Show #8: THE THREE D'S, Mormon Folk Songs
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MEL BERNAM (ANNOUNCER): Here is Radio New York Folk Music Worldwide. A program devoted to the best in folk music throughout the world, showcasing the top performers and authorities in the field. Now your host for Folk Music Worldwide, Alan Wasser.

ALAN WASSER (HOST): Welcome again to Folk Music Worldwide from the studios of Radio New York Worldwide. The group we have today are performing live in the studios of Radio New York Worldwide. We're not using records.

The group is called The Three D's, they're a young group out of the west of the United States, and if you guys are ready, perhaps you could give us a sample of how you play. How about "Wait For The Wagon?"

[Song performance: The Three D's: Wait for the Wagon]

Lyrics:

Will you come with me my Phillis, dear,
To yon blue mountain free,
Where the blossoms smell the sweetest,
Come rove along with me.
It's ev'ry Sunday morning when I am by your side,
We'll jump into the wagon, and all take a ride.

Wait for the Wagon, wait for the wagon,
Wait for the wagon and we'll all take a ride.

Where the river runs like silver,
And the birds they sing so sweet,
I have a cabin, Phillis, and something good to eat.
So listen to my story, it will relieve my heart,
Come jump into the Wagon, and off we will start.

Wait for the wagon, wait for the wagon,
Wait for the wagon and we'll all take a ride.

Do you believe, dear Phillis,
Old Mike with all his wealth,
Can make you half so happy,
As I with youth and health?
We'll have a little farm, a horse, a pig, a cow,
And you can mind the dairy, and I will guide the plough.

So wait for the wagon, wait for the wagon,
Wait for the wagon and we'll all take a ride.

Your lips are red as poppies,
Your hair so smooth and neat,
All braided up with daisies,
And hollyhocks so sweet.
It's ev'ry Sunday morning, when I am by your side,
We'll jump into the Wagon, and we'll all take a ride.

So wait for the wagon, wait for the wagon,
Wait for the wagon and we'll all take a ride.

Together, on life's journey, we'll travel 'til we stop,
And if we have no trouble, we'll reach the happy top.
So come with me sweet Phillis, my dear, my lovely bride,
We'll jump into the Wagon, and all take a ride.

Wait for the wagon, wait for the wagon,
Wait for the wagon and we'll all take a ride.

[end of music]

ALAN: That was Wait for the Wagon performed by the Three D's, who are just coming over here now. The first thing we ought to do is introduce the group. Duane, perhaps you ought to handle the introductions. You are the leader of the group.

DUANE HIATT (GUEST 1): Well thank you Alan. My name is Duane Hiatt. On my right is Denis Sorensen and on my left is Dick Davis, hence the name The Three D's as you can see, Dick, Denis, and Duane. The name sort of stands for other things too. We like to say that we have dimension in folk singing.

We specialize in Western folk songs, like the one you just heard, and branch out from there into other types of folk singing, and even to everything from slapstick comedy to semi-classical music. So I think we have a certain amount of dimension specializing in Western songs.

ALAN: Well, you got a good background for Western music, don't you? You were actually all from the West.

DUANE HIATT: We were born and reared out there on Western folk songs, just about. We come from Utah, out in the, what is called the Inter-Mountain West. Not quite as far as you can go, but far enough to be plenty darn western out there.

ALAN: Actually, where are you from? What particular town?

DUANE HIATT: What town? Dick and I grew up together in Payson, Utah, and Denis we got together with him three years ago around a campfire. He comes from Ogden, Utah.

ALAN: Well actually, where did your group get started as a singing group?

DUANE HIATT: Denis, why don't you take over here and tell a little bit about how we got together?

DENIS SORENSEN (GUEST 2): Well, through a mutual friend one evening, we had a camping outing up in the Utah mountains, above Payson where Dick and Duane were born. And they happened to bring along their battered guitars and we got singing things like Waltzing Matilda and a few other of the current folk songs, and the next week they called up and asked if I'd like to join them in preparing a song for a travelling group that was working out of the university at that time, which we all three attended.

