Barking Dog: October 5, 2023
Memphis Jug Band - Stealin’ Stealin’
Influential American pre-war style jug band active from the 20s to the late 50s
The song was written in the late 1920s by Memphis Jug Band leader Will Shade, and the band recorded it in 1928
It gained renewed popularity in the 1960s through recordings by contemporary folk musicians
We’ll hear one of those recordings after this
Bob Dylan - Stealin’
Recorded in Minnesota in May of 1961 by Dylan’s then-girlfriend Bonnie Beecher
Bruce Green, Clifton Green, Tweedie Gibson - There Is Good News
From an album of rhyming songs recorded by Peter K Siegel and Jody Stecher in Nassau, Bahamas in June of 1965
Rhyming singing is a tradition that started with sponge fishermen, known as “spongers”, who sang to pass the long days and nights aboard their boats
The leader, or “rhymer” would improvise fast verses, often about biblical stories or local legends, against a background of bass or tenor singers
Myriam Gendron - Shenandoah (II)
She’s a musician from Montreal
This is off her 2021 album Ma Délire - Songs of Love, Lost & Found
Traditional American folk song and sea shanty that’s been traced back to the early 19th century
Likely came from American and Canadian voyageurs who travelled down the Missouri River, though it’s unclear whether it originated in French or English
Either way, Gendron has translated it into French for her version
Dave Van Ronk - Bird on the Wire
A member of the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City, known as the “Mayor of MacDougal Street”, MacDougal Street being where practically every coffeehouse in New York was located in the 1960s
This is his cover of one of Leonard Cohen’s best-known songs, written in the late 1960s
Van Ronk recorded it live at Windham College in Vermont in 1972
Periwinkle - Straight Talk
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
Utah Phillips - Sedition
He was an anarchist folksinger, storyteller, and labour organiser from Ohio who also rode the rails throughout the United States and worked as an archivist, a dishwasher, and a warehouse-man at various points in his life
This is from his 1991 album I’ve Got to Know
From the Discogs page: “During the (first) Gulf War, I got plenty good and mad. I parked my car and wouldn't drive it because I said it wouldn't run on blood. Then, with the help of Dakota Sid Clifford, I went in a small but very fine studio here in Nevada City. I said to Bruce Wheelock, the engineer, ‘Set up two mikes and start the tape. I’ll tell you when I'm done.’ For the next 70 minutes I spouted, fulminated, and sang about war, peace, pacifism and anarchy—and believe me, I know what I'm talking about. I used songs, poems, and rants to make the point, and said, ‘Ookay turn of the machine.’ Bruce said, ‘Don't you want me to edit it?’ I said, ‘No! I'm mad! Leave it the way it is!’” –U. Utah Phillips
Si Kahn - Brookside Strike
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
Off his 1993 live album In My Heart
This is a song about the 1973 Brookside Mine strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, which Kahn was involved in through the United Mine Workers of America
Mike Seeger - The Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train
Seeger was a folklorist and musician who co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s
That song’s off his 1991 album Solo: Old-time Country Music
Written by Uncle Dave Macon in 1930
Context: Tennessee governor Henry Horton was re-elected after being involved in a scandal involving awarding contracts without bids, and soon after, the Bank of Tennessee collapsed, leaving the state $6m in debt just prior to the Great Depression
Star Thistle - Bigger Than Me
A project from the mind of Winnipeg artist Uncle Sinner
This is from Star Thistle’s debut album, The Best of Star Thistle, released in 2021
Cheick Hamala Diabate, Bob Carlin - Cumberland Gap
Diabate is a Malian musician now based in Maryland who’s been performing since the mid-1980s
He primarily performs on the ngoni, and is recognized as a master of the instrument, which is related to the banjo
Carlin is an old-time singer and banjo player from NYC
He’s toured Europe and North America playing on historical banjos, and has also learned more about African banjo traditions through his collaborations with Diabate
This is from their 2007 album From Mali to America, which was nominated for a Grammy award
Appalachian folk song likely from the late 19th century and first recorded in 1924
Ted Hawkins - Ladder of Success
He was a musician from Mississippi who had a rough childhood, and first learned to sing while he was at a reform school at the age of twelve
He drifted in and out of jail around the United States over the next few decades, recording several tunes and busking on the boardwalk in Venice Beach, California
Hawkins met several different producers throughout the years who tried to sign him to labels or record his music, though legal troubles delayed these efforts and made locating him difficult
