Barking Dog: October 20, 2022
3 songs from people who were born on this day, October 20:
Grandpa Jones - Jesse James
He was born in 1913, 109 years ago
He was a banjo player and singer from Kentucky who was active from the early 1930s until his death in 1998
Musician Bradley Kincaid gave him his nickname when he was only 22 years old due to his grumpiness during early-morning radio shows, and Jones created a stage persona based on the nickname
This is a 19th-century folk song about the American outlaw Jesse James, first recorded in 1919 by Bentley Ball
It’s been recorded by countless other musicians since then
Tom Petty - Wildflowers
He was a rock musician from Florida, known as the lead singer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as a member of the Traveling Wilburys, and as a solo musician
He was born 72 years ago today
This is a home-recorded demo version of the song, released in 2020
The song was first released as the opening track of his 1994 album of the same name
Norman Blake - Randall Collins
84 today!
He’s an American musician who’s been playing professionally since the mid 1950s
He toured with Johnny Cash for a decade, played on Bob Dylan’s album Nashville Skyline, and appeared on Joan Baez’s recording of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
He’s well-known as a duo with his wife, Nancy, as well, and they’ve been playing together for almost 50 years
This seems to be his own song, from his 1972 album Back Home in Sulphur Springs
Oscar Brand - A Dollar Ain’t a Dollar Anymore
Brand was a Winnipeg-born American folk musician and author who also hosted a weekly folk music show on WNYC Radio in New York City for 70 years, the longest running radio show with a single host in broadcasting history
This song was written by folksinger Tom Glazer in the mid 1940s, though it still really resonates today
Spongebob - Hey Mean Mr. Bossman
Believe it or not, this song was written and recorded specifically for an episode of Spongebob Squarepants where Squidward and Spongebob go on strike
It’s a parody of “Take This Job and Shove It”, a 1977 country song by David Allan Coe
It was written by executive producer Paul Tibbett, and performed by Jeremy Wakefield and Sage Guyton
Si Kahn - Talkin’ Politician
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
Off his 1974 album New Wood
His own song in the talking blues style
Christine Lavin - Regretting What I Said
She’s a musician who worked at a cafe in Saratoga Springs, New York, until the folksinger Dave Van Ronk convinced her to move to New York City to pursue a career as a musician
She’s recorded over 25 albums since the early 1980s, but this one’s from a 1982 issue of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a cooperative that was dedicated to reinvigorating the New York folk scene, and released over 100 albums between 1982 and 1997
As we hear, “Regretting What I Said” is the shortened title of this song
David Francey - Border Line
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
Off his 1999 album Torn Screen Door
Old Man Luedecke - Caney Fork River
From Chester, NS
From his album My Hands Are On Fire and Other Love Songs
A song by Willie P Bennett, who wrote it to stay awake on a 14-hour drive to his next gig
He apparently crossed the Caney Fork River in Tennessee four times on that trip, which inspired the song
Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings, Willie Watson - I Hear Them All / This Land Is Your Land
Welch and Rawlings are one of the best-known contemporary American roots duos, and they’ve been nominated for an Academy Awards and have won a Grammy together for their 2020 album All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone)
Watson is a New York musician who is a founding member of the band Old Crow Medicine Show
A medley of the Old Crow Medicine Show song “I Hear Them All” and Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land is Your Land”, recorded for the 2015 album Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’
Ferron - Snowing in Brooklyn
She’s a Canadian musician and poet from BC
This one’s off her 1992 live album Not a Still Life, recorded at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco
Sam Amidon - Time Has Made a Change
Contemporary folk artist from Vermont
From his 2020 self-titled album
A hymn written by Harkins Freye in the 1920s
His parents, folk musicians Peter and Mary Alice Amidon, recorded a version of the song in 1982
Hobart Smith - The Great Titanic
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
This song is more commonly known as “God Moves On the Water”, and was first recorded by Blind Willie Johnson in 1929, though he did not write it
The fact that both Johnson and Mance Lipscomb, who made the two earliest recordings of the song, were both from Texas, suggests that this song may also have come from there
It’s one of the best-known American disaster ballads
Hobart said of the song: “When the Titanic went down, I was just fifteen years old. And you know, right after anything like that happens there’s a song that’ll come out. Now, I didn’t make the song; I got it from somebody else, but I couldn’t tell who, it’s been so long.”
