I only came across Clifton Hicks quite recently after which I featured the track Prodigal Son, from his 2015 Copperhill album, in our Folk Show (Episode 17).
As I mentioned then, Hicks was born in Jacksonville, Florida (1985) and learned to play the banjo from Ernie Williams of Sand Mountain, Alabama and George Gibson of Knott County, Kentucky.
It’s from Gibson that he learned the folk ballad Barbara Allen (Child 84, Roud 54), a familiar ballad both in Britain and Ireland as well as the US. In Steve Roud and Julia Bishop’s bountiful tome The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs they say “‘Barbara Allen’ is far away the most widely collected traditional song in the English language – equally popular in England, Scotland and Ireland, and with hundreds of versions collected over the years in North America.”
This version of the well-travelled ballad is, not surprisingly, different to that found in The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs which Hicks plays in gDGAD “Moonshiner tuning”.
Barbara Allen (Verison learned from George Gibson)
In Scarlet Town where I was born
There was a fair maid dwelling,
She was the fairest of them all
And her name was Barbara Allen
All in the merry month of May
When sweet buds were a swelling,
Young William on his death bed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen
He sent his man into the town
To the house where she was dwelling,
My master’s sick and he sends me here
If your name be Barbara Allen
So slowly she went to his home
So slowly she drew nigh him,
And all she said when she got there
Young man I fear you’re dying
Do you remember in Scarlet Town
In yonder tavern drinking,
You gave a health to the ladies all
But you slighted Barbara Allen
Yes I remember and remember it well
In Scarlet’s Tavern drinking,
I gave a health to the ladies all
But my heart to Barbara Allen
She turned her face unto the wall
She turned her back upon him,
Adieu adieu to all my friends
Be kind to Barbara Allen
As she was on the high road home
Those death bells were a knelling,
And every note did seem to cry
Hard hearted Barbara Allen
https://cliftonhicks.bandcamp.com/