He recorded an album in 1986 that became popular in Europe, and he toured there and lived in the UK for several years
In 1994, a few years after returning to the States, Hawkins recorded an album for Geffen Records, which finally brought him to national attention in the US, and he began to tour
He unfortunately died of a stroke when he was 58, a few months after the release of his breakthrough album
This is from his 1989 album I Love You Too
Lou Reed - Michael, Row the Boat Ashore
A home recording from 1963 or 1964
It’s an African American spiritual that likely originated among enslaved people in South Carolina during the American Civil War
It was adapted into a folk standard by folksinger and teacher Tony Saletan in 1954
Karen James - The Pete Seeger Song
A folksinger and daughter of Spanish musician Isabelita Alonso, who grew up in England, Spain, and France, and moved to Canada as a teenager
From her 1961 self-titled album
Pete Seeger was one of many left-wing people in the folk scene who were persecuted and blacklisted in the United States during the 40s and 50s
Pete Seeger - Quite Early Morning
Pete Seeger was a very influential folk singer and activist from New York who advocated for important social causes through his music
This is off the 1975 album Pete Seeger & Arlo Guthrie Together in Concert
It was recorded at the Civic Opera House in Chicago
In 2012, Seeger said, “I still think the human race has a 50/50 chance to be here in a century from now, and I still stick with the song I wrote about 40 years ago, ‘Quite Early Morning’”
Aunt Dora Harmon - The Prodigal Son
From an album of recordings from the American Folk Song Festival, made in the 1950s and released in 1960
In the liner notes, the song is described as “an old mountain favourite played on the dulcimer and sung by “Aunt” Dora Harmon age 89”
Sam Amidon - Prodigal Son
Contemporary folk artist from Vermont
From his 2008 album All Is Well
In the Bandcamp description of the song, he says, “you can close your eyes and imagine that i'm doing some liturgical dance at the end of this song. or you can do some liturgical dance yourself.”
Anna & Elizabeth - Here in the Vineyard
Contemporary folk duo from Vermont and Virginia, respectively
This song is based on earlier traditional hymns
Lonzie Thomas - Raise a Ruckus Tonight
He was a musician from Lee County, Alabama who was recorded at his home by music historian George Mitchell in the early 1980s
This is a traditional African American folk song possibly from the 19th century
Ollie Watkins - California Blues (Blue Yodel Number 4)
He was a blues musician from Oklahoma who travelled to California perhaps during the Great Depression and played the streets and parties of California’s Central Valley in the 50s and 60s
Nobody knows what happened to him after he made these recordings, but a record executive at Fedora Records purchased a box of 78s found in a closet in the 1990s, and discovered Watkins’ recordings amidst the countless forgettable tunes
He brought Watkins’ music to a meeting, and the record company agreed that his music had to be heard
His songs were released on an album in 2001 called Used To Keep Me Worried: Reflections Of A Lost Legend Of The Blues
It’s a Jimmie Rodgers song from 1929
Stephen Wade, John Cephas - Darlin’ Cory
Cephas was a guitarist from Virginia, and was known primarily as a duo with the harmonica player Phil Wiggins
Wade is from Chicago
He began playing blues guitar when he was 11, and later changed his focus to the banjo
In the 1970s, he developed a one-man theatre performance called Banjo Dancing, which ran for 10 years in Washington, DC, and he developed another theatre show called On the Way Home, which he performed throughout the 1990s
This is off Wade’s 1997 album Dancing in the Parlor
“Darlin’ Cory” is an American folk song, based on verses from the song “The Gambling Man”
It’s pretty new, with the earliest version coming from 1918
Sis Cunningham - But If I Ask Them
Founding editor of Broadside Magazine, an important publication for the Greenwich Village folk scene
She was also one of the first people to be blacklisted as a communist sympathiser in post WWII America
This is from the 1976 album Sundown
Cunningham wrote it in 1975 and dedicated it to Aunt Molly Jackson, a folksinger and union activist from Kentucky
Sundown liner notes. (Smithsonian Folkways)
Fiver - Carry On Warm
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
Oscar Brand - The Downtrodden Landlord
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
That’s from his 1957 album Pie in the Sky & Other Folk Song Satires
The 1948 People’s Songbook says of it, “This song, which originated in England during World War II, was caught up by thousands of United States tenants threatened by eviction when Congress lifted rent controls. To be sung with a fine sense of sarcasm!”
