Barking Dog: December 30, 2021
Betty Smith - Red Rosy Bush
From a 1975 album of traditional North Carolina songs
Smith was an educator and folksinger from Rowan County, NC
This is a love song from the southern mountains of NC
She learned it from the folksinger and actor Leon Bibb, who is the father of contemporary musician Eric Bibb
Ian & Sylvia - Some Day Soon
Ian & Sylvia performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975
This is their own song from 1964
Dock Boggs - Davenport
Influential old-time musician from Norton, Virginia who recorded in 1927 and 1929 but worked as a coal miner much of his life
His music career was revived during the folk revival of the 1960s and he spent his later life playing folk festivals and making recordings for the Folkways record label
He learned this song from his oldest brother, John
He first heard him play it in 1906, when he was 8 years old
Wandering Boys - I Want Jesus To Walk With Me
They were a male gospel group that recorded four songs for Standard Records in 1943
This is an African American spiritual, and we’ll hear another version of it right after this
Algia Mae Hinton - I Want Jesus to Walk with Me
She was a Piedmont blues musician from North Carolina who learned to play the guitar from her mother, an expert in the Piedmont fingerpicking style who often played at local parties and gatherings
She met the folklorist Glenn Hinson in 1978, who arranged for her to perform at the North Carolina Folklife Festival
She gave several concerts outside of North Carolina after that, even travelling to Europe to perform in 1998
This is off the 1999 album Honey Babe
Josh White - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
Started playing music in the late 20s and by the end of the 30s he gained fame as a blues, jazz, and folk musician in New York City
Also acted in films and on Broadway
He recorded this one in New York City in 1940
We also hear Wilson Myers and Bill White on this track
It’s a chain gang song that tells the story of a rapid trial and sentencing of a Black man, and dramatizes the racist judicial system
Often these expedited trials were a sign that prisons were running low on labourers for work gangs, and officials would send Black people to work gangs over false or exaggerated charges
While many chain gang songs were forgotten as the work song tradition died, this song crossed into other genres, including into country
Stan Rogers - The Wreck of the Athens Queen
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
This is from his 1977 album Fogarty’s Cove
Cara Luft - The Ploughboy and the Cockney
From Winnipeg
Can be traced back to a 1670s broadside called “The Courageous Plow-Man”
Joe Hickerson - Drive Dull Care Away
Is a folk singer and songleader from Illinois
Was Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress for 35 years
He got this version from Sandy Ives, who collected folk music on the east coasts of the United States and Canada
Ives heard it from Charles Gorman of PEI in 1957, and it is an exceptionally rare song, though Hickerson found two other versions of it, one with a different tune that has been printed by The Sacred Harp since 1844, and another with only the words, from a 1775 edition of The Pennsylvania Ledger, so it is rather far reaching despite its uncommon nature
OJ Abbott - The Basketong
Abbott was 84 when this song was recorded for the album Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties, compiled by Edith Fowke between 1957 and 1958
Canadian song that hadn’t reached the American shanties at the time of this recording
Belongs to a group of songs that describe life in a particular camp
Joan O’Bryant - The Butcher Boy
Kansas folksinger and folklorist who taught folklore and English at the University of Wichita
The album that song is from was recorded in 1958, when O’Bryant was only 26 years old
Peggy Seeger - The Butcher Boy
Peggy Seeger a member of the Seeger family - Mike and Pete Seeger brothers, father Charles Seeger, a folklorist and musicologist, mother Ruth Crawford Seeger, a composer and first woman to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship
She’s a popular folksinger who has lived in the UK for over 60 years
American ballad, but comes from older English ballads
Lonesome Ace Stringband - The Hills of Mexico
From Toronto
Also known as “On the Trail of the Buffalo” and “Buffalo Skinners”
This recording is from their new live album, Lively Times, recorded in Vancouver
Sam Hinton - The Cowboy’s Lament
Was an American folksinger, marine biologist, and visual artist
This recording is from his 1966 album The Wandering Folksong
Pete Seeger - Streets of Laredo
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
Also known as “The Cowboy’s Lament” or “The Dying Cowboy,” an American cowboy ballad adapted from a sea song called "The Sailor's Grave” which was written by Edwin Hubbell Chapin, published in 1839
Became popular on ships and in lumber camps
Old Man Luedecke - Kingdom Come
From Chester, NS
Off his 2012 album Tender is the Night
David Francey - Belgrade Train
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music later in life
That song is from his 2003 album Skating Rink
Willie Dunn - John McLean
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is from the 2015 album Metallic
Roscoe Holcomb - Rocky Mountain
Was a construction worker, coal miner, and farmer much of his life
Not recorded until 1958, another older artist who became popular during the folk revival, though wasn’t known at all before then - discovered by John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers playing on his front porch in Daisy, Kentucky
