If one looks at Number 1 under the Tennessee calls or responses, there is nothing to indicate especially that it was ever other than the whole as it is here written. But when he looks at Number 2 under Tennessee calls or responses he is struck with the remarkable fact that it changes right in the midst from the rhythm of the 9/8 measure to that of the 6/8 measure. Now if there be any one characteristic which is constant in Negro music it is that the rhythm remains the same throughout a given production. In a very, very few long Negro productions I have known an occasional change in the time, but never in a musical production consisting of a few measures. The only reasonable explanation to be offered for the break in the time of Number 2, as a Negro production, is that it was originally a "call" and "response"; the "call" being in a 9/8 measure and the "response" being in a 6/8 measure. Here then we have "call" and "sponse." It would look as if the Negroes in Tennessee had combined the "calls" and "sponses" into one and had used them as a whole. When we accept this view all the differences, between the Alabama and Tennessee productions, before mentioned are accounted for. Then looking again at Number 1 under Tennessee calls or responses, one sees that it would conveniently
divide right in the middle to make a "call" and "sponse." Now look at Number 3 under Tennessee calls. It was usually cried off with the syllable ah and would easily divide in the middle. I remember this "call" very distinctly from my childhood because the men giving it placed the thumb upon the larynx and made it vibrate longitudinally while uttering the cry. The thumb thus used produced a peculiar screeching and rattling tone that hardly sounded human. But the words "I want a piece of hoecake, etc.," as recorded under the "call," were often rhymed off in song with it. Thus we trace the form of "call" and "sponse" from the friendly musical greeting between laborers at a distance to the place of the formation of a crude Rhyme to go with it. I would have the reader notice that these words finally supplied were in "call" and "sponse" form. The idea is that one individual says: "I want a piece of hoecake, I want a piece o' bread," and another chimes in by way of response: "Well, I'se so tired and hongry dat I'se almos' dead."
"Ole Billie Bawlie" found as Number 4 was a little song which was used to deride men who had little ability musically to intonate "calls" and "sponses." The name "Bawlie" was applied to emphasize that the individual bawled instead of sounding
pleasant notes. It is of interest to us because it is a mixture of Rhyme and Field "call" and completes the connecting links along the line of Evolution between the "call" and "sponse" and the Rhyme.
Wherever one thing is derived from another by process of Evolution, there is the well known biological law that there ought to be every grade of connecting link between the original and the last evolved product. The law holds good here in our Rhymes. If this last statement holds good then the law must be universal. May we be permitted to digress enough to show that the law is universal because, though it is a law whose biological phase has been long recognized, not much attention has been paid to it in other fields.
It holds good in the world of inanimate matter. There are three general classes of chemical compounds: Acids, bases, and salts. But along with these three general classes are found all kinds of connecting links: Acid salts, basic salts, hydroxy acids, etc.