely informed the family that it was time for them to leave or be forcibly ejected.
Preacher Morgan pleaded he needed to hold one more meeting to obtain enough gas money to leave. The mayor gave permission for a final fundraising meeting.
At that meeting, Morgan’s daughter Annie walked out on the makeshift stage. John Jacob Niles described that moment in his unpublished autobiography: “A girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins ... Best of all, she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, rather sadly, and sang …”
Annie Morgan began a lilting melody that haunted Niles. She sang, “I wonder as I wander, out under the sky, how Jesus the Savior, had come for to die.”
The captivated Niles paid Annie a quarter to repeat the song as he scribbled notes. She sang the notes eight times, leaving Niles with three lines of verse, a bit of melody and the idea for a complete song.
Kentuckian John Jacob Niles was a serious student of Appalachian folk music since his teens, first starting to capture original songs from oral sources while working as a surveyor in the Appalachians.
Injured in a plane crash while serving as an aviator in World War I, Niles used money provided to him as a disabled veteran to pursue advanced music studies in Paris, where he also read his poetry in Gertrude Stein’s salon.
Back in America, Niles continued his musical education studying at a conservatory in Cincinnati, and along the way singing opera in Chicago before continuing his search for songs in the Appalachians.
Among the songs he collected during his Appalachian searches were “Pretty Polly” and “Barbara Allen.”
In the early 1930s, he was touring and performing with singer and actress Marion Kerby, a collector of Appalachian melodies.
With the song fragments provided by Morgan from her Murphy performance, Niles turned the melody into a song, “I Wonder as I Wander,” completing the arrangement on Oct. 4, 1933.
Niles performed the song for the first time on Dec. 19, 1933, at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, later publishing the song in his collection, Songs of the Hill Folk, in 1934.
Niles was here as an assistant to photographer Doris Ullman who had founded, with others, the Pictorial Photographers of America, and had devoted herself to “vanishing types,” many of them in rural Appalachia.
While here Niles also served briefly as the music director of the newly founded (1925) John C. Campbell Folk School. In 1936, he returned to Kentucky and married.
“I Wonder As I Wander” blossomed as a classic Christmas carol, and is described as the most famous Christmas carol to come out of North Carolina.
Niles would record many of his compositions and transcribed songs, often accompanied on a lute or dulcimer he had built. He published more than 14 collections of his music and performed concerts on stage around the world.
Niles performed at the White House in 1938, and was an occasional performer at the Newport Folk Festival in the 1950s. Niles and his songs would become a major influence to artists like Joan Baez, Burl Ives, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Bob Dylan, who all recorded his songs. One of Niles’ compositions, “Go Away From my Window,” would be utilized by Dylan as the opening line to his song, “It Ain’t Me Babe.”
Niles earned his moniker as the “Dean of American Balladeers.” He died in Lexington, Ky., in 1980 at 87.
A biography of Niles’ life was written in 2010 by Ronald Pen. The title he chose for the book hails to his most famous composition, I Wonder as I Wander: The Life of John Jacob Niles (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky).
The John Jacob Niles Center for American Music at the University of Kentucky is named in his honor. He was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in 2006.
The timelessness of “I Wonder as I Wander” is emphasized by the artists who have recorded Niles’ song over the years. Barbara Streisand included it in 1967 on A Christmas Album. Mary Travers of Peter, Paul & Mary covered the song in their PBS Special The Holiday Concert in 1988. Westminster Choir College annually performs “I Wonder as I Wander” at readings and carols concert. Vanessa Williams included the song in her 1994 album, Prairie Christmas. Violinist Lindsey Sterling recorded it for her 2018 deluxe edition of her 2017 album Warmer in Winter. The song has even become popular among elector-musicians like Kaskade, covering the song for their album Kaskade Christmas Volume 2.
If you have read this far and not heard the song, do yourself the favor of hearing it, available free on YouTube and other sources.
As you listen, keep in mind this classic Christmas carol you are hearing was born in this place we call home, Murphy, more than 90 years ago.
And what of Preacher Morgan and his daughter, Annie? What became of the traveling revivalist family is lost to history.
They disappear from our narrative, leaving Murphy in their automobile with the makeshift stage, powered by $2 of gas furnished by John Jacob Niles in exchange for Annie singing the verses that would become the timeless song, “I Wonder as I Wander.”
Bruce Voyles’ local history column runs every other week on this page in the Cherokee Scout. Email him at RoadsLessTraveled@cherokeescout.com.