Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls?

DESCRIPTION: "Why do you bob you hair, girls, It is an awful shame To rob the head God gave you To bear the flapper's name." The singer proclaims that "short hair belongs to me," and maintains that women with long hair will be commended by God
AUTHOR: Blind Alfred Reed (1880-1956)
EARLIEST DATE: 1930 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: hair
FOUND IN: US(SE,So)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
[Randolph 644, "Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls" -- deleted in the second printing]
Randolph/Cohen-OzarkFolksongs-Abridged, pp. 442-443, "Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls?" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 644)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 56, "Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls" (1 text)
DT, WHYBOBHR*
Roud #7842
RECORDINGS:
J. E. Mainer's Mountaneers, "Why Do You Bob Your Hair Girls?" (Bluebird B-6792/Montgomery Ward 7131, 1937)
Blind Alfred Reed, "Why Do You Bob Your Hair Girls?" (Victor 21360, 1928); compare "Why Don't You Bob Your Hair Girls-No. 2" (Victor V-40196, 1930)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Good Old Days of Adam and Eve" (theme) and references there
cf. "The Bobbed Hair" (theme)
NOTES [322 words]: Needless to say, there is no scriptural rule mandating long hair -- Paul (1 Cor. 11:15) calls long hair a woman's pride, but nowhere requires it; indeed, in 11:6, he offers shaving the head as an alternative to wearing a veil!
It's hard to imagine how such a heavy-handed piece came to be traditional -- but I suppose anyone stupid enough to believe the arguments it contains could also think them persuasive.
According to the Digital Tradition, this is by Blind Alfred Reed. Norm Cohen reaffirms this, and credits Reed also with the sequel. W. K. McNeil, editor, Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music, Routledge, 2005, also credits it to Reed.
It took me a long time to accept this -- why would a blind man produce such a piece? There is good reason to think that we have evolved to think long hair attractive in a woman, but Reed wouldn't see that, let alone believe in the evolutionary biology of it! But the claim is so strongly attested that I have now credited Reed with the song.
According to McNeil, p. 311, Reed was born in Floyd, Virginia, and was blind from birth. His family soon moved to Princeton, West Virginia. He played fiddle, guitar, banjo, and mandolin. He made his living mostly as a street singer, singing his own songs and traditional material. Somewhere in there, he married, since he had a son Arville Reed who recorded with him and with others.
After hearing about a train wreck, Reed wrote what we call "The Wreck of the Virginian Number Three" (his title being just "The Wreck of the Virginian") and contacted Victor about recording it. He recorded it and three religious songs at Bristol, Tennessee, on July 28, 1927, about two months after the event. This song was recorded at his second session, on December 19, 1927, and became one of his best-known songs. Because of the Depression, he did not record after 1929; his music was not really resurrected until the 1970s, long after his death in 1956. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: Br3056

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