Barking Dog: January 27, 2022
Old Man Luedecke - Real Wet Wood
Contemporary folk artist from Chester, NS
Off his 2015 album Domestic Eccentric, which he recorded inside a cabin he built in his backyard
Harrison Kennedy, Jean-Jacques Milteau, Vincent Segal - Rollin & Tumblin
Harrison Kennedy a Hamilton artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
Joined here by Jean-Jacques Milteau, a French harmonica player, singer and songwriter and Vincent Segal, a French cellist and bassist
A version of “Roll and Tumble Blues,” first recorded by Hambone Willie Newbern in 1929
Babe Stovall Trio - Time Is Winding Up
Babe an American Delta blues singer and guitarist from Mississippi
Recorded June, 1964 in New Orleans by Larry Borenstein
Stovall is joined by Godson Phillip on banjo and Sylvester Hand on bass
It’s a traditional spiritual
Charlie Brown - Ballad of Earl Durand
Real name was Charles Artman
Called “Utah’s first hippie”
Never wore shoes, which got him in trouble with the law on multiple occasions
Lived in a teepee, drove an old yellow bus
Hosted the Teton Tea Party, an all-night event for mountaineers and folk musicians
Which is where this song comes from, and it’s one of my favourites
George Landers - Rolling Mills Are Burning Down
A banjo player from Marshall, NC
Not much known about him aside from that, but this is from an album of field recordings of Appalachian folk music made by John Cohen in NC and Virginia in 1965 and released in 1975
Jake Xerxes Fussell - Rolling Mills Are Burning Down
From Durham, NC
Off his brand new album, Good and Green Again
Pete Seeger - Come All You Fair and Tender Maids
He was a folk singer and an activist who, though blacklisted during the McCarthy era, remained a prominent public figure who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and international disarmament through his music
This is an Appalachian folk ballad that was often known as “Little Sparrow” prior to the 1960s
Robert “Nighthawk” Johnson - Can’t No Grave Hold My Body Down
From an album of field recordings George Mitchell made of Johnson in Skene, Mississippi, in 1969
Attributed to songwriter and preacher Claude Ely of Virginia
He claimed to have written it when he was twelve while he was sick with tuberculosis
Kacy & Clayton - The Rio Grande
From Wood Mountain, SK
Duo of second cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum who grew up listening to and playing traditional music on their family’s ranch
From their 2016 album Strange Country
Juan Victoriano - Male Esperancita
From a 1970 album of music from the Indigenous Purepecha people of northwestern Mexico
Victoriano composed this song, and we hear him here with guitar accompaniment
The song has a pirecua melody, which is a type of song that’s usually sung as a duet with guitar accompaniment, and is often a love song
The pirecua is adapted to a waltz rhythm here, and the liner notes for the album note that the waltz had an enormous impact on Indigenous Latin American music after it was introduced from Europe in the 19th century
Tommy Jarrell - Sweet Sunny South
Fiddler, banjo player, and singer from Mount Airy, NC
Made his living in road construction but was an influential musician and received the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship in 1982
Nancy & Norman Blake, Boys of the Lough, James and Rachel Bryan - Sweet Sunny South
Traditional American artist raised in Alabama
Nancy is his wife, a cellist who was classically trained before playing with traditional folk groups
Boys of the Lough are a Scottish-Irish celtic band that have been playing together since the 1970s
James Bryan played fiddle on several of the Blakes’ recordings, and Rachel is his daughter
The groups all met each other for the first time at the 1978 Winnipeg Folk Festival, and after nearly three decades trying to plan a recording session together, they finally got together in 2007 to record Rising Fawn Gathering, which was released by Smithsonian Folkways in 2009
This song dates back to the 19th century, though the origins aren’t exactly clear
Frank Bode, Tommy Jarrell, Paul Brown - Wild Bill Jones
We’re going to hear another one with Tommy Jarrell now, and he’s joined by a couple other musicians
Bode was a guitarist and banjo player from Mt. Airy, NC who learned to play from his wife Ginger and her family
He played in a group called the Toast String Stretchers with his wife and Paul Brown, who we also hear on this recording
Brown is also from Mt. Airy, and he’s a banjo player who started playing when he was 10
He studied the banjo under Tommy Jarrell
A popular Appalachian murder ballad first recorded and released by Eva Davis in 1924
Willie Dunn - Crazy Horse
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is from his 1999 album Metallic
Arnold Keith Storm - The Boy Who Could Never Come Home
He was a postal worker from Indianapolis who recorded an album for Folk-Legacy Records in 1964 called Take the News to Mother
He learned this song from his father, and it seems to be a rare one of the turn-of-the-century sentimental variety
Isabel Parra - Porque los Pobres no Tienen (Because the Poor Have Nothing)
This is from a 1970 album of protest songs from Latin America
Isabel Parra is a Chilean folksinger who began her recording career at the age of thirteen with her mother, the folklorist Violeta Parra
This is her mother’s song, and the title translates to “Because the Poor Have Nothing”
Karen James - The Pete Seeger Song
A folksinger who grew up in England, Spain, and France, and moved to Canada as a teenager
This is off her 1961 self-titled album