Mississippi John Hurt - Spike Driver Blues
American country blues singer and guitarist who taught himself guitar around the age of nine
Recorded in 1928
Hurt’s version of the song was later included on Harry Smith’s incredibly influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music
This is one of several songs about the legend of John Henry, a railroad worker who raced a steam drill and won, but died shortly after
Hurt learned it from a railroad worker named Walter Jackson in 1916, when he was also working on the rails
Morley Loon - Yoo Indo Deem Awin
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
That one’s from his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
The title translates to “Hunter's Spirit Song”
Galilee Singers - Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name
They were a vocal group that began in the 1940s and recorded a number of sides for Decca Records
This one is from 1945
An old African-American spiritual
We hear another version after it
Hammie Nixon, Walter Cooper - Soon One Mornin’
Nixon was a Tennessee harmonica player and singer known for his partnership with Sleepy John Estes, which lasted from the 1930s until the 1970s when Estes died
Cooper, presumably a friend of Nixon’s, plays guitar on this one
From the 4th album in a series called Living Country Blues USA, which comprise field recordings made of American blues artists in 1980 by two German blues enthusiasts named Axel Kustner and Siegfried Christmann
RL Burnside - Rolling and Tumbling
He was a Mississippi blues artist who played music for most of his life before receiving attention in the 1990s
He learned to play the guitar mainly from Mississippi Fred McDowell, who lived nearby during Burnside’s youth
A version of “Roll and Tumble Blues”, first recorded by Hambone Willie Newbern in 1929
Martin Sullivan - The Railroad Boy
Sung by Martin Sullivan of Peterborough, ON
From an album of Ontario folk songs, recorded and compiled by Edith Fowke
Ontario variant of a traditional Irish song called “The Bonny Labouring Boy”
Martha Hall - Young and Tender Ladies
Off a 1960 album of Kentucky mountain music recorded by musician, photographer, field recorder, and filmmaker John Cohen in 1959
Cohen says of Hall: “When she sang, it felt like she was sharing fragments of something precious that had been put away for safekeeping. But in recalling the ballads, a wistfulness and joy returned; the act of singing rekindled warm feelings.”
Her version of the Appalachian traditional ballad “Fair and Tender Ladies”
Lee Sexton - Little Maggie
Born in Kentucky in 1928
Earned the $1 he needed for a banjo working as a field hand when he was 8
The song is related to “Country Blues” and “Darlin’ Corey”, and was first collected in Appalachian region of the United States in 1800
Grace Clergy - Peggy Gordon
From the folklorist Helen Creighton’s album of Maritime folk songs from 1952
A Canadian folk song first collected mainly in Nova Scotia in the 1950s and 60s
Clergy was a fisherman from Nova Scotia, and he appears on the cover of the album this song comes from
Singers from Skir Dhu - La La Lò, La Luadhadh (With Water, With Milling)
Off the 1955 album Songs from Cape Breton Island
The island in Nova Scotia has historically been populated by Scottish Gaelic-speaking communities
The performers on this album were members of the last generation of Scots in Canada to hear and speak Gaelic from birth
This song was recorded at a milling frolic in Skir Dhu, a community on the north coast of Cape Breton
It’s both for and about milling
The lyrics mean, “Tartan cloth with water, with milling / Prepare; pull the roll about; thicken / Cloth with water, with milling”
Fiver - Waltz for One
Stage name of Toronto-based artist Simone Schmidt
This is from a 2017 album of fictional field recordings collected from the files of people who were incarcerated at the Rockwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Kingston, Ontario between 1856 and 1881
The album is called Audible Songs from Rockwood
Bernice Johnson Reagon - Running
Reagon is a song leader, activist, scholar, and composer who was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee’s Freedom Singers in the 1960s, and with them recognized the potential in collective singing to bring diverse groups together
From her 1986 album River of Life: Harmony One
Burton Young - Harbour Grace (Diddling)
Young was a member of a musical family from the Petpeswick area east of Halifax, Nova Scotia
He had sailed for 25 years as mate on schooners, where he often exchanged songs with his cremates