ALAN: Which university?

DENIS SORENSEN: This is Brigham Young University there in Provo, Utah.

ALAN: That's a Mormon University, are you three all Mormons? Or...

DENIS SORENSEN: Yes, we're all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which is the formal name. Mormon is kind of the nickname given to the church. And we're all graduates of Brigham Young University, which is a school of about 12,000 students now.

ALAN: Well, let me ask Dick here. Has any of your music Mormon roots?

DICK DAVIS (GUEST 3): Oh, yes. We've just completed an album [The Ironhorse: Three D's Sing Mormon Folk Ballads] actually through the Brigham Young University movie studio department. And it features actual Mormon folks songs.

Now these aren't the hymns that you'd usually find in a hymnal, but rather the songs that they would sing going along in their wagons or around their campfires in the evening, and many of these songs actually tell the history of the trek of the Mormon pioneers as they crossed the continent to Utah.

ALAN: Well, perhaps you could give us a good sample of that now. What would you suggest is a good Mormon-type folk song?

DICK DAVIS: Well, perhaps we could sing On The Way to California, which at that time didn't really mean California as we know it now, but rather upper California which included Nevada and Utah, Idaho and California as it now stands.

So the Mormon pioneer singing this song really meant on their way to Utah as we would think of it now. But here is it anyway, On The Way to California.

[Song performance: The Three D's: On The Way to California]

Lyrics:

Now in the spring we'll leave Nauvoo
And our journey will pursue
Bid the robbers all farewell
And then let them go to heaven or hell.

So on the way to California
In the spring we'll take our journey
Pass between the Rocky Mountains
Far beyond the Arkansas fountains.

Down on Nauvoo's green grassy plain
They burned our houses and our grain
But when they thought we were hell bent
They asked for it from the government.

So on the way to California
In the spring we'll take our journey
Pass between the Rocky Mountains
Far beyond the Arkansas fountains.

For Governor Ford with mind so small
He has no room for a soul at all
He neither can be damned or blessed
If heaven or hell should do its test.

So on the way to California
In the spring we'll take our journey
Pass between the Rocky Mountains
Far beyond the Arkansas fountains.

On the way to California
In the spring we'll take our journey
Pass between the Rocky Mountains
Far beyond the Arkansas fountains

[end of music]

ALAN: That was On The Way to California, an old Mormon folk song as sung by the Three D's. Perhaps Duane, you can tell us something about that song, the background of it.

DUANE HIATT: The Mormon church of course was founded back around in 1830. And during this time the West was yet to be won and there was a lot of frontier and a lot of open country, and still a lot of rather hostile country to be won over. Well, the Mormons went out to this area in what was then, a place called Nauvoo, Illinois.

It's at a bend in the Mississippi River that was strictly swamp land when they came, but they worked very hard as they had done in several other places, to build up this swamp land and to make the city they called Nauvoo, which meant "the city beautiful," and it was a beautiful city.

As they stayed there, the people around them grew jealous of the things that they had and grew to dislike them exceedingly and they drove them out in the middle of the winter. So this is why they say that, "In the spring we'll leave Nauvoo." Actually it was pretty darn early spring, it was around about February and they crossed the Mississippi River on the ice.

But they felt like they could...they had felt they could depend upon the officers of law and order and the state militia and such things as this. But as I say, in a new country, out West where things were just getting rolling, this sort of organization wasn't as we know it today.

And so they felt that they had been kind of double-crossed by the state militia. Instead of protecting them, they had allowed mobs and robbers to come and take their families, to take their homes, take their possessions and drive them out, in what was then Utah, a country that nobody wanted.

And so they sing this song. It says, "On the way to California." As Dick says, what they really meant was just on the way west, anywhere to get away and to be alone and worship and live as they pleased.

Governor Ford was governor of Illinois at this time and he received the most part of their wrath because they felt, as I said, that he had double-crossed them by not protecting them from the people they felt were mobs and robbers and who took from them things that were rightfully theirs.

