Here’s a song that we likely wouldn’t even know about were it not for the diligence and the curiosity of a researcher who was far from an ordinary young woman of her time.
Born in 1892 to a prominent family in Paducah, Ky, Mary Guthrie Wheeler was destined from the start for adventure. Rather than settling into a quiet, conventional life, she embraced the extraordinary. And her most enduring adventure took place right at home, collecting the songs and stories in the hardscrabble life of the men and women who worked along the Ohio River.
Here’s one she found for her 1944 book, “Steamboatin’ Days.”
