The Anthology of American Folk Music
Volume 1: Ballads, Track 2

FATAL FLOWER GARDEN
Nelstone's Hawaiians

Recorded Atlanta, GA: November 30, 1929
Hubert Nelson, vocal and steel guitar; James D. Touchstone, vocal and guitar
Originally released on Victor 40193

(alternate titles: The Jew's Daughter; Sir Hugh)

Hubert Nelson and James D. Touchstone combined their last names to create the name of their group - Nelstone's Hawaiians. Not a great deal is known about them except that they were from Southern Alabama. Country music scholar Charles Wolfe believes they were the first group from their area to use a steel guitar. They were also the first to record what is now a country music standard, "Just Because."

During the 1920s, recordings featuring the Hawaiian steel guitar were quite popular. The "crying" sound of the slide on the strings of the steel guitar, a sound similar to that of bottleneck guitar playing, made it a popular instrument. For this reason, electric steel guitars are still a standard instrument in country and western music. Hawaiian guitar playing caught on domestically shortly after Hawaii's entrance into the American empire in the years preceding World War I (Bill Malone, Country Music USA, pg. 26). Hawaiian Frank Ferera, who came to the United States in 1914 as part of the Panama Pacific Exhibition, claims to have introduced the instrument on the mainland (Malone, pg. 64).


FOR ADDITIONAL RECORDINGS OF NELSON AND TOUCHSTONE: see the collection Oh My Little Darling: Folk Song Types (NW 245a).
 
OTHER RECORDED VERSIONS INCLUDE:
British: as Fatal Flower Garden: Peggy Seeger (ARG 70a); as Sir Hugh: Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd (RVR 12-621a).