Barking Dog: February 3, 2022
The Wakami Wailers - Tickle Cove Pond
They’re a band that formed in 1981 when four employees at Wakami Lake Provincial Park, near Chapleau, Ontario, started playing Canadian folk music together
They have continued playing since then, and have released four albums
This is off their 1999 album River Through the Pines
Written by fisherman and songwriter Mark Walker of Tickle Cove, Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland in the late 19th century, and is prized for its witty and poetic turns of phrase
Joseph Spence - In Times Like This
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, who recorded versions of his gospel arrangements
This is off an album of unheard Joseph Spence recordings, released by Smithsonian Folkways in 2021
The song was composed during World War II by Ruth Caye Jones, a Pennsylvania evangelist and gospel songwriter
Bruce Green, Clifton Green, Tweedie Gibson - My Lord, Help Me To Pray
From an album of songs recorded in Nassau in the Bahamas in June of 1965 of songs from the rhyming tradition, which started with sponge fishermen, known as “spongers”, who sang to pass the long days and nights aboard their boats
The leader, or “rhymer” would improvise fast verses, often about biblical stories or local legends, against a background of bass or tenor singers
Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder - Hooray Hooray
Taj is a Grammy-award-winning blues musician from New York City whose career has spanned over 50 years
Cooder is also a Grammy-award-winning musician with a career spanning over 50 years
This is a new single from the two, both of whom are known for their collaborations with other musicians
It’s from their forthcoming album, Get on Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee
Terry first recorded the song for Folkways Records in 1954
Buster “Buzz” Ezell - Salt Water Blues
He was a blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player who was recorded by the Library of Congress in Fort Valley, Georgia, in 1941 and 1943
Big Dave McLean - Someday Baby
A blues musician from Winnipeg who’s been playing for over 50 years
Song was first recorded as “Someday Baby Blues” by Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon in 1935
It’s off McLean’s 2008 album Acoustic Blues: Got ‘Em from the Bottom
The Weather Station - Came So Easy
Toronto
Fronted by Tamara Lindeman
This is from the 2011 album All of It Was Mine
Victor Jara - Que Saco Rogar al Cielo
He was a Chilean musician, poet, teacher, theatre director, and activist who was tortured and killed in 1973 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet
His work is widely remembered and celebrated throughout the world for its focus on peace, love, and social justice
Off his self-titled album from 1966
Willie Dunn - Lovenant Chain
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is off his fourth album The Vanity of Human Wishes, from 1984
Hazel Dickens, Alice Gerrard - No Hard Times
Dickens from West Virginia, Gerrard from Washington
Dickens met Gerrard through the Seegers, as Mike Seeger was Gerrard’s husband
They established a collaborative relationship and were some of the first women to record a bluegrass album at a time when most bluegrass bandleaders were men
This song was first released by Jimmie Rogers in 1933
Uncle Sinner - This World Can’t Stand Long
From Winnipeg
Written by Jim Anglin and first recorded in 1947 by King’s Sacred Quartette
This is off his 2015 album Let the Devil In
The Carolinians - Bad Conditions
They were a gospel group that recorded a session for Bluebird Records in Rock Hill, SC in 1938
This is a traditional gospel song
The Fisk Jubilee Singers - River of Jordan
They are an a capella ensemble consisting of students from the historically Black Fisk University of Nashville, Tennessee, which formed in 1871 as a fundraising effort for the university
They are named after the biblical year of jubilee, during which enslaved people began to be emancipated
They decided the name was apt, as most of the students at the university and their families were only recently emancipated from slavery
This song is also known as “The Welcome Table” and “Jacob’s Ladder”
It’s a traditional American gospel song likely written by an enslaved person
The song later became an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s
This version includes a reference to the River Jordan which isn’t found in some other versions
We’ll hear a few different versions of the song after this
Emmett Brand - I’m Going to Cross the River of Jordan
From a 1956 album of field recordings made by Frederic Ramsey Jr. in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi of older musicians he met
He reckoned he was around 82 when he was recorded near Morgan Springs, Alabama on April 15, 1954
He said he learned it from “the old folks”
Blind Willie McTell - I Got to Cross the River Jordan
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
Recorded November 1949 in Atlanta, GA
Pharis & Jason Romero - Come On Home
Married duo from Horsefly, BC
From their 2013 album Long Gone Out West Blues
Jimmy Collier, Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick - Everybody’s Got a Right to Live
At the height of his career Collier was on Sesame Street, played at Carnegie Hall, and played for Martin Luther King, Jr.