That's essentially what the song is saying and with a deep feeling, such as this song was born out of, with the kind of culture, a very frontier, a very rugged, or rather wild sort of a culture, the sort of person you had to be to survive in it, sort of the country in that period of time., that's what the song reflects. Some fairly rough talk about some fairly rough feelings about some fairly rough happenings that had happened. I think that's about it, Alan.

ALAN: Well, why don't we take a moment out here just for a break and then come back and talk to The Three D's some more on Folk Music Worldwide.

All right, this is Alan Wasser again, back at Folk Music Worldwide. We'll be talking with The Three D's again in just a second but first let me say that if any of our listeners want to write in, we'd very much appreciate it. We're always anxious to get letters.

We really want to know if anybody is listening out there. It's the only way we have of knowing. So just write in to me, Alan Wasser, or to the show, Folk Music Worldwide, Radio New York Worldwide, New York 19, USA.

Well, let's get back to talking to The Three D's, young Mormon folk singers. What are you doing in the East now? I know your main area of operations is out West. Perhaps Denis, you could tell us.

DENIS SORENSEN: Well, at present, we're involved in a concert which for the most part is sponsored by our church. We've done a series of youth conferences, and we'll do a total of about 20 shows here in the eastern part of the United States and into Canada.

We'll be up as far as Bangor, Maine, over in Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Harrisburg here in New York. Up into Toronto, Canada and in other parts of New England.

It's quite an extensive tour and when we finish here, then we'll go and continue, a like tour in the West, down in California, around the San Francisco Bay area, up into the Northwest and up into Vancouver, Canada on that end.

So this is essentially the type of thing we do. We're back here specifically for youth conferences. We play to groups which are generally of an age of 14 to 19, and present what we call a dimensional folk song variety act.

ALAN: Well, I understand you are traveling through the East in a rather unusual manner. Perhaps you can tell us something about that. Duane, you wanna...

DUANE HIATT: We are. We find that it gets more unusual the bigger the city we come in. We travel in what's known out west as a camper and what must be known out in the East as some kind of an oddball vehicle conveyance, because what we have is a pick up truck and on the back of this truck has been built a trailer sort of a thing. It sleeps four people and it has a stove and a sink and various things that we can survive on.

And this is the way we travel, and when it comes time to sleep then we just park the thing somewhere, in someone's backyard or along the street and we sleep there. And we were doing fine until we come into such cities as New York and Boston. Places like this where this is, as I say, kind of an oddball conveyance and we tend to get stared at.

Of course, we don't mind too much. We think we'll paint our name on the side of it and become famous, if not for folk singing, at least for riding an oddball conveyance.

ALAN: Have you actually parked it and slept in it on the streets of New York City?

DUANE HIATT: Is this confidential? Yes, we did.

ALAN: Yes, well, it is unusual, I'll agree with you. Incidentally, I understand you've done quite a bit of traveling, each of you separately for the Mormon church, different parts of the world. Duane?

DUANE HIATT: Yes, we were on what's known in our church as a mission. It's perhaps a little different sort of a thing than you generally think of a mission, because the church asks young men at the age of 19, and young women if they're available, if they are free to do it at the age of 21, to go out and spend either two years or two and a half years, depending on whether you have to learn a new language, in a foreign area preaching the gospel as we understand it as members of our church.

And I had the opportunity to go down into the Tonga Islands, which everyone says, "Where is that?" And I said, "Where is that," too.

It's a very small group of islands, about a hundred islands off the coast of Fiji, between Fiji and Samoa down in that area, and there I learned the Tongan language, a Polynesian dialect and spent two and half wonderful years talking to people about what we think is a way to be happy.

That's essentially what it amounts to. And each of the other two guys have also done the same. Denis, maybe you can tell us about your experiences and where you were.

DENIS SORENSEN: Well, from March of 1957 until September of 1959, I had the privilege of serving in Brazil, which is a magnificent country in South America to which I understand we'll be broadcasting. A country of about 70 million people where they speak Portuguese.

I had the privilege also of learning to speak Portuguese and spent my two and a half years telling the people of Brazil what we Mormons think it is to be happy.

