Blue Mountain Ballads - (1991) YR1517
Tennessee Williams
Four songs for medium high voice and piano
These texts remain under copyright and are therefore not fully reproduced herein.
i. Sugar in the Cane [ 2 pages, circa 1' 35" ]
I'm red pepper in a shaker,
bread that's waitin' for the baker....
ii. Heavenly Grass [ 2 pages, circa 1' 45" ]
My feet took a walk in heavenly grass.
All day while the sky shone clear as glass....
iii. Cabin [ 2 pages, circa 1' 15" ]
The cabin was cozy and hollyhocks grew
Bright by the door till his whisper crept through....
iv. Lonesome Man [ 3 pages, circa 1' 20" ]
My chair rock rocks by the door all day
but nobody ever stops my way....
[ 9 pages, circa 5' 55" ]
Copyright © 1998 by Yelton Rhodes Music (BMI), Los Angeles. All international rights reserved.
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was one of the most prominent American playwrights after World War II. His deep southern accent made him a target of his university classmates who gave him the nickname "Tennessee," though he was born in Mississippi and raised there and in Missouri. In 1928 as a late teen Williams traveled with his grandfather to Europe and inspired by its atmosphere wrote much poetry, a fact little known to most theater goers for whom Williams is a playwright only. In that same year he had his first homosexual experience, he confided later in an interview.
Confronting severe mental and physical breakdown in the 1960s, Williams' plays were more or less successful at first, as his work in Hollywood and especially The Glass Menagerie in 1945 earned him his reputation as an author of the first rank. Williams examined in his controversial and poetic plays turbulent emotional and sexual forces, physical and spiritual needs, and created such unforgettable characters as Maggie in the Pulitzer Prize winning plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (195) and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).
Williams wrote, "I deal with the decadence of the South. I don't ever deal with the decadence of the North. It's too disgusting. But I'm writing about a South that is fast becoming a memory." [ 1 ] The character of these songs is meant to evoke some of that color, emotion and content.
These song settings are individual and yet stylistically American. Rubati and individual interpretation are encouraged throughout the four settings. The performer is encouraged to add a measure of individuality to their performance.
I. Sugar in the Can Excerpt 
The first of the four songs is in 5/4 and yet feels like a 4/4 blues form albeit with a written-in ritardando in each measure.
The songs are available from Yelton Rhodes Music in Los Angeles, as catalogue number YR1517.
[ 1 ] In "The Twilight of Tennessee Williams: A Portrait of the Playwright in the Last States of a Great Career," by Scot Heller, Scot. People Weekly, 19 (14 March 1983).
