Barking Dog: November 23, 2023
RL Burnside - Come On In
He was born 97 years ago today
He was a Mississippi blues musician who learned to play the guitar mainly from Mississippi Fred McDowell, who lived nearby during Burnside’s youth
He mainly worked as a sharecropper, fisherman, and truck driver throughout his life, but he played at juke joints and local events and was a well-known musician in his region long before his recording career
He was first recorded by folklorist George Mitchell between 1967 and 1968 in Coldwater, Mississippi, where Burnside was working on a plantation
That’s where this one comes from
Harpo Marx - The Ash Grove
He was born 135 years ago today
He was the second oldest of the Marx Brothers, and although he’s mainly known as a comedian and mime, he also had a successful career as a harpist, and can be seen playing the harp in several of his films
This is from the 1957 album simply called “Harpo”
It’s a traditional Welsh folk song
Connie Converse - The Ash Grove
Began writing songs and performing for friends in NYC in the early 1950s but gave up her music career after a decade and moved to Michigan
In 1974 she wrote letters to friends and family suggesting that she intended to start a new life somewhere else, packed her things into her car and drove off, and was never seen again
In 2009 an album of 17 of her home recordings was released, called How Sad, How Lovely
This is off the 2020 EP Sad Lady, which is the second collection of Converse’s home recordings to be released
Recorded between 1952 and 1954
Ian & Sylvia - Katy Dear
Ian & Sylvia were a married duo who performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975, and each continued their music careers after their divorce
They’re known for performing a number of songs including “Someday Soon,” “Early Morning Rain,” and “Four Strong Winds”
This is an American ballad also known as “Silver Dagger”
It’s widespread in North Carolina and Virginia
Stan Rogers - The Flowers of Bermuda
Born and raised in Ontario, but known for his maritime-influenced music that was informed by his time spent visiting family in Nova Scotia during his childhood
Rogers recorded this for his 1979 album Between the Breaks Live!
He wrote it in the Spring of 1978
The Boarding Party - Come Down, You Roses
Group from Washington DC, consisting of three Americans and two Englishmen
This is from the 1983 album Tis Our Sailing Time
Seems as though this song was originally a Caribbean children’s play song that became a popular tune in shanty-singing circles
It was first collected in the Bahamas by the folklorists Alan Lomax, Zora Neale Hurston, and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle in 1935
Reverend Pearly Brown - How About You
He was a blues musician from Georgia who was known mainly as a street performer
He was blind from birth, but received an education at a school for blind people and completed eight grades in six years
Brown was later ordained a minister and began singing on the streets in 1939
This one is off his 1975 album It's A Mean Old World To Try To Live In
The song is by American composer and evangelist Thomas Dorsey
Snooks Eaglin - Alberta
American musician who played a wide range of styles and claimed to know about 2500 songs
Recorded in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1958
It’s a popular country blues song with countless versions
Bob Dylan - Corrina, Corrina
Related to “Alberta”
This version is an outtake from the recording sessions for Dylan’s 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Marcel Khalife - Promises of the Storm
He’s a Palestinian-Lebanese singer and oud player who’s been playing since the 1970s
From his 1983 album Promises of the Storm, which is also the name of the song we’re about to hear
The page for the album on the Smithsonian Folkways website notes that he sings in colloquial Arabic, while most poems and songs used classic Arabic at the time
This is a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, which Khalife put to music
The liner notes state: “This poem is a call to Palestinian rebellion. The poet refuses sadness and empty nostalgia for the past, rejecting the pervasive sentimental Arab love song[…] He seeks the joy of a future that will be won only by the storm of resistance, the promises of winning the battle”
Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacColl - Song of Choice
She’s an American folk singer who’s been living in the UK for over 60 years
MacColl was a well-known British folksinger and labour activist known for his involvement in the 1960s folk revival, and he was married to Seeger
Seeger wrote this song for a yearly political review in 1973, and it’s about personal political responsibility
Pete Seeger - I Come and Stand at Every Door
Pete Seeger was an influential folk singer and activist from New York who advocated for important social causes through his music
The Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet wrote the lyrics of that song as a poem in memory of Hiroshima
New York peace worker Jeanette Turner sent the poem to Seeger in the late 1950s, and he set it to a melody written by MIT student James Waters for the Scottish ballad “The Great Silkie”
Pharis & Jason Romero - A Wanderer I’ll Stay
From Horsefly, BC
Off their 2015 album of the same name
Rachel Newton - Jolene
She’s a contemporary Scottish singer and harpist who’s played in bands like The Shee, the Furrow Collective, and Boreas, though that song is from her solo album West, from 2018
It’s a cover of one of Dolly Parton’s best-known songs, originally recorded in 1973
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, John Prine - Walls of Red Wing
Elliott ran away from home at the age of 15 to join Col. Jim Eskew’s Rodeo, rather than become a surgeon as his father intended
He was only with them for 3 months before his parents found him and dragged him home, but his first exposure to a singing cowboy left him rapt, and at home he taught himself guitar and began busking for a living
Prine was one of the most influential songwriters of his generation
