Barking Dog: February 29, 2024
The Bently Boys - Down on Penny’s Farm
Recorded in 1929
The song is also known as “Robert’s Farm,” and is said to have been written by Claude Reeves around 1935, though the Bently Boys’ earlier recording complicates this
The Bently Boys called it a “regionalized recasting of an earlier song, "Hard Times"
Ellen Stekert - The Raftsman’s Song
She’s from Long Island, and she obtained a PhD in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965
She learned the 18 lumberjack songs on her 1958 album Songs of a New York Lumberjack from one man named Ezra “Fuzzy” Barhight
In the liner notes, Stekert notes that lumber men often rewrote old songs to suit local events, and this song seems to be an example of that
Fuzzy believed the events of the song to be true
Bruce Cockburn - You Point to the Sky
He’s a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who’s been playing professionally for over 40 years
This is from his 1971 album High Winds White Sky
Uncle Sinner - The Cuckoo
From Winnipeg
Off his 2008 album Ballads and Mental Breakdowns
A traditional English folk song, though it’s also popular in the US, Canada, Scotland, and Ireland
Mount Zion Baptist Quartet - I Shall Not Be Moved
They were a vocal quartet that recorded four tracks for Victor Records in New Orleans in 1927
“I Shall Not Be Moved” is a spiritual that became popular as a protest song during the Civil Rights Movement and as a union song
Ted Hawkins - There Stands the Glass
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, just a few months after the release of his breakthrough album
This is a live recording from the 1998 album The Final Tour, recorded on his last concert tour in 1994
Willy Mitchell - Call of the Moose
He’s an Indigenous musician who was born in New York in the 50s after his Algonquin and Mohawk parents were refused admittance to a hospital in Cornwall, Ontario
In January 1969, a police officer shot him in the head during a situation involving stolen Christmas lights
He used the money from the resulting settlement to buy a guitar, and formed the Desert River Band, with whom he recorded and toured during the 1970s
This song is included on the 2014 compilation album Native North America
Pharis & Jason Romero - Engine 143
From Horsefly, BC
There are a number of other American train wreck songs from the early days of the steam locomotive
This one is based on the true story of the wreck of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway’s Fast Flying Virginian on October 23, 1890
Their version is off their 2011 album A Passing Glimpse
Ian & Sylvia - Keep on the Sunny Side
Married duo who recorded together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975
This is from the 2019 album The Lost Tapes, a collection of professional live recordings from the early 70s that Sylvia found in her attic early in 2019 while gathering memorabilia for the National Music Centre in Calgary
It’s a popular American song written in 1899, with lyrics by Ada Blenkhorn and music by J Howard Entwhistle
It was popularised by the Carter Family through their 1928 recording
The North Fork Rounders - The Hound Dog Song
They’re an old-time string band that formed in Ohio in the mid 1970s
This is from their 1978 debut album Railroadin’ & Gamblin’
The origins of this song aren’t completely clear—it could have been written by prolific songwriter and musician James Bland, though it might also be a traditional song from the Ozark Mountains, where a story like the one we’ll hear is said to have occurred
The song was also adopted as a theme song for Missouri Congressman James Beauchamp’s unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912, the same year the song was first recorded
Dave Van Ronk - The Jersey State Stomp
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 the 60s
This is from the very first issue of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a cooperative that was dedicated to reinvigorating the New York folk scene, and released over 100 albums between 1982 and 1997
This one just lists place names in New Jersey
Mississippi John Hurt - Hard Times in the Old Town Tonight
American country blues singer and guitarist from Avalon, Mississippi
His recordings for OkEh Records were included on the incredibly influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, and in 1963 a copy of his song “Avalon Blues” was discovered, which led the musicologist Dick Spottswood to find Hurt in Avalon
Hurt performed at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, which brought further attention to his music, and he toured extensively throughout the US and recorded 3 albums
This is his own song
It was recorded at a 1965 concert at Oberlin College in Ohio
The Weather Station - Everything I Saw
From Toronto
Off the 2011 album All of It Was Mine
The Allman Brothers Band - Little Martha
From their 1972 album Eat a Peach
It’s the only song recorded by the band that was written solely by Duane Allman, who died just a few weeks after the song’s recording
A Paul Ortega, Joanne Shenandoah - Blessing the Little Ones
Ortega was an influential Apache musician who began as a tribal singer at the age of five
He moved to Chicago in the early 1960s and began to adapt blues guitar to Apache social songs
Shenandoah was a Grammy award-winning musician and composer from the Oneida Indian Nation, based in New York, and she performed internationally, including at Carnegie Hall and the Vatican
This is from their 1991 album Loving Ways
Kev Carmody - I’ve Been Moved
He’s an Aboriginal Australian musician who’s been playing professionally since the 1980s
This is from his 1991 album Eulogy (For a Black Person)
Leonard Cohen - Passing Through
Recorded live in London in 1972
The song was written by American professor of English Dick Blakeslee in 1948
Kong Nay - Maknahseka
Nay is a Cambodian chapei dang veng musician called the “Ray Charles of Cambodia”
This is off the 2019 album Cambodian Heritage: Chapei Dang Veng, Vol. 1
Jack Owens - I Won’t Be Bad No More
Owens was a blues musician from Mississippi
He learned several instruments as a child but his chosen instrument was the guitar