FDK was a civil rights activist who was an associate of MLK in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where he was the director of folk culture
This is from their joint album of the same name from 1968
Old Man Luedecke - Low on the Hog
From Chester, NS
Off his 2015 album Domestic Eccentric, which he recorded inside a cabin he built in his backyard
Fraser Union - Snap the Line Tight
They’re a BC folk group that formed in 1983
This song is from their 2009 album BC Songbook
It’s by Vic Bell, who wrote it in the 1960s about log salvaging on the BC coast
Stanley G. Triggs - Tony Went Walking
Born in Nelson, BC in 1928
Worked in logging camps, construction camps, in forestry, with survey crews, and on railroad gangs
Also worked as a freelance photographer and earned a living playing in coffee houses in the 1960s
This seems to be his own song
The Watersons - The North Country Maid
English folk group from Yorkshire, England who performed acapella traditional songs beginning in the 1960s
They were three siblings: Norma, Mike, and Elaine, and their cousin John Harrison
Norma Waterson died on Monday at the age of 82, and she’s being remembered for both her warmth and her talent
That recording is from their self-titled 1966 album
The song is also known as “The Oak and the Ash”
It’s from at least the 17th century, and was originally a dance that was included in James Hawkins’ musical transcripts in 1650
Nimrod Workman - Coal Black Mining Blues
American singer, coal miner, and union organiser who spent much of his life in West Virginia
Named after his grandfather, who taught his grandson old British ballads
Workman worked as a coal miner for 42 years until he had to retire because he contracted black lung
After his retirement, he advocated for miners with black lung and also became known as a folk singer
He performed all around the Appalachian region and at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and was also recorded on film by Alan Lomax (you can find those films on Youtube)
He also received a National Heritage Fellowship from the United States National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honour in folk art in the US
Died in November, 1994 at the age of 99
This is his own song, the melody of which comes from a couple of songs dating back to the 20's and 30's, particularly “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues”
It was included in the soundtrack for the 1977 film "Harlan County, USA", by Barbara Kopple
George Strattan - Joe Hill
This is off an anthology of English folk music, recorded between 1974 and 1980 and released in 1981
Strattan was a retired draughtsman and trade union official from Liverpool, Lancashire
The song is about Joe Hill, a Swedish-American labour activist and songwriter known for songs like “The Preacher and the Slave”—through which he coined the phrase “pie in the sky”—”There is Power in a Union,” and “Casey Jones, the Union Scab”
Hill was convicted of the murders of a former police officer and his son in 1914 after a controversial trial and was executed in 1915
The song was originally a poem written by Alfred Hayes around 1930, and was put to music in 1936 by Earl Robinson
Hill Brothers with Willie Simmons - Just Over in the Glory Land
The Hill Brothers were a Virginia old-time country band active in the 1930s
The song was recorded in August of 1937 in Charlotte, NC
It’s a hymn written by JW Acuff in 1906, and was popular for awhile as a southern brass band song
Paul Joines - The Young Men and Maids
From an album of songs from the Blue Ridge Mountains
Joines was from Sparta, NC
At a young age he took to rambling and travelled to every part of the country, but always returned to the mountains
This American ballad is more commonly known as “Silver Dagger,” and it’s widespread in North Carolina and Virginia
Variants of the song include “Katie Dear,” “Molly Dear,” and “Awake, Awake, Ye Drowsy Sleepers”
We’ll hear two other versions after this
Jim Smoak, the Louisiana Honeydrippers - Silver Dagger
Smoak is a bluegrass and country banjo player from Louisiana who’s been playing since he was a child
In 1961, the ethnomusicologist Harry Oster asked Smoak to join a bluegrass band, which resulted in 21 recorded songs which were first released by Arhoolie Records in 2002
Fleet Foxes - Silver Dagger
Contemporary band from Seattle, Washington
They released that version in 2021
Fannie Lou Hamer - All the Pretty Little Horses
She was a Civil Rights and women’s rights activist who co founded the Freedom Democratic Party and the National Women's Political Caucus
This song is from the 2015 album Songs My Mother Taught Me, which was recorded in 1963
This is a traditional folk song and children’s lullaby, which was passed down from Hamer’s grandmother to her mother to her
This version includes a verse that conveys the feelings of an enslaved caregiver who, while caring for her enslaver’s child, wishes for time with her own child, who is in need of care and attention
Pete Seeger - All the Pretty Little Horses
From the 1951 album Songs To Grow On, Vol. 2: School Days
Betty Pamptopee - Owa bagish kichi ingodwok nijinishinabek (O for a thousand tongues)
Off a 1956 album of music from some of the Great Lakes Indigenous tribes, including the Algonquin, Meskwaki, Ojibwe, and Haudenosaunee
This song is in the Ojibwe language, and it’s sung by Bett Pamptopee of Isabella Reservation in Michigan
Sheila Clark - The Ballad of Tom Dula
This is from a 1986 album of tragic love ballads performed by folksinger Sheila Clark
A North Carolina folk song about the 1866 murder of Laura Foster by the confederate soldier Tom Dula
A local poet named Thomas Land wrote a poem about the events soon after
Dula’s name was spelled D-U-L-A but pronounced “Dooley” in the Appalachian tradition of pronouncing the final “a” as a “y”, as is the case with the Grand Ole Opry
Bill McAdoo and Pete Seeger - Fare Thee Well
From the 1960 album Bill McAdoo Sings, with Guitar
He was 23 when he recorded it, and is accompanied by Pete Seeger on banjo
This song is also commonly known as “Fare Thee Well,” though it was originally recorded from a woman named Dink by John Lomax in 1909
Babe Stovall - When the Circle Be Unbroken
Babe an American Delta blues singer and guitarist from Mississippi
This is a field recording made by David Evans in January, 1966 in Louisiana
Well-known Christian hymn written around 1907 by Ada R Habershon and Charles H Gabriel
The Golden Gate Quartet - To the Rock
They are a vocal quartet formed in Virginia by four high school students in 1934
They are still active today, but have obviously undergone multiple changes in membership
The song is also called “Hell Down Yonder,” and it seems to be a traditional southern spiritual
Gabriel Brