G.R. Combs Ballad Collection, 1907-1930

Gilbert R. Combs (1886-1966) compiled his collection of songs and ballads in part from those he heard growing up in Eastern Kentucky, and also from his acquaintance with gospel music and spirituals from several southern states. The collection includes some biographical notes covering Combs' early life, and his own recollections of his early childhood and description of traditional songs in mountain settings. The Rev. Gilbert Reynolds Combs, according to his own account, was born in a cabin in Owsley County, just over the county line from Breathitt County, on August 18, 1886. At age sixteen he left home for Berea, where he studied for seven years. He worked on the Berea College farm and graduated in 1904 from Berea's vocational school (having studied woodworking). In 1904 The Historical Register lists him as teaching in Booneville and living in Berea. By 1907 he had completed the two-year course at the Berea Academy, and then spent two more years taking college classes at Berea. He transferred to Kentucky Wesleyan College and graduated there as Valedictorian in 1911. While attending Vanderbilt the following year on a scholarship, he won the Founders Medal for oratory. Kentucky Wesleyan granted him a Doctor of Divinity degree in 1926. (Historical Register of Berea College, 1904, 1916; George Bain, biographical sketch) In 1913 Combs was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Between 1911 and 1928 he pastored three churches in Kentucky, including the First Methodist Church of Lexington. From 1928-1954 he pastored churches in North Carolina; in 1954 he was at Love's Methodist Church in Walkertown, North Carolina, according The Berea Alumnus (25:11). During three of the years Combs spent at Berea, Prof. James Watt Raine, a Scot who began teaching English at Berea College in 1906, collected ballads from Berea students. (Raine's list of known contributors does not include G.R. Combs, but does include some Combs sources.) Although he may not have taken classes from Raine while he was at Berea, Combs had opportunity to realize that the songs he had taken for granted as a child were of interest to scholars. At some point he began to collect them himself. Carl Sandburg's 1927 collection, The American Songbag, cites G. R. Combs as the source of one version of "Red River Valley." Sandburg notes that "In a corner of his church study Mr. Combs has a collection of more than 300 mountaineer songs," and adds that "his singing of their ballads and ditties is quiet and convincing."