Barking Dog: February 15, 2024

This Week’s Theme: Hard Times

This week, as a cheeky nod to the ongoing CKUW Fundrive, we’re playing songs of hard times.

Note: This week’s notes are less detailed due to the Fundrive.

• Joe Hickerson - Hard Times

  • Was 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

  • From his 1970 album With a Gathering of Friends

  • From a group of songs of the same name, some of which are more specific in their lyrical content, including a well-known Newfoundland version

• Liberty High School Quartet - Hard Times

  • Recorded by the folklorist Alan Lomax in Texas in 1939

• Seena Helms - Hard Times

  • Off the 1980 album Hand-Me-Down Music

• Bob Dylan - Hard Times

  • From his 1992 album Good As I Been to You

• Gillian Welch - Hard Times

  • She’s one of the best-known contemporary American roots musicians, and has collaborated with artists like Allison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, and The Decemberists, though she’s known particularly for her musical partnership with Dave Rawlings

  • From her 2011 album The Harrow & The Harvest

• Don Edwards - Hard Times

  • From his 2011 album American

• JD Short - It’s Hard Time

  • He was a blues musician from Mississippi who performed under a number of different aliases beginning in 1930

  • That one was recorded for Bluebird Records in 1933 under the name Joe Stone

• Lillie Steele - The Song of Hard Times

  • From the 1958 album Banjo Tunes and Songs

• Pearly “Grandma” Davis - It’s These Hard Times

  • This is from an album of old-time music from Mike Seeger’s collection

  • Davis was one of the few actual old-time musicians who was still coming to the Union Grove Fiddler’s Convention in the early 1960s, which is where and when Seeger met her

  • When he and John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers visited her and her family after one of the conventions, they learned that she didn’t trust electricity, and therefore didn’t have it, and also saw that she had two prominent pictures on her mantlepiece: one of the first recorded rural fiddler, Fiddling John Carson, and one of Elvis Presley

  • Recorded April 5, 1961 at her granddaughter’s house near Roaring River, NC

• Alan Mills - Hard, Hard Times

  • Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec

  • Known for popularizing Canadian folk music, and for cowriting “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly”

  • Made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for his contributions to Canadian folklore

  • This song was found in Newfoundland and was popular during the depression

  • Many similar songs can be found in the US, but the lyrical content of this song makes it very Canadian

• Lonnie Donegan - Times Are Getting Hard, Boys

  • He was a Scottish musician popular in the skiffle movement of the 1950s

  • This one is from 1958

• Mike Seeger - Hard Times in These Mines

  • Seeger was a folklorist and musician who co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s

  • From his 1966 album Tipple, Loom & Rail: Songs of the Industrialization of the South

• Joe Glazer - Hard Times in the Mill

  • Glazer was a folk musician and labour activist from New York who recorded over 30 albums during his career

  • Off his 1975 album Textile Voices: Songs and Stories of the Mills

• Art Thieme - Hard Times in the Mill / A Dollar Ain’t a Dollar Any More

  • He was a folk musician, photographer, and radio host from Chicago who specialised in music and stories from the upper midwest United States, but he also had an interest in cowboy songs

  • This is from his 2006 album Chicago Town and Other Points West

• Bob Dylan - Hard Times in New York Town

  • A demo from 1962

  • It’s an adaptation of the Bently Boys’ 1929 song “Down on Penny’s Farm”

• Blind Willie Johnson - Mother’s Children Have a Hard Time

  • Texan blues singer and preacher born in 1897 who’s known for his distinctive voice and slide guitar playing

  • He wrote this song and recorded it in 1927

  • The song’s lyrics are autobiographical, as Johnson’s mother died when he was a child, and his father remarried soon after, to a woman who reportedly threw a toxic substance into Johnson’s eyes, causing him to become blind

• Sons of the Pioneers - Hard Times Come Again No More

  • One of the earliest western bands in the US

  • Formed in 1933, originally Roy Rogers, Bob Nolan, and Tim Spencer

  • The band still exists but there have been countless changes in membership since the beginning

• Emmylou Harris - Hard Times Come Again No More

  • American musician and songwriter who has won 14 Grammys and been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, among other honours

  • This is from her 1996 album Portraits

• Gangstagrass, Kaia Kater - Hard Times Come Again No More

  • Gangstagrass formed in New York City in 2006 to combine hip hop and bluegrass into its own genre

  • Kater is an artist based in Toronto

  • Off the 2020 album No Time for Enemies

• Vera Hall - Trouble So Hard

  • Hall was a deeply skilled folk singer from Alabama whose singing began to gain national attention in the 1930s

  • When ethnomusicologist John Lomax recorded her in the 1930s, he wrote that she had the loveliest voice he had ever recorded

  • She’s best known for this 1937 song

• Jim Ringer - Waitin’ For the Hard Times to Go

  • This is off his 1972 album of the same name

• Peggy Seeger - Sing About These Hard Times

  • Peggy is an American folksinger and member of the Seeger family who’s been living and performing in the UK for over 60 years

  • This is off the 2005 album Love Call Me Home

• Brownie McGhee - Hard Time Blues

  • He was a folk and blues musician from Tennessee who regularly performed as a duo with harmonica player Sonny Terry

  • This is from his 1962 album Traditional Blues - Vol. 2

• Harrison Kennedy - Hard Time Blues

  • A Hamilton, Ontario artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years

  • From his 2011 album Shame the Devil

• Skip James - Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues

  • James was from Bentonia, Mississippi

  • He first recorded for Paramount in 1931, but his recordings did not sell well due to the Great Depression, and he faded into obscurity until the 1960s, when his music was rediscovered by blues fans, and he appeared at folk and blues festivals across the US, recorded several albums, and performed at concerts

  • This is his own song, from 1931

• Karrnnel Sawitsky, Daniel Koulack, Joey Landreth - Killin’ Floor

  • From the 2015 album Fiddle & Banjo: Tunes from the North, Songs from the South

• Trampled by Turtles - All the Good Times Are Gone

• Hedy West - How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live

• Guitar Slim, Jelly Belly - No More Hard Time