Mountain Magic Jack Tales II

These are Jackie’s liner notes from the LP release of these recordings.

Dear Listener,

I must have been in elementary school the very first time I heard a Jack Tale. The elementary school librarian read the stories to the classes from a book. The mountain dialect was used, the librarian was black, so black dialect was incorporated in the reading of the story. This changed the Jack Tales and made them funnier and, of course, a little more interesting.

I became a storyteller in 1972 and thought about telling the Jack Tales, and went about searching for the book and found it. The stories as they were in the book were not so interesting for telling or reading. So I quickly tossed them aside for other folk tales. As I traveled through the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, I met people who had grown up knowing those stories, hearing those stories, and who were quite easily persuaded to tell them. The tellings that you hear on this recording are a composite of mountain tellers, librarian tellers of long ago, and Jackie Torrence.

The MOUNTAIN MAGIC is just that. Jack is a wonderful character. He uses magic in all of his adventures.

As you listen, let Jack’s magic, the magic of story listening, go together to make MOUNTAIN MAGIC weave its magic for you.

Yours truly,

The Story Lady Jackie Torrence

1) Soldier Jack (25:10)

This is the story of Jack as an adult. He becomes a soldier, a civilian and marries the King’s daughter. But not without close encounters with haints, kings, and eventually death. I tell many tales of the mountains and of Jack, but this one is the favorite!

2) Jack Goes Out To Seek His Fortune (25:00)

In this story we meet and know a little more about Jack’s brothers, Tom and Will. All three of them go out to prove themselves worthy of their father’s fortune. Their encounters with a wicked king prove death-defying.

Related Albums

Mountain Magic Jack Tales I

Country Characters

Tales For Scary Times

Flying Africans

1. Soldier Jack 25:10
2. Jack Goes Out to Seek His Fortune 25:00

Produced by Michael Robert Frank and Jackie Torrence

Recorded and Mixed at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago, Illinois, August 26, 1984
Todd Colburn and Craig O’Donnell, engineers

CD Design by Al Brandtner • Photography by D. Shigley

Special appreciation to Jackie Torrence for her captivating way of storytelling;
Thanks to Bruce Kaplan of Flying Fish Records for his advice and encouragement and to Dana Morris for her patience and creativity in designing the original album art.
Special appreciation to Jackie Torrence for her captivating way of storytelling; Thanks to Bruce Kaplan of Flying Fish Records for his advice and encouragement and to Dana Morris for her patience and creativity in the original design.

© P 1985 EARWIG MUSIC COMPANY, INC.

For more information about storytelling, contact The International Storytelling Center, 116 West Main Street, Jonesborough, Tennessee 37659. www.storytellingcenter.net