Tony Schwartz - City Pitchmen
He was an agoraphobic sound archivist who spent much of his life documenting the sounds of his neighbourhood in New York City, though he also collected recordings from around the world by corresponding with international musicians
This one is off his 1954 album Millions of Musicians, which documents the music of everyday life
On this track we hear street vendors in Manhattan selling everything from pens to flowers to newspapers
Jealous James Stanchell - Anything from a Foot Race to a Resting Place
He was a musician who developed a large repertoire while playing throughout Houston, Texas
He also wrote a number of his own songs, including this one, which is a field recording that Stanchell made for Mack McCormick, off a compilation album of McCormick’s recordings called Playing for the Man at the Door, released by Smithsonian Folkways Records in August
McCormick was going to record Lightnin’ Hopkins on the day he recorded Stanchell, but Hopkins forgot his guitar and went to borrow one from Stanchell
Stanchell returned with Hopkins and recorded a few of his own songs for McComick as well
Alan Mills - I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec
Made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for his contributions to Canadian folklore
This is from his 1956 album Animals, Vol. 1
Rose Bonne wrote the lyrics in 1952, and Mills contributed the music
Guitar Slim - Won’t You Spread Some Flowers on My Grave
His real name was James Stephens, and he was a blues musician from North Carolina
From the 12th 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
That’s a blues song first recorded in 1933 by Blind Willie McTell
David Francey - The Breath Between
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
This is the title track from his new album, which came out on September 15th
JW Warren - Sundown Blues
He was an Alabama musician who played at local juke joints and barbeques in his youth, and even dated Big Mama Thornton when they were young
The folklorist Tim Duffy met him later in life when he had given up music, and convinced him to record his music
The Music Maker Relief Foundation, which Duffy founded, provided him with grants for medication, gave him a guitar, and recorded him for several albums
This is off an album of his music that was recorded in the early 1980s by George Mitchell
Turner Foddrell - Slow Drag
Was a Virginian Piedmont blues and folk musician who was born into a musical family
A local DJ stumbled upon him and his brother, Marvin, playing together in the general store that Foddrell owned in the 1970s, and they began playing at festivals and touring the country and the world, and they recorded a couple of albums together
After Marvin died in 1986, Turner and his son continued to play together
Foddrell also recorded on his own, including this song, which he learned from his father
This is from a 1981 album of Western Piedmont blues music from Virginia
Big Dave McLean - Needed Time
A blues musician from Winnipeg who’s been playing for over 50 years
It’s off McLean’s 2008 album Acoustic Blues: Got ‘Em from the Bottom
“Needed Time” is a traditional American song, popularised in the 20th century by Lightnin’ Hopkins
It uses the same tune as “Daniel in the Lion’s Den”
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Devil on a Stump
From Toronto, ON
This is a traditional old-time American tune that they got from Art Stamper’s recording
It’s from their 2014 album Old Time
