Barking Dog: January 12, 2023
We’re kicking off this week’s show with a few birthdays:
Mississippi Fred McDowell - 61 Highway
Born 119 years ago today
He was a hill country blues musician originally from Tennessee, though he moved to Mississippi in 1928 and continued to farm there full-time while playing music on the weekends
His music caught the attention of producers and blues fans in the early 1960s due to recordings that Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins made of him while on a field recording trip through the southern states
Within a couple of years of this attention, he became a professional musician and recording artist who played at folk festivals and toured clubs around the world
This is one of those recordings made by Alan Lomax, from September of 1959
Many similar blues songs, though Lomax notes in the liner notes that this recording is “in text, delivery, and spirit very much [McDowell’s] own”
The notes also state that Lomax typed a single word in this recording’s entry in his field log: “Perfect.”
Tex Ritter - Big Rock Candy Mountain
Ritter born 118 years ago today
He was a popular musician in the early country music scene who performed on the Grand Ole Opry and appeared in dozens of films
This song was written by Harry “Mac” McClintock in the 1920s and was originally about a hobo dreaming of paradise, though Ritter’s version was adapted into a children’s song and recorded in the 1940s
Townes Van Zandt - Ira Hayes
He was a musician from Texas, known mainly for his own compositions, though he recorded many traditional songs as well
From the 1994 album Roadsongs
Hayes was born 100 years ago today
He was an Indigenous man who belonged to the Akimel O'odham tribe, previously known as the Pima, which is primarily located in what is now southern Arizona and northern Mexico
Hayes was enlisted in the US Marine Corps during the 2nd World War in 1941, and is known particularly as one of the six figures in the famous photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
After the war ended, Hayes struggled with PTSD and alcoholism, and he died in 1955 from alcohol poisoning and exposure
This song is by Peter LaFarge, and uses Hayes’s individual story as a metonym for the issues many Indigenous veterans experienced after returning from war, receiving fewer benefits and less support than white American veterans, and little recognition for the roles they played
The Duhks - The Wagoner’s Lad
From Winnipeg
This is a traditional tune closely related to “On Top of Old Smoky”
The Duhks include it on their 2005 self-titled album
Keb’ Mo’ - Tomorrow Is a Long Time
Keb’ Mo’ is a Grammy-award-winning musician based in Nashville who’s been playing professionally since the 70s
This is a widely covered Bob Dylan song, written in 1962
Mo’ recorded for the 2015 album Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’
David Laing - Escape
He was a geologist, singer-songwriter, and educator from New Hampshire who recorded 2 albums for Folkways records in the 1970s
His father was a novelist and his mother was the poet Dilys Laing, and he inherited his love for nature and humanity from both of them
Laing wrote songs about places that were special to him, which resulted in the album this song comes from, called Magic Mountain
That one is about walking on a trail in Vermont
Gabriel Brown - John Henry
He was a Piedmont blues musician from Florida who was recorded by folklorists Zora Neale Hurston and Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1935
That same year, he moved to New York City and joined the Federal Arts Theatre under the direction of Orson Welles
This is one of several songs about the legend of John Henry, a railroad worker in West Virginia who raced a steam drill and won, but died shortly after
Woody Guthrie - John Henry
Guthrie an important figure in folk history who’s known for his songs about the Okie migrants who travelled west during the Great Depression in search of work
He’s joined by Cisco Houston on this one, recorded in 1944 for Folkways Records
The liner notes for the more recent compilation album this one appears on state that “John Henry” is probably the most famous and frequently performed American folksong, and that the Smithsonian has more than 180 recordings of it in its collection
Eric Bibb - John Henry
Bibb is a musician from New York who grew up surrounded by traditional music because his father, Leon Bibb, was part of the American folk revival of the 1960s
Off his 2011 album Blues, Ballads & Work Songs
Willy Mitchell - Call of the Moose
Indigenous musician born in New York in the 50s after his Algonquin and Mohawk parents were refused admittance to a hospital in Cornwall, Ontario
In January 1969 a police officer shot him in the head during a situation involving stolen Christmas lights
He used the money from the resulting settlement to buy a guitar, and formed the Desert River Band, with whom he recorded and toured during the 1970s
This song is included on the 2014 compilation album Native North America
Tia Blake - Hangman
Real name was Christiana Wallman
Recorded one album in Paris, spent most of her life as a writer
Also recorded a number of demos in both Paris and Montreal
Song first collected by Francis James Child in the 19th century
One of many ballads with the theme of a woman pleading for someone to buy her freedom from the hangman
