Civil War Songs

Bobby Horton, one cassette.

Bobby Horton, the tireless minstrel of the Lost Cause, is back with a fifth volume of songs of the Confederacy, and it says a good deal about the quality of Civil War-era music that this tape is every bit as appealing as its predecessors. Among the numbers are a North Carolina ballad that wisely borrows the wonderful tune “Annie Laurie”; “Do They Miss Me at Home,” an immensely popular song written nine years before the fighting started; and an engaging oddity, “The Infantry,” a tribute to that organization written to the tune of “O Tannenbaum” by Gen. Bernard Bee, a South Carolinian who took a mortal wound at Bull Run. Horton plays all the instruments- mandolin, fiddle, guitar, concertina, banjo—and sings the songs with lilt and sincerity. Although an Alabaman with deep roots in Southern soil, Horton has also produced three fine volumes of Union Army songs.