When I first heard the Flamingos' doo wop classic Golden Teardrops I was puzzled by the reference to "a cottage by the sea", which seemed an arbitrary place in which to picture the loved one. Did it perhaps signify something to the record's original audience which I had missed?
... I'll remember,
No matter where you'll be -
In a crowded room
Or a busy street
Or a cottage by the sea ...
That was around fifty years ago but I didn't think to investigate further - until now.
The prompt was a transfer of the Swan Silvertones' 1957 recording of the gospel song A Lady Called Mother; despite some crackles it sounds sharper and clearer than any I'd heard online before - and it reminded me that the parent of the title is "in a cottage far away."
The Swan Silvertones are best known for their rendition of Mary, Don't You Weep but for my money this more restrained side is almost equally compelling. An account of an unfulfilled yearning rather than a celebration of victory, it's slower-paced and lacks the same sense of release as Mary ..., offering only the occasional hint of the emotion beneath the surface, but this more subdued and deliberate performance remains an effective showcase for the subtlety and good judgement of Claude Jeter's singing.
But why "a cottage" in both songs? Is it a motif in gospel or R&B music? And what's the significance, if any, of setting it by the sea?
The woman addressed in Golden Teardrops is the singer's lover but might the idea might have come from some sentimentalised image of a mother left behind in the South as her offspring head North in search of employment?
Could the idea of a cottage be more symbolic than literal, perhaps, a comforting way of picturing the one to whom so much is owed, placing her somewhere remote, safe from harm - enshrined, as you might say? More simply, might it serve as a reminder of a simpler way of life now left behind?
When first searching online for clues I found a possible gospel connection - and a unexpected link, moreover, with my native land.
In his autobiography the evangelist and composer Ira D. Sankey tells the story behind a favourite hymn, My Ain Countrie - not written by him but included in his famous collection Sacred Songs and Solos, familiar to black and white congregations alike (and still in print).
After a young Scottish couple emigrated to America the wife became ill, telling her husband: "I am wearying for my ain countrie; will ye not taik me to the sea, that I may see the ships sailing to the homeland once more?"
In a few weeks he ... took his wife East to a pleasant little cottage by the sea, whose further shore broke on the rocks that line the coast of Scotland. She would often sit and gaze wistfully at the ships sailing from the bay, one after another disappearing below the horizon on their way to her ain countrie.
Although she uttered no complaint, it was evident that she was silently pining away. [Her husband] was afraid that she would die in a foreign land; and as an effort to save her he sold his New England home, and took her back across the ocean.
She speedily recovered by the keen mountain air, the sight of purple heather, nodding bluebells, and hedge-rows white with fragrant hawthorn blossoms in bonnie Scotland, her own dear native land. To her it was home. And there is no sweeter word in any language than "home!"
Inspired by that story, Mary Lee Demarest - who had a Scottish grandfather and had been brought up by a Scottish nurse - wrote a poem which was later given a musical setting. Sankey would sing it, accompanying himself on the organ, as the warm-up for his fellow-revivalist Dwight L. Moody's sermons in Britain and the US.
Here is a sample of My Ain Countrie, the ailing wife's wish for the comfort of home transmuted by Demarest into a desire for a more profound peace.
I am far frae my hame, an’ I’m weary aftenwhiles,
For the langed for hame bringin’, an’ my Father’s welcome smiles;
An’ I’ll ne’er be fu’ content, until mine een do see
The gowden gates o’ Heav’n an’ my ain countrie.The earth is fleck’d wi’ flowers, mony tinted, fresh an’ gay
The birdies warble blithely, for my Faither made them sae:
But these sights an’ these soun’s will as naething be to me,
When I hear the angels singin’ in my ain countrie.
One problem presents itself, however: Demarest's poem-to-hymn makes no mention of a cottage by the sea or anywhere else. I suppose it's possible that the story behind the song had become so well known in its own right that the image had once been common currency, but I admit it's a long shot.
Thinking more generally about a cottage "by the sea" or simply "far away" in gospel songs or gospel-derived R&B, could it be that it might function as a kind of double exposure, halfway between a literal dwelling and a metaphor for heaven: a kind of notional antechamber for the ageing, wearying matron, a restful prelude before she succumbs to the Big Sleep itself, so that the distant son can think of her in the meantime without being oppressed by a sense of guilt?
Too much?
Anyway, then a bigger problem occurred to me: I had rashly assumed the existence of a cottage motif based solely on the evidence of two songs and one story-behind-a-song.
But there's no doubt that mothers do feature regularly in golden age gospel music. References to them, possibly interpolated into a song ("Did I treat my mother right?") could aid a black quartet's efforts to win over the all-important "Sister Flute", the generic term for the matronly members of the audience, in order to ensure an evening's success. Daniel Wolff describes the process in his biography of Sam Cooke:
If the men in the white suits do their job right, Sister Flute will start to moan ... And if the men are truly successful ... Sister Flute's moans will turn to shrieks ... and, as the spirit gathers, she may collapse, or throw herself into the arms of the deacons, all the time shouting the praises of an almighty and present God.
I couldn't find any black - or, indeed, Southern - gospel versions of My Ain Countrie ... though the fact that it's in dialect probably doesn't help. You can find a 1911 recording by William MacEwan, described as "the Original Glasgow Street Singer-Evangelist", here; As Moody and Sankey made several visits to Glasgow over the years, for months at a time, MacEwan's style may convey some of Sankey's own approach to his favourite hymn. It's not gospel singing as most of us know it nowadays, but it's not without passion.
