Charles Owen Research notes

• from Folk Music from Nova Scotia liner notes:
• What Harm has Jesus Done You? Sung by Charles Owens and family, June 1953
• Bridgetown NS
• family would gather together at a moment’s notice and sing solo, unison or in harmony for hours
• sometimes would accompany one another or themselves on guitar or banjo, other times a capella
• Charles was 99 at the time of this recording, tall, fine looking; still walked and played the drum and testified for the Salvation Army
• recorded him again at age 100, still singing at age 101, the year of his death
• other members of his family could be seen on television, in the CBC show Land of the Old Songs, where they sing sitting on a bank beyond a lily pond
• slave descendants whose ancestors brought the song with them when they migrated from the US