This is from a new album of recordings of Holcomb’s 1972 performance at The Old Church in Portland, Oregon, which is a Carpenter Gothic church built in 1882
Those recordings were rediscovered in the archives of a local community radio station and released on Jalopy Records a couple weeks ago
This is his own song, based on a broadside ballad from the Crimean War
Blind Willie McTell, Kate McTell - Dying Gambler
He was a piedmont blues and ragtime artist who made many recordings with different companies under different names, but who never had a major hit
Despite his lack of commercial success, he actively played and recorded during the 40s and 50s, unlike many of his peers
He did not live to see the folk revival of the 1960s through which many other bluesmen were rediscovered, but he influenced many artists, including Taj Mahal and The White Stripes
Kate was his wife and a blues musician in her own right who joined him on several recordings
This recording is from 1935
Star Thistle - Starting Over
A project from the mind of Winnipeg artist Uncle Sinner
Off his debut album The Best of Star Thistle
Lillie Cogswell Knox - Got the Keys to the Kingdom
This is from an album of field recordings from the Gullah enclave of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina made by the Lomaxes in the 1930s
This seems to be a traditional gospel song, and we’ll hear what could possibly be a variant of the song by Washington Phillips after this
Washington Phillips - I’ve Got the Keys to the Kingdom
He was an interesting fella--an unordained or “jackleg” preacher, who spoke to spontaneous street gatherings and criticized the sectarianism of organized religion
While the instruments he plays on his recordings were listed only as “novelty accompaniment” by Columbia Records, he called them “manzarenes” or “dulceolas”, which he made out of broken instruments
The 78s he made for Columbia are coveted by record collectors, and in 2018 an album of his recordings, called Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams was released, which received two Grammy award nominations
From 1929
Charles Wallace, H Brown, John Roberts - Dig My Grave Both Long and Narrow
From a 1959 album of Bahamian music
This was recorded at the Fresh Creek Settlement on the island of Andros in August of 1958
It’s a very old Bahamian song, and is almost always sung in three-part harmony
It may come from Anglican polyphonic hymnal traditions of the 18th century
Palmer Crisp - Roll On John
He was a musician who worked for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in Allen, Kentucky
He also had a radio show in West Virginia
This was recorded in Allen in 1946 for the Library of Congress
It’s included on an album of his father Rufus’s music
He stated that it was “only natural” that some of his father’s music rubbed off on him, and this is one of the songs he learned from his father
It’s a railroad song the origins of which are unknown
It seems to have been composed and become popular while the railroads were being constructed in the mountains during the end of the 19th century
Michael Hurley - Alabama
Member of the 1960s Greenwich Village scene, also a cartoonist and painter
This is from his new album, The Time of the Foxgloves
Luz Morales - Aking Bituin (My Star)
This is from an album of folk songs from the Philippines from 1960, sung by the Filipino soprano Luz Morales
Ferron - Shady Gate
She’s a Canadian musician and poet from the same generation as people like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Cockburn, though she’s less widely known even within Canada
From her 2009 album Boulder, though she first released the song on a 1992 live album
Pharis & Jason Romero - I’m Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail
Married duo from Horsefly, BC
From their album A Passing Glimpse
John Greenway - Talking Miner (Talking Centralia)
American folklorist who specialised in social protest songs
Recorded an album called Talking Blues in 1958 on the Folkways label
Included 15 covers of songs by different artists
This is one of those songs from that album, and it’s one of three songs written by Woody Guthrie after the Centralia mine explosion in Centralia, Illinois, in 1947, in which 111 miners were killed
Son House - Yonder Comes My Mother
Mississippi delta blues artist who influenced Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters
He and his band were recorded for the Library of Congress by Alan Lomax in 1941 and 1942, and in 1943 he left Mississippi for New York and gave up music
In 1964, though, a group of record collectors rediscovered him and his music, and persuaded him to relearn his songs
He reestablished his music career, playing in coffeehouses, at folk festivals, and on tours
He also recorded several albums
This was recorded in 1969 in Rochester, NY
Smoky Babe - My Baby She Told Me
From an album of Louisiana Country Blues, recorded by the folklorist Harry Oster in the early 1960s
Smoky Babe was an itinerant musician originally from Mississippi who grew up working on farms in his region, then travelled around Alabama and Louisiana working on barges and as a mechanic during the day, and playing at clubs at night
Freddie Spruell - Milk Cow Blues
He was a Delta blues musician from Louisiana who is often considered the first Delta blues musician to be recorded
This was recorded in Chicago in 1926
Sandy Stoddard - Moose and Bear Calls
Album from 1956
This is the kind of thing you find when going through seemingly normal folk compilation albums of field recordings