It’s about Pete Seeger's refusal to testify before the House Un-American Activities Commission in 1955
Victor Jara - El Cigarrito
He was a Chilean musician, poet, teacher, theatre director, and activist who was tortured and killed in 1973 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet
His work is widely remembered and celebrated throughout the world for its focus on peace, love, and social justice
This song is from 1965, and it was the first single he released as a solo artist
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Black Lung
From Toronto
This recording is from their new live album, Lively Times, recorded in Vancouver in 2019
The song is by Hazel Dickens, an American musician known for her feminist and pro-union songs and her distinct singing style
Loman Cansler - Far Away
He was a musician, high school counsellor, and folksongs collector from Missouri who learned over 1000 songs during his life
This is from his 1959 album Missouri Folk Songs, and he learned it from a man he had known since childhood
The lyrics are attributed to Miss M. Lindsay, and the music to Mrs. J.W. Bliss
It’s from at least 1909
Dyad - Hiram Hubbard
Victoria, BC
This is off their album Who’s Been Here Since I’ve Been Gone from 2002
This is an American Civil War-era ballad about a man captured, brought to trial, and convicted by his captors despite being innocent
It’s reported to be a reflection of the guerilla warfare in the Kentucky or Tennessee highlands during the war
Two Little Girls at March - Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round
This is off a 1965 album of songs sung by protestors in Selma, Alabama during a march to the capital, Montgomery, to demand fair access to voting registration
This civil rights song originated from an African American spiritual called "Don't Let Nobody Turn Me Round"
This version is sung by two little girls
Horace Sprott - Smoke Like Lightning
Sprott a wandering musician from Alabama who was recorded in the 1950s by researcher and writer Frederic Ramsey
Recorded near the Cahaba River in Perry County, Alabama in 1954
Clarence Edwards, Cornelius Edwards, Butch Cage - Smokestack Lightning
Cage was a fife, guitar, and fiddle player originally from Mississippi, though he moved to Louisiana in the 1920s as a result of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927
Clarence and Cornelius Edwards were brothers and blues musicians from Louisiana who first began playing in bands together in the 1950s
They recorded some songs for the musicologist Harry Oster in the 1960s, and Clarence became more widely known in the 1980s, when he performed at blues festivals throughout the country
A Howlin’ Wolf song written in the 1930s and first recorded in 1951
It draws on songs like “Stop and Listen Blues” by the Mississippi Sheiks, and “Moon Going Down” by Charley Patton
We heard another version before that, performed by Horace Sprott
Bobby Bourke - Gabriel
This is off a 1956 album of Cajun folksongs from Louisiana, recorded by I Bonstein
The song lyrics talk about the narrator’s god-parents, named Gabriel and Madeleine
It’s an old French folk ballad associated with a children's nursery rhyme
Jack Hardy, Jill Burkee, Mark Dann, Steve Forbert - This Land Is Your Land
From an album put out by Fast Folk Musical Magazine in 1982 called The Political Song Revisited
This is a version of “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie, which includes two verses that are often omitted in other versions of the song
John Bon - A99
From a 1964 album of Aboriginal Australian music from Western Australia, North Queensland, and the Torres Strait
John Bon was about 20 when he was recorded for this album, and he belonged to the Meriam people of the inner eastern Torres Strait Islands
He accompanies himself on guitar on that recording, and the lyrics speak directly to a pearling lugger ship as if it were a bird
The title, “A99,” refers to the registration number of that lugger
The Wailin’ Jennys - Bright Morning Stars
Folk group formed in Winnipeg in 2002
From their 2011 album of the same name
This song is likely from Kentucky
Rediscovered by Robin Christenson in 1968 from the 1953 book American Folk Songs for Christmas
He was married to Ellen Kossoy, and they arranged it with Irene Kossoy and her husband, Tony Saletan, to be performed at the 1968 Fox Hollow Festival, from which it entered back into the common repertoire
Tom Carter, Skip Gorman - New Lost Train Blues
Gorman got together with several friends in Salt Lake City in 1977 to record an album of western songs and tunes
On that track we heard Gorman and Tom Carter on guitar, and Hal Cannon on the railroad whistle
It’s a railroad tune previously recorded by JE Mainer, Steve Ledford, and the New Lost City Ramblers
Big Dave McLean - Police and High Sheriff
A blues musician from Winnipeg who’s been playing for over 50 years
This song seems to come from the 1927 Ollis Martin recording “Police and High Sheriff Come Ridin' Down”, and the song was undoubtedly the inspiration for the newer folksong “Gotta Travel On”
Lawrence Houle - Finale Medley
He was an Anishinaabe Metis fiddler from Ebb and Flow who performed at a number of festivals during the folk revival of the 1960s and was later an Elder at Métis Calgary Family Service Society, where he gave workshops
He was committed to the recovery and reestablishment of the Ojibwe language, and made several recordings with that goal in mind
He’s joined on guitar by Lionel Desjarlais for this one, and we’ll also hear Houle jigging as he plays
Pharis & Jason Romero - Lost Lula