May have originated in continental Europe, as there are many versions from Finland, Sweden, and even Lithuania
John Angaiak - Sing O’sing O’birdie
A Yup’ik singer-songwriter born in Nightmute, Alaska in 1941
After serving in Vietnam in the US Armed Forces, he enrolled in the University of Alaska and became active in the school’s indigenous language workshop
This song comes from his 1971 album I’m Lost in the City, which was inspired by his work preserving his native language, with the first side entirely in the previously exclusively oral Yup’ik language, and the second in English
Elizabeth Cotten - Vastopol
Known primarily for her guitar picking style, though she also learned banjo at an early age
Self-taught and was left-handed but learned to play on a right-handed banjo
This song is named after the common open chord guitar tuning Sebastopol
David Francey - Mill Towns
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
From his 2001 album Far End of Summer
A Paul Ortega - Four Ways
Ortega was an influential Apache musician who began as a tribal singer at the age of five
He moved to Chicago in the early 1960s and began to adapt blues guitar to Apache social songs
This is from his 1974 album Three Worlds
We’re now going to hear 3 examples of the style of guitar playing sometimes called the “Bentonia School”, which is defined by its preference for minor tunings and its shared repertoire of songs. It’s debated among blues fans and scholars whether this style actually constitutes a “school”, but the musicians associated with it do have a distinctive sound that I think is worth exploring. The Bentonia School was possibly pioneered by Skip James, who we’ll hear from first.
Skip James - Oh, Mary Don’t You Weep
James was from Bentonia, Mississippi
First recorded for Paramount in 1931, but his recordings did not sell well due to the Great Depression, and he faded into obscurity until the 1960s, when he was rediscovered by blues fans, and appeared at folk and blues festivals across the US, recorded several albums, and performed at concerts
This is a Black American spiritual that originated amongst enslaved people prior to the Civil War
It tells the biblical story of Mary of Bethany pleading to Jesus to revive her brother Lazarus from the dead
Recorded in 1967
Jack Owens, Bud Spires - Train Time
Owens was another musician from Bentonia
He learned several instruments as a child but his chosen instrument was the guitar
He never really aimed to become a professional recording artist like his fellow Bentonian Skip James, who we heard before Owens, and Owens instead farmed and ran a juke joint for much of his life before being recorded during the folk and blues revival of the 1960s when the musicologist David Evans learned about him from other blues musicians from his region
He toured throughout the US and Europe during the last decades of his life, often with his harmonica-playing friend Bud Spires, who we heard on that recording
Though Owens is considered a member of the Bentonia School, he experimented with new guitar tunings and unlike James, who sang quietly and with falsetto, he sang loudly in a regular voice
Jimmy “Duck” Holmes - Hard Times
Holmes is the last living member of the original Bentonia School
He learned to play from Henry Stuckey, whose music was never recorded despite the fact he may have been the originator of the Bentonia blues style
Holmes began the Bentonia Blues Festival with his mother Mary Holmes in 1972, and it still takes place every year
He also owns the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, which is the oldest remaining juke joint in the state of Mississippi
They say that if you go down to the Blue Front Cafe, if you’re lucky, Holmes will play for you, and if you’re really lucky, he’ll teach you to play
We heard his version of Skip James’s “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues”, one of James’s best-known songs
Carolyn Hester - The House of the Rising Sun
She is an American folk musician known for her involvement in the 1960s folk revival
You might know “House of the Rising Sun” from the Animals’ famous recording, but it’s a traditional American folk song, with either English or French origins
Alan Lomax proposed that the location of the house was changed from England to New Orleans by white southern performers, though there’s not a tonne of evidence supporting this
The oldest published version of the lyrics was printed by Robert Winslow Gordon in 1925, but it was known to miners prior to 1905
Hester recorded it for her 1960 self-titled album
Pete Seeger - We Shall Overcome
Pete Seeger was a very influential folk singer and activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmentalism, and other social causes through his music
This recording appears on the 2018 compilation album Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris
This is a gospel song that became a protest song during the Civil Right Movement
It’s likely lyrically descended from the song “I’ll Overcome Some Day”, which was written by Charles Albert Tindley and published in 1900
The Moving Star Hall Singers - We Shall Overcome
This is off an album recorded live in San Francisco in 1967
The Moving Star Hall Singers were all lifelong residents of Johns Island, South Carolina, their ages ranging from 25 to 65 years old
