Dillard Chandler (April 16, 1907 – January 24, 1992) was an American Appalachian Folk singer from Madison County, North Carolina.
[2][3] During the American folk music revival in the 1960s, John Cohen traveled to Western North Carolina to research and record traditional ballad singers.
[5] The New York Times describes Dark Holler as "traditional songs about love and murder usually traceable to England, a century or more before, but sung in a style rooted in the region: the singers all stretch out, irregularly, on vowels of their choosing, and add upturned yips to the end of stanzas".
[2] Cohen noted how Chandler's vocals are reflective of the Appalachian idiosyncratic style of "extended phrasing", and ending lines with a falsetto "yip".
[2] British Folklorist Cecil Sharp wrote in his research of Appalachian singers: The habit of dwelling arbitrarily upon certain notes of the melody, generally the weaker accents.
This practice, which is almost universal, by disguising the rhythm and breaking up the monotonous regularity of the phrases, produces an effect of improvisation and freedom from rule with is very pleasing.
[1] According to Cohen, in 1969 Bob Dylan knew Chandler's singing, despite the fact that Old Love Songs & Ballads had sold only fifty copies at the time.
[3] Cohen's motivation in making the film was to debunk stereotypes of Appalachian folksingers being merely the preservers of traditional British ballads, with few modern influences or styles.
He wrote in the liner notes, "With the example of Dillard in mind, I could envision ballad singers as impure—rich with contradictions and a new vitality, which could propel the songs to future generations."