Carrie Grover was born in Nova Scotia in 1879, surrounded by traditional song. When she was 14 the family moved to Maine, but Carrie continued to sing the songs of her birthplace until she died in 1959. A book of her songs, A Heritage of Songs, was published in the early 1950s and she left an unfinished manuscript of songs when she died. Now Julie Mainstone Savas has put together a website celebrating Carrie Grover’s life and her songs – The Carrie Grover Project, [https://carriegroverproject.com]. As well as a detailed account of the life of the singer (and fiddler), there are PDFs of her family songs, as well as two well-made podcasts by Savas about the project, Grover, her songs and the context. These include some recordings of Grover, recorded by Alan Lomax.
As a bonus (and to make up for not having included the ‘Website of the Month’ feature in these newsletters as regularly as I should) I would like to go back to the blog of the American Folklife Centre, which I have mentioned before. Here you can find an excellent pair of articles by Steve Winnick, describing how Paul Brady discovered Carrie Grover’s version of ‘Arthur McBride’ in a copy of her book and took it back to Ireland where it became a regular feature in his performances with Planxty and with Andy Irvine. It has also been picked up by many other performers. This is a great study of the way in which a song has made its way into the revival repertoire and reinforces the value of this blog. You can find the first article HERE and there is a link at the end of it to the second.