ALAN: Well you can speak Portuguese, why don't you try? Why don't you give us a pitch in Portuguese for a couple of letters to Folk Music Worldwide. Let's see what happens.

DENIS SORENSEN: [Portuguese]

ALAN: Well, let's see if anybody in Brazil heard you. Dick, where were you?

DICK DAVIS: I served in what is called the Northwestern States mission that covers Oregon and Washington and part of Idaho here in the United States, and then served 8 months up in Alaska in Fairbanks and Anchorage, where I got mighty cold as we were out calling from house to house.

And upon returning from our mission, of course, we're all three married now and have children. This is about the extent of my mission.

ALAN: You guys sounded like you beat us. I was a Peace Corps man and I see you guys sort of came way before us in going out and spreading your beliefs. Well, let's get back to this, good music. I understand you do some modern-type songs besides the old traditional? Any examples of that, Duane?

DUANE HIATT: Yes, we do, Al. And here again, out West as out East here and everywhere, folk music is as modern as today, though it has its roots in perhaps past events as some songs that we have sung for you today.

But still, people still feel great feelings and there are still great people to be sung about. And so we find music, some of it coming out of plays and shows, some of it being born right among the people, some of it written for records but still, that which seems to strike a familiar chord among the people, they sort of take to their hearts and adapt it, though it may be written for another cause, they adapt it and make it into folk music.

And I think that is what has happened in this next song. A modern folk song about, again, about the West and a song that many people I'm sure are familiar with. It's a song about the wind, and the rain, and the fire and it says that they call the wind Mariah.

[Song performance: The Three D's: They Call the Wind Mariah]

Lyrics:

They say out here they have a name
For wind and rain and fire
Now the rain is Joe
And the fire is Tess
And they call the wind Mariah.

Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)

They say out here that they have a name
For wind and rain and fire
The rain is Joe,
The fire is Tess
And they call the wind Mariah.

Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)

Mariah blows the stars around
Sets the clouds a-flyin'
Mariah makes
The mountains sound like folks was out there dyin'.

Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)

They call the wind Mariah
Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)

Before I knew Mariah's name
And heard her wail and whinin'
I had a gal and she love me
And the sun
Was always shinin'.

Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)

But now I gone and left my gal
I left her far behind me
And I'm so lost
So gol' darn lost
There ain't no one can find me.

Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)

They call the wind
Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)

Now I'm a lost and lonely man
Without a star to guide me
Mariah blow my love to me
And I need my gal beside me
Mariah (Mariah)

Yes I'm a lost and lonely man
Without a star to guide me
Mariah blow my love to me
I need my gal beside me.

Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)

They call the wind
Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)

They say out here they have a name
For wind and fire only
But when you're all alone and lost,
There ain't no word for lonely.

Mariah (Mariah)
Mariah (Mariah)

They call the wind
Mariah

[end of music]

ALAN: That was Mariah as sung by The Three D's. Duane, maybe you can tell us something. That is a modern song from a modern play, but what is it that makes it a folk song now, what is it about the style?

DUANE HIATT: This gets a little bit hard to define of course, Alan. But we figured that a song that, as I said before, a song the people sort of take to their heart that seems to inspire them and describes some of the feelings that they have in a musical version, this we would consider to be a folk song.

You maybe noticed that the style the Western folk sing is just a little bit different from the Eastern folk singer. It's a little bit smoother and a little less of the nasal sound that you usually hear and we like to think that we're capturing a little bit of this as we go along.

ALAN: Well, I'm afraid we're just about of time again, but I want to thank you very much, Duane Hiatt, Denis Sorensen, and Dick Davis, The Three D's, for coming in and appearing. This is Alan Wasser.

MEL BERNAM (ANNOUNCER): This has been Folk Music Worldwide. Devoted to the best in folk music throughout the world and spotlighting top performers and authorities in the field. If you have any suggestions, requests or comments, why not write in to Folk Music Worldwide, Radio New York WRUL, New York City 19, USA. This has been a Music Worldwide presentation of Radio New York Worldwide.

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