Page 5 - Demo

In a career that spanned the 1920s to
the 1970s, Turner established herself
as a versatile performer: she was a historian, storyteller, and consummate musician. She composed, sang, and played the piano, guitar, drums, pots
and pans, and anything else she might find useful—and she did it all with exceptional skill. Throughout her life,
she was particularly drawn to the folk music of African Americans and for a time became nationally known as one
of the music’s foremost experts and performers. She appeared on records, radio, and television. She was invited to perform at the White House. As a white “Virginia lady” championing the music of African Americans in the still-segregated South, Turner challenged conventional assumptions about women’s roles in society in the early twentieth century. As a young woman, she frequently found herself at odds with her parents, who disapproved of her performing career, insisting that a woman’s place was in
the home. Still, Turner’s passion for the music and love of performing drove her to continue her efforts.
A Listening Ear Down
Born in Brunswick County in Southside Virginia on November 8, 1895, Lucile Barrow was the daughter of Herbert C. Barrow and Loula Poole. She grew up on her parents’ farm and attended the nearby Blackstone School for Girls. As
a child, she began learning the songs
of African Americans from her “Negro mammy” and at the nearby Mt. Zion Negro Church, where her father would frequently take house guests by carriage to hear worshipers chant and sing. Turner later recalled that she was most struck by the improvisatory nature of the music: “the singing was completely unrehearsed, but the rhythm and harmony were always perfect and beautiful.”
Her parents took note of her strong affinity for music, and in the summer of 1909, they sent her north to study piano
In 1930, Craddock-Terry sent copies of this ‘Cile Turner portrait to radio listeners free upon request.
ear down’ and began collecting songs of the ‘just gone past.’”
Within a short time, Barrow’s talents attracted attention from outside the conservatory. In 1916, she was invited
to join the Olde New England Choir of Boston, a prestigious five-person vocal ensemble. Director Frederic Perry offered her a starting salary of $35 a week—a handsome sum at the time and more than any other member of the group received. Her parents refused to allow her to take the job, echoing common middle- and upper-class attitudes about women in show business; they reportedly told her “No Virginia lady goes on
the stage!” According to Perry, she reluctantly declined the offer, saying that she had changed her mind and wanted to become a teacher—a profession that met her parents’ approval. She returned to Virginia and enrolled at Sweet Briar College.
In 1917, Lucile Barrow dropped
out of Sweet Briar and married Lawson Turner, an executive at Lynchburg-based N&W Overall Company (he was later made president). The couple settled
in Lynchburg and had three children: Lawson Jr. (b. 1919), Barrow (b. 1921), and Nancy (b. 1923). Turner gave up a promising performing career to raise her children. She joined the Junior League
of Lynchburg and in the early 1920s
was elected its president. Fellow league members were intrigued to learn of Turner’s knowledge of traditional folk songs and she was asked to perform some of them at a Junior League conference in Philadelphia.
Word of her performance traveled fast. Soon she was invited to other league meetings in the region to sing. Throughout the 1920s, she sang frequently for the regional Lions, Rotary, and Kiwanis Clubs in and around Lynchburg, performing a mixture of traditional songs and original songs composed for her by her friend, Lucille McWane Watson (who was editor of
This photo of “Aunt” Martha Payne
was found with ’Cile’s papers. She was allegedly 118 years old at the time of this photo (1944) and may well have been one of Turner’s influences.
with F. Stuart Mason and voice with
F. Morse Wemple at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Later in life, Turner
noted that most of her classmates at the conservatory were from northern states, and her accent and songs were foreign to them. By singing the songs that she had learned as a child, and by offering her interpretations of the people from whom she had learned them, she attempted
to acquaint her classmates with the life that she had known growing up. As she exhausted her supply of songs, she made a point of listening for new ones on trips home. As she put it, “‘I turned a listening
SPRING/SUMMER 2008 