Though the island was poor and younger generations weren’t as involved with preserving cultural traditions, the group of islands that Johns Island is part of has been referred to as one of the heartlands of American music
Alistair Hulett - Ballad of Accounting
He was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland, known as a member of the folk punk band Roaring Jack
This one is from the 2012 album Live in Concert, recorded at the Melbourne Folk Club in Australia in November of 2009, just a few months before his death in January of 2010
As Hulett will say, this song is by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, who originally wrote it as the theme song for a BBC radio series
Marie Hare - The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks
Ballad singer from Strathadam, NB, known for her performances at the Miramichi Folksong Festival
This is one of the best known lumbering songs, and describes one of the dangers of lumbering: the log jam
Log jams occurred when logs got caught as timber was drifted downriver in the spring, and hundreds of logs caught and piled up behind them
River drivers had to go out onto these unsteady masses and try to break up the jam, which would often happen quickly, engulfing the men in a torrent of logs and water, and more often than not, leaving them dead
This song is very likely Canadian, though the origin of the song and the location of the incident in the song is unknown
Periwinkle - Song for Sarah
This is from a 1981 album called The Promised Land: American Indian Songs of Lament and Protest
There’s not much else to be found about Periwinkle, though the liner notes for the album are worth checking out because they contain a lot of background on Indigenous issues in the United States
David Rovics - Mudslide
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
From his 2014 album All the News That’s Fit to Sing
It’s about the mudslide that killed 56 people in the small town of Oso, Washington, in March of 2014, which could have been prevented with responsible logging practices
Sammy Walker - Pretty Boy Floyd
He’s a folksinger from Georgia who recorded his first albums in the mid 1970s
This is off his 1979 album Songs from Woody’s Pen, a collection of 11 covers of Woody Guthrie songs
Pretty Boy Floyd was an Oklahoma outlaw, active between the 1920s and 30s, who robbed and killed throughout Oklahoma and Ohio until he was killed by FBI agents in 1934
This is one of many outlaw ballads, and is one of Guthrie’s best known songs, though he romanticised Floyd’s life to quite an extent
Hobart Smith - Columbus Stockade Blues
An old-time musician who was rediscovered in the 60s after performing throughout the first half of the 20th century, often with his sister Texas Gladden
This is from the 1964 album Hobart Smith of Saltville, Virginia
The song is a country standard, some versions have lyrics from other songs, including “You Are My Sunshine” and “Fond Affection”, including this one, which takes the chorus from “Fond Affection”
OJ Abbott - How We Got Back to the Woods Last Year
Abbott was 84 when this song was recorded for the album Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties, compiled by Edith Fowke between 1957 and 1958
Song is from the northern Ontario woods, though it was brought to American camps by migrant shantyboys
The Wailin’ Jennys - Saucy Sailor
Folk group formed in Winnipeg in 2002
This is an English ballad, the earliest known version of which is from a broadside from 1781
The Wailin’ Jennys recorded it for their 2004 album 40 Days
Karen James - The Dark Eyed Sailor
A folksinger who grew up in England, Spain, and France, and moved to Canada as a teenager
Song also known as “Fair Phoebe and her Dark Eyed Sailor”
Likely from the end of the 19th century, so relatively new, as far as folk songs go
It’s called a “broken token” ballad, and it’s one of many, many songs about a lover who returns in disguise to test his sweetheart’s love then reveals his identity by showing her a ring they had broken together
Collected in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and North America
James got her version from a recording the folklorist Helen Creighton made in Nova Scotia
Uncle Sinner - Red Rocking Chair
From Winnipeg
Off his 2008 album Ballads and Mental Breakdowns
Traditional American old-time song known variably as “Sugar Baby”, “Honey Babe Blues”, and “Red Apple Juice”, amongst other names
Dirk Powell - Honey Babe
Powell is a Grammy award-winning musician from Ohio who’s considered one of the leading experts on traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo styles
From his 2004 album Time Again
The Golden Gate Quartet - Down by the Riverside
They are a vocal quartet formed in Virginia by four high school students in 1934
They are still active today, but have obviously undergone several changes in membership
This is a more recent recording, from their 2014 album 80 Years
American spiritual that dates to before the American Civil War
Has often been used as an anti-war song
Dyad - Hell and Scissors
Victoria BC
This is an old-time breakdown from the southern US
One source I found notes that a “hell” is apparently a leather holster used to hold scissors, though it also suggests that “Hell and Scissors” was English slang used to express surprise, and that “Hell and Scissors” possibly referred to an area of Kentucky that was difficult to cross
