Music provides insight on history

Visitors to the Red House Interpretive Center in Cape Girardeau were treated to the sounds of the past Tuesday night. Mary Green Vickery, a singer/songwriter/historian, presented a lecture and performance titled "Songs Lewis and Clark Might Have Sung."

The program told the history of songs that were popular in America around 1804, when the Corps of Discovery started its journey from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean under the guidance of William Clark and Merriwether Lewis.

The event was the third of four Lewis and Clark historical lectures taking place in Cape Girardeau this month.

Vickery is an independent historical music scholar from South Dakota. In her performances, she encourages audience participation, teaching them the choruses to songs for what she calls "18th-century karaoke."

The singer chose a variety of early American songs to perform, from ballads to patriotic marches to folk tunes. With each song was a history lesson.

One of the tunes Vickery performed was "The Tipler's Defense," an 18th-century drinking song from England that made its way to America. Whiskey was important to the members of the Corps of Discovery, Vickery said.

"I think some of those really bad days on the river, thinking of the whiskey they would get at night really kept them going," she said.

The singer used guitar and prerecorded piano as accompaniment. Patriotic tunes like "Chester" and "Hail! Columbia," a song that was called the nation's first national anthem, gave insight into the early Americans' sense of rebellion against English tyranny.

Vickery chose to end the program with a pop quiz, having the audience fill in words on her own song about Lewis and Clark sung to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."

The Lewis and Clark lecture series will continue at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Hirsch Community Room at the Cape Girardeau Public Library. Jeffrey Smith, a history professor at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo., will present a program on Clark.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182