He died in April of 2020 from COVID, but he’s remembered for his social commentary, his unique style of singing, and his humorous turns-of-phrase
This is from Elliott’s 1998 album Friends of Mine
It’s a protest song by Bob Dylan about a boys’ reform school in Minnesota
Based on the Scottish ballad "The Road and the Miles to Dundee", though this song is a bit hyperbolic in its descriptions of the building
Billy Connolly, Hans Theessink - The Rock
Connolly may be better known as a comedian and actor, he started out as a folksinger with a comedic persona in the 1960s
Theessink is a Dutch musician who primarily plays the blues
This is from a 2002 compilation album called Banjoman, which is a tribute to Derroll Adams, an American folk musician who frequently collaborated with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
Adams wrote this song, and included it on his 1984 album Songs of the Banjoman
Woody Guthrie - Talking Hard Work
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
This is off the 1964 album Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs, Vol. 2
Ted Danson - Reflections of Woody Guthrie
Ted Danson is an actor known for his roles in shows like Cheers and The Good Place, as well as movies like Three Men and a Baby
This is from the 2002 album This Land Is Your Land: Songs of Unity, which also contains tracks from people like Raffi, Willie Nelson, and Danny Glover
Sibylle Baier - Forgett
She’s a German folksinger who came to prominence later in life with her 2006 album, Colour Green, which she released when she was 51 years old but recorded in the 1970s
This song is from that album
Rosalie Sorrels - Winter Song
She started out as a folksinger and collector of folk songs, and left her husband in the 1960s to travel across America with her five children, establishing herself as a performer and making connections with other folk musicians, writers, and artists
This is from the 1961 album Folk Songs of Idaho and Utah
She got this song from Dr. Leroy Robertson, head of the music department at the University of Utah at the time, who remembered his mother singing it to him as a child
It’s a single stanza from a long British broadside from the 19th century called “Time to Remember the Poor”
Kenneth Peacock - Jimmy Whalen
He was an ethnomusicologist from Toronto who was on the staff for what is now the Canadian Museum of History
He’s remembered for the impact this research had on the folk music revival in Canada in the mid 20th century
His projects for the museum covered practically every part of Canada, and he seems to have learned this song while researching the folk music of Newfoundland in the 1950s
This is an Irish song
Sam Chatmon - Sittin’ On Top of the World
Was a delta blues guitarist and singer
He was part of a well-known Mississippi musical family
In fact, his brother Lonnie wrote this very well-known country blues song
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
Steven Wright - Friends of Mine
He’s a comedian, writer, and actor known for his work in films like Desperately Seeking Susan and Coffee and Cigarettes, and in shows like Mad About You and the Larry Sanders Show
This is off his 1985 Grammy-nominated comedy album I Still Have a Pony
Kacy & Clayton - Strange Country
From Wood Mountain, SK
This is from their 2016 album of the same name
Peggy Honeywell - Little Birdie
Uses this name for folk music, she is also a visual artist working under her real name, Clare Rojas
This is from her 2005 album Faint Humms
Song is widespread in the south, and many different lyrical verses have been collected
Sharon Shannon, Roisin Elsafty, The Elsafty Family - An Phailistin
Shannon is an accordionist, fiddler, and singer from Ireland who began her career as a member of the Waterboys
This is from her 2003 album Libertango
She’s joined by Roisin Elsafty and her family
Elsafty is a traditional Irish singer with Irish and Egyptian roots
The song was written by Elsafty’s mother Treasa and Donal Lunny in both Gaelic and Arabic, and the title translates to “Palestine”
Eugene Rhodes - Working on the Levee
He was a musician from Kentucky who travelled through the southern states as a one-man-band until he ended up in Indiana State Prison, where he continued to play
Folklorist Bruce Jackson went to the prison to record an album of Rhodes’ music in 1963 called Talkin’ About My Time, which is where this song comes from
As we’ll hear Rhodes say, Lead Belly recorded this song in 1935
Joe Kelly - The Golden Vanity
From a 1958 album of field recordings of Ontario folk music, made by the folklorist Edith Fowke
This one sung by Joe Kelly of Downer’s Corners near Peterborough
This version largely follows the older versions, though the last two verses were added on more recently by someone who didn’t like the original ending
It’s possible this version circulated in the Canadian lumbercamps, because those verses were also recorded from someone in Quebec
Joseph Spence & The Pinder Family - No Grave to Hold God’s Body Down
Joseph Spence was a Bahamian musician known for vocalizing and humming while playing guitar, and he influenced artists like Taj Mahal, The Grateful Dead, and John Renbourn
The Pinders were his sister’s family
The song is 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
That one was recorded in June of 1965 by Peter K Siegel and Jody Stecher in Nassau, Bahamas
Dave Van Ronk - WC Fields Routine
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 recitation of a WC Fields bit, which he recorded live at Sir George Williams University, now Concordia University, in Montreal in 1967
Uncle Sinner - Liza Jane
From Winnipeg
This was recorded in Calgary in 1999
There are countless versions of this song, and it seems to be an American folk song, likely from the southern states
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Country Mile
From Toronto, ON
This is from their new album Try to Make it Fly, which came out on October 13th and is their first album of all-original songs
Daniel Koulack & Karrnnel Sawitsky - The Devil’s Race to Windsor
From Winnipeg
Off the 2010 album Fiddle and Banjo
Sheesham and Lotus - Five Miles of Ellum Wood