He never really aimed to become a professional recording artist, and instead farmed and ran a juke joint for much of his life before being recorded during the folk and blues revival of the 1960s when the musicologist David Evans learned about him from other blues musicians from his region
He toured throughout the US and Europe during the last decades of his life, often with his harmonica-playing friend Bud Spires
This is from their album It Must Have Been the Devil from 1971
Daniel Romano - Nothing
He’s an artist from Welland, Ontario
This is off his 2011 album Sleep Beneath the Willow
Alice Stuart - Rather Be the Devil
She was a musician from Washington who got her start in folk music at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1964, when she was 22
She returned to the festival twice in the following years, and formed a friendship with Mississippi John Hurt, who we heard earlier, and the two toured together throughout the US
She also toured with musicians like Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Van Morrison, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
Stuart was briefly a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention as well, though she didn’t end up making any recordings with the band
This is from her 2002 album Can't Find No Heaven
It’s her version of Skip James’ 1931 song
Alabama Sacred Harp Convention - Hallelujah / Amazing Grace
Recorded at Corinth Baptist Church in Fyffe, Alabama in September of 1959
Sacred Harp is a type of traditional sacred choral music that originated in New England, and uses shape notes, a kind of musical notation that was designed to more easily facilitate congregational singing
This is an 1835 William Walker shape-note tune using earlier words by Charles Wesley
Sam Amidon - Hallelujah
Contemporary folk artist from Vermont
From his 2020 self-titled album
Kacy & Clayton - Let It Shine On Me
From Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan
Traditional gospel blues song first recorded by the Wiseman Quartet in 1923
Art Samuels, The Montréal Youth Singers - Status Quo
Montreal musician
The song is from a 1956 album that includes both "songs of peace and protest" and "songs of fun and impudence”
The Men of No Property - England’s Vietnam
This is the title track from the 1977 Folkways album England’s Vietnam—Irish Songs of Resistance: Sung by the Men of No Property
The Men of No Property were Belfast-born musicians Barney McIlvogue, Brian Whoriskey, and Irene Clarke, all students who took part in protests and marches in Northern Ireland in 1969 during the Northern Ireland civil rights campaign
The liner notes say: The people of Vietnam fought for 30 years before achieving their independence.The path to freedom may be long and hard but for England the simple message is that the days of the colonists are over, and, for all her military might, she cannot forever deny the Irish people their freedom.
David Rovics - Lebanon (2006)
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
This poem is from his 2009 album Ten Thousand Miles Away
Children in New York City - Bill Bones
This is off the 2017 Smithsonian Folkways compilation album Music for Children, Music by Children
It was recorded by the sound archivist, media theorist, advertising creator, and graphic designer Tony Schwartz for his 1953 album 1, 2, 3 and a Zing Zing Zing
Schwartz invited a 12-year-old girl to sing camp songs in the recreation room of a New York City housing project in 1953, and she then convinced other children to join her
Pete Seeger, Brother Kirk, Oscar the Grouch, The Sesame Street Kids - Old Lady Who Swallowed the Fly
This is from the 1974 album Pete Seeger and Brother Kirk Visit Sesame Street
Rose Bonne wrote the lyrics in 1952, and Alan Mills contributed the music
Stanley Triggs - Meadow Blues
From British Columbia
He worked in logging camps, construction camps, in forestry, with survey crews, and on railroad gangs
He also worked as a freelance photographer and earned a living playing in coffee houses in the 1960s
The song was made up by a young girl named Carla Miller from Merritt, BC, who was the cook at a logging camp in the Lardeau Valley that Triggs worked at in 1946
George Davis - Why Are You Leaving?
He started playing music when he was 27 while working as a miner
He would practice on his front porch every evening, and the miners would come and stand on the railroad tracks to listen to him
In 1947, he was invited to do his first radio show, and at one time had at least three radio shows in three different towns, driving 480 km a day to record them
This is from his 1967 album When Kentucky Had No Union Men
John Snipes - You Don’t Know My Darling
He was a farmer and banjo player from Chatham County, North Carolina, and he was known in the region for being a marathon dance musician, and would often play a single tune at lightning speed for as long as an hour
This is off an album of African American banjo music from North Carolina and Virginia
Old Man Luedecke - Lulu My Darling
From Chester, Nova Scotia
A short one from his 2008 album Proof of Love
Betty Mae Jumper - Hallelujah
From the 1995 album Heartbeat: Voices of First Nations Women
Jumper was a nurse, and the first female chairperson of the Seminole Tribe of Florida
She also co-founded the tribe's first newspaper
She learned this song from a missionary as a child
It’s sung in the Creek language, and was popular in her tribe
Harry McClintock - Hallelujah, I’m a Bum
American cowboy, union organiser, hobo singer, and poet from Tennessee who’s known for writing “Big Rock Candy Mountain”
This is off the 1972 Folkways album Haywire Mac, which was recorded by folksinger and folk song collector Sam Eskin in 1953
Bob Dylan, The Band - Hallelujah, I’ve Just Been Moved
This recording was made during the Basement Tapes sessions in 1967
Fred Cockerham - Little Satchel
Fiddle and banjo player from North Carolina
This is his own song, though he took elements from the older tune “Silver Dagger”
Dorothy Collins, Raymond Scott - Bottled Soft Drinks Serenade (Glass Container Institute)