I did, however, find a song written by John Rogers Thomas entitled Cottage by the Sea, dating from 1856, with a seeming reference to a mother praying, to judge from a 2013 performance by Frank Fairfield.
Introducing the song, he points out that a yearning for "the simpler times" was already widespread by the time of its composition:
And in each chorus he can be heard singing the lines:
And I hear my mother praying
In that cottage by the sea
which would conveniently tie A Lady Called Mother and Golden Teardrops together ... except for the fact that the original sheet music simply repeats the line "And I feel again life's morning".
Did Fairfield consider this phrase too complex or poetic a thought for a chorus and therefore likely to inhibit audience participation? It's hard to make out every detail of his introduction but - if I hear aright - he alludes to "sheet music songs that I maybe kinda mashed up a little bit", which sounds to me like a coy admission of liberties taken.
If so, was the interpolated phrase consciously borrowed from a specific gospel song?
It seems odd that, having made the point that many old songs assumed to be traditional were actually the products of professional writers, he seems, in effect, to be treating this song as though it were traditional and therefore fair game for a spot of gussying-up.
This might seem a small point but Thomas's original paean to the lasting effect of maternal love contained no reference to religion, so someone has given a parlour song a hefty nudge churchwards.
I don't know whether it was the first recording made of Cottage by the Sea but a performance by Frank Coombs from 1911 which omits the middle verse repeats the last two lines of each verse included for their respective choruses instead of sticking to the "life's morning" line - but again, no parent is heard at prayer:
John Rogers Thomas spent his life's morning in Wales so would have been doubly distanced from his early days by the time he wrote this ballad. According to wikipedia he came to America with an opera company, "became interested in the music of America that was developing" - presumably including Stephen Foster, whose career was flourishing in the 1850s - "sang and toured with Bryant's Minstrels and settled in New York City."
There is a gospel song entitled If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again which might perhaps have provided Frank Fairfield with the phrase he seems to have interpolated into Cottage by the Sea. First recorded by the country gospel group the Jenkins Family in 1924, as far as I can tell, it seems to have been especially popular with Southern gospel groups although also covered by black singers such as "Sister Kathy Marie", better known as Marie Knight, famous for her duets with Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
It's not a vital piece of information for present purposes but the bass player in this jazzy, sprightly 1948 recording of the song may be Pops Foster, who helped drive the Luis Russell Orchestra's Panama to glory almost twenty years earlier, as "the DB Trio" were otherwise known as the Sam Price Trio, credited on Up Above My Head, and including Foster on double bass.
A cottage is also referred to in the country song Home by the Sea. Recorded by the Carter Family in 1933 it, too, yearns for simpler times and includes both "by the sea" and "far away":
Then give me back my dear old home
That old home by the sea
And I never will wander far away
From my home, my dear old cottage home
It's notable for this image:
Yes, my heart is like a humming sea shell
That tells of its birth where e'er it roams
I will sing of my cottage by the seashore
Of my home, my dear old cottage home
The song is credited to "Carter", presumably A.P. Carter, which may mean that it's a lightly tweaked, or even untweaked, traditional number.
What conclusions, then, if any, can be drawn from the disparate recordings discussed above? I suppose that Johnny Carter or Bunky Redding, writers of Golden Teardrops, could have lifted the "cottage by the sea" line from one of the above sources but if the wish to return to a happier, simpler time is far from a recent phenomenon there may well be other songs which could have served as a prompt.
It may also be that the phrase in the Flamingos' song subsequently inspired another doo wop group. There is a doo wop song entitled Cottage by the Sea, recorded by a Washington DC group hitherto unknown to me, the Incas.
According to the Doo-Wop-Groups blog the Incas, who patterned themselves on the Dells, were formed in 1956 and split up in 1958 - too late, in other words, to have been an inspiration to Johnny Carter or Bunky Redding for 1953's Golden Teardrops but could it be the Incas (or their composer, if not a member of the group) got the idea for the song from that throwaway detail in Golden Teardrops rather than one of those older sources?
Anyway, here it is. Like its earlier namesake, the song looks back to a simpler time - not childhood in this case, but a failed romance: "Can't have any time like before", the singer declares in a fleeting moment of Hardyesque clarity before seeming to revert to adolescence and declare his intention to "wait there for evermore till you come back to me".
The sentiment is not too far along the coast from Golden Teardrops, which has been described by doo wop authority Billy Vera as a junkie's overblown, self-indulgent regret for his behaviour; apparently that's how the group used to introduce it to audiences.
And so my fitful researches come to an end - without, I admit, arriving at much of a conclusion. More details about the Flamingos' classic, part of a series covering all the group's Chance and Parrot recordings, can be found in the post below:
This is the YouTube channel which includes A Lady Called Mother along with many other high- quality transfers of gospel and doo wop group sides:
Black Vocal Group Harmony (Robert Bowe)
Below is a link to an article about the Swan Silvertones by Tony Cummings on the Cross Rhythms website. He emphasises the central importance to the group of Claude Jeter (above top, second from right), who formed the group in 1938, almost twenty years before their hit-making run on Vee-Jay:
The Swan Silvertones: Gospel Roots
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