“Sweet Sunny South” is a sentimental song about the South that seems to have struck the right chord with Southerners, for it has turned up often in the repertory of traditional singers in the twentieth century. Perhaps what made it compelling is the combination of the sentiments and the beautiful old folktune through which they are expressed. A pre Civil War poem later set to music, the song first seems to appear in print in 1853 as Take Me Home. W.L. Bloomfield is credited as composer and Edwin P. Christy (Christy’s Minstrels) as a performer who sings the song on stage. An 1856 cover published by Blackmore Brothers lists Bloomfield as the writer and Eugene Raymond as the arranger. The tune is akin to the older “Hicks’s Farewell” tune that appears in nineteenth-century shape-note hymnals. For twentieth-century sets, see Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachian). A well-known hillbilly recording of the song and tune from the 1920s is by Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, reissued on County 505
Songs with Banjo from Harold Hagler
