Barking Dog: November 24, 2022
A couple of birthdays to kick off the show:
Billy Connolly - Everybody Knows That
80 today
Though he may be better known as a comedian and actor, he started out as a folksinger with a comedic persona in the 1960s
This one was recorded live in 1974
Robin Williamson, John Renbourn - The Rocks of Bawn
Williamson is 79 today
He’s a Scottish musician and storyteller who was a founding member of the Incredible String Band
John Renbourn was an English musician known for founding the folk group Pentangle with Bert Jansch
This is off their 1995 live album Wheel of Fortune, which was nominated for a Grammy
It’s a traditional Irish folksong, likely from the early 1700s
Chuck Brodsky - The Ballad of DB Cooper
He’s a musician based in North Carolina who’s been performing since the 90s
This one is from his 2006 album Tulips for Lunch
We’re playing it today because it’s the 51st anniversary of the hijacking of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, where an unidentified man nicknamed “DB Cooper” by the media demanded $200,000 ransom, then parachuted from the plane while over northwestern Washington once he received it, never to be seen again
Cullen Galyean, Bobby Harrison - Life of Sorrow
From an album of traditional bluegrass music from the hills of southwestern Virginia and northwestern North Carolina
Galyean and Harrison were friends and musical partners for 25 years before the album was recorded, and they later released four other albums as members of the Virginia Mountain Boys
Recorded at Pipers Gap, Virginia in 1983
The song is by Ralph and Carter Stanley, and was first recorded by the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys in 1949 or 1950
It’s related to the traditional song “Man of Constant Sorrow”, both musically and lyrically
Sheila Kay Adams - Fall On My Knees
She’s a musician, writer, and storyteller from North Carolina who comes from a traditional ballad-singing family
She learned to sing from her great aunt Dellie Chandler Norton and other members of her community, and began performing while she was in her teens
In 2013, she received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honour in folk art in the US
This is from her album My Dearest Dear from 2000
It’s an old-time Appalachian tune
Old Man Luedecke - At the Airport
From Chester, NS
Off his 2006 album Hinterland
Bruce Molsky - Rocky Mountain
American old-time musician who studied with celebrated North Carolina fiddle player Tommy Jarrell for a time
From the 1997 album Bruce Molsky & Big Hoedown
Big Hoedown are a trio with whom he often plays
Beverly Smith also sings on this one
The song is by Roscoe Holcomb, a renowned singer and banjo player from Kentucky, who based it on a broadside ballad from the Crimean War of the 1850s
Mr. and Mrs. John Sams - Wagoner’s Lad
Of Combs, Kentucky
Recorded by musician, photographer, field recorder, and filmmaker John Cohen
This is a traditional tune closely related to “On Top of Old Smoky”
Shelley Short - Wagoner’s Lad
Contemporary musician from Portland, Oregon
Off her 2017 album Pacific City
The Mammals - If You Could Hear Me Now
They’re a folk rock band based in New York who’ve been performing since the early 2000s
This is off their 2020 album Nonet
Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger - Playboys and Playgirls
Recorded live at Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island in July of 1963
It was written by Bob
Tom Brosseau - 97 Flood
He’s a musician from North Dakota whose grandmother taught him to play the guitar when he was a child
Brosseau often performs as a solo artist, but he also plays in the group John Reilly & Friends with actor and musician John C Reilly, and was in a duo with Gregory Page called the American Folksingers
That one is from his 2007 album Grand Forks, a concept album about the 1997 Red River Flood which also severely affected southern Manitoba
The mayor of Grand Forks, North Dakota, presented the key to the city to Brosseau in 2007 because of the album
Wade Hemsworth - The Bad Girl’s Lament
A Canadian folksinger from Brantford, Ontario
Hemsworth learned this song in the Canadian north woods, and it is closely related to early versions found in the Maritime provinces and in Maine
It’s a member of the “Unfortunate Rake” song family, which includes “St. James Hospital”, “The Cowboy’s Lament”, “One Morning in May”, and “The Young Sailor Cut Down in His Prime”, though this is the story of a young girl “gone wrong”, rather than a ballad about a misguided boy, or “rake”
Dave Van Ronk - Would You Like to Swing on a Star?