He also learned this custom onboard, which was performed for dances when no instrument was available
It’s called “chin music” in some Maritime provinces, and “cheek music” in Newfoundland
Alan Mills, Jean Carignan - Lots o’ Fish in Bonavist’ Harbour
Mills a Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec who was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for his contributions to Canadian folklore
Carignan was born in Lévis, Quebec and was also made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 as “the greatest fiddler in North America”
This song is also known as “Feller from Fortune”, and it’s a very popular Newfoundland party song
Will McLean - Acre-Foot Johnson
Florida singer-songwriter called the “Father of Florida Folk”
From the 1979 album Will McLean in Concert at Van Weazel Hall
The song is about a Florida folk hero
David Nzomo - Twika Wakwa
He’s a musician from Kenya who recorded six albums of traditional Kenyan songs for Folkways records while he was studying at Columbia University in the 1960s and 70s
This one’s off his 1970 album African Rhythms: Songs from Kenya
Nzomo writes in the liner notes: “In my society, it is permissible to marry more than one wife. In accordance with traditional customs, the man may be in total agreement with his wife (wives) and she (they) may decisively influence the choice or even help in the courtship process. This song is a humorous proposal to a second, third, etc., etc., wife.”
Pete Seeger - Odds on Favorite
Seeger was a folk singer and an activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and peace through his music
The lyrics are by EY “Yip” Harburg, who’s known for writing the lyrics for “Over the Rainbow” and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”
Harburg had given Pete the lyrics many years before he recorded it, but Pete couldn’t come up with a melody
In 1996, Harburg’s son asked Pete to provide a song for the commemoration of his late father’s 100th birthday, which reminded him of the lyrics and finally inspired him to put them to music
The liner notes state that “Pete says that, although he still has hopes for our survival, he shares Yip Harburg’s fear that human intervention may unnaturally shorten the life of this planet. The song’s abrupt ending reflects this situation.”
He recorded it in 1999
Malvina Reynolds - The New Restaurant
Malvina Reynolds came to folk music later in her life, when she met Pete Seeger and other folk singers when she was in her 40s
Had received a doctorate from the University of California in 1938, but went back to university in the late 1950s to study music theory
She’s known particularly for writing the song “Little Boxes”
From the 1967 album Malvina Reynolds Sings the Truth
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
Willie Sordill - Old Friend’s Song
He’s a musician from Massachusetts who’s mainly known as a jazz musician, and has been playing professionally for over 40 years
While in university, he learned more about North American folksong tradition, and began writing and performing his own folk songs
He’s still an active member of the New England music scene, collaborating with countless other artists and performing in many different genres
This one is from his 1980 album, Please Tip Your Waitress
In the liner notes for the album, he writes about the song, “It’s a wonderful thing to find out that for all the changes we go through, we often share those changes with others who we’ve been close to, even if we aren’t aware of it at the time.”
Mel Bowker - Flunky Jim
From an album of Saskatchewan folk songs collected by Barbara Cass-Beggs and released in 1963
A song from the depression years, when the government paid a bounty on gopher tails
The words were written by Dan Ferguson, Bowker’s grandfather, who came to Saskatchewan from Ontario in 1902 to homestead
It’s sung to the tune of the Irish folk song “The Wearing of the Green”
Vera Keating - How Cold These Winds Do Blow
From an album of Ontario folk songs compiled by Canadian folklorist Edith Fowke in 1958
Keating from Peterborough
A ballad rare in North America, with only one other version recorded in Canada at the time this album was made
The song likely came from Ireland
Peter Tork - Cuckoo
Tork was perhaps best known as the keyboardist and bassist for the Monkees, though he started out as part of the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City in the early 1960s
A traditional English folk song, though it’s also popular in the US, Canada, Scotland, and Ireland
Daniel Koulack & Karrnnel - Andy Broon and Guests
From Winnipeg
Off the 2010 album Fiddle and Banjo
Bruce Cockburn - Train in the Rain