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 was located in New York City in the 60s
This is an American pop standard written by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke
It was first recorded by Bing Crosby for the 1944 film Going My Way, and won an Oscar for Best Original Song
Ronk included it on his 1976 album Sunday Street
Christine Fellows - Un Canadien Errant
She’s a well-known Manitoban musician who’s been performing since 1993, both with groups like Helen, the Mountain Goats, and Old Man Luedecke, and on her own
This is from her 2011 album Femmes de chez nous
Song written in 1842 by Antoine Gérin-Lajoie after the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837–38
Tommy Johnson - Maggie Campbell Blues
He was a Delta blues musician from Mississippi who is known specifically for his falsetto singing and his guitar playing
He made his first recordings for Victor Records in 1928
Tommy Johnson was the first blues singer to claim to have sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in exchange for his talent on the guitar
The story was later associated with Robert Johnson, to whom Tommy Johnson had no relation
From 1928
It shares many of its lyrics with the blues standard “See See Rider”, and it also contains floating verses found in several other blues and roots songs
Eric Bibb, Rory Block, Maria Muldaur - Maggie Campbell
Bibb is an American musician who grew up around well-known musicians like Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson, and Bob Dylan, because his father, Leon Bibb, was part of the 1960s New York folk scene
Block is a guitarist and singer from New Jersey who began playing guitar at the age of 14 after meeting the guitarist Stefan Grossman, who introduced her to the Mississippi Delta blues
Muldaur is one of the musicians who first influenced Block to learn to play the guitar
She’s known as a member of the American folk revival of the 1960s, and often performed with her husband Geoff Muldaur, as well as with musicians like David Grisman, Jim Kweskin, and later the Grateful Dead, who she opened for and played with throughout the 1970s
From their 2004 collaborative album Sisters & Brothers
David Rovics - Tax the Rich
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
From his 2017 album Big Red Sessions
It was written around the time of the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011
Alan Mills - Shenandoah
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
Traditional American folk song and sea shanty, traced back to the early 19th century
Likely came from American and Canadian voyageurs who travelled down the Missouri River
Willie Dunn, Ron Bankley - The Tide Rises
Dunn was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
Ron Bankley was an Ontario guitarist, poet, and songwriter
Arlo Guthrie - Mooses Come Walking
American folksinger and son of iconic folk figure Woody Guthrie
This is from a 1994 live album that Guthrie recorded with Pete Seeger
He wrote the poem in 1993 and began reciting it at his performances, then later adapted it into a picture book in 2004
Stan Rogers - Dark Eyed Molly
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 the summers of his childhood
From his 1978 album Turnaround
The Scottish musician Archie Fisher wrote this song, and included it on his 1976 album The Man With a Rhyme
George Herod - O, the Sun Don’t Never Go Down
This is from a 1956 album of field recordings of older musicians from the southern United States made by Frederic Ramsey, Jr.
Herod was about 64 years old when this album was made, and he was the retired leader of the Lapsey Brass Band
This recording was made in Alabama in May of 1954
It’s a traditional hymn
Philip Kazee - Roll On John
He’s a Kentucky banjo player, and the son of well-known pastor and banjo player Buell Kazee who first became popular in the 1920s and later experienced a comeback during the American folk revival of the 1960s
He first started to play the banjo in the 1950s while working as a church minister
Unlike his father, he never pursued a career as a performer, but he did record an album of traditional songs in 2008, which is where that one comes from
The song belongs to a cluster of Black railroad and mining work songs that were adapted by white Appalachian banjo players
Selah Jubilee Singers - Royal Telephone
An American gospel vocal quartet active from 1927-1953
The song was written by pastor and songwriter Frederick M Lehman and first published in 1919
Recorded 1946
Mamie Minch, Tamar Korn - Royal Telephone
Minch and Korn are New York-based musicians who have been performing as a duo for many years
This is from their 2018 Jalopy Records EP
Larry Penn - On My Grandma’s Patchwork Quilt
Penn was Wisconsin’s Labour Poet Laureate, a songwriter, toymaker, activist, and union man
From his 1987 album Still Feels Like Rollin': Songs About Trucks and Trains
It’s his own song, and he says of it: “Grandma’s quilt may seem out of place on this tape about trucks and trains. But a nice warm bed has always been affinal to those who travel.”
Jesse Colin Young - Sugar Babe
He’s a musician from New York known both as a solo artist and a founding member of the 1960s group the Youngbloods
From a 1977 compilation album of live performances from the Bread and Roses Festival of Acoustic Music in Berkeley, California
He wrote the song when he was still in school, and first performed it with the Youngbloods
It’s inspired by lyrics he found in a book of traditional American folk songs
Boogie Bill Webb - Big Road Blues
He was a blues musician from Louisiana who combined Mississippi hill country blues with New Orleans R&B
From the 1st 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 song is by Tommy Johnson, who first recorded it in 1928
Mark Ross - Song of the Rail
Ross is a folksinger and historian from Oregon who’s been playing since the 1960s
This one is from the 1988 compilation album Rebel Voices: Songs of the Industrial Workers of the World
The lyrics are by labour activist, artist, and writer Ralph Chaplin, and Ross put them to music
Hoyt Axton - Vandy
He was a musician and actor from Oklahoma who first gained popularity as a folk singer in the 1960s
This is a live recording made at The Troubadour in Los Angeles in 1962
Either a traditional American folk song from around North Carolina, or written by fantasy and science fiction writer Manly Wade Wellman, who included it in his 1953 story, “Vandy, Vandy”
Wellman claimed that he had collected the song, but there isn’t much proof of oral transmission of the song prior to the publication of his story
We do know that the folk musician Bob Coltman set the piece to music after reading the story
Karen James - The Fair Maid on the Shore
A folksinger who grew up in England, Spain, and France, and moved to Canada as a teenager
From her 1961 self-titled debut album
Likely originated in Scotland, and has been found in Ireland and England as well, but it is much more widespread in the US and particularly in Canada
Daniel Koulack & Karrnnel - The Little Mountain Stream
From Winnipeg
Off the 2010 album Fiddle and Banjo
Pharis & Jason Romero - Old Bill’s Tune
From Horsefly, BC
Off their recent album Tell 'Em You Were Gold, which was recorded live over six days in a 60-year-old barn beside the Little Horsefly River
It’s a banjo-centric album, created to highlight the sound of the banjos that Jason makes
He plays a banjo named “Birdie” on this one
They wrote a song called “Ballad of Old Bill,” and the melody felt like a fiddle tune, so that’s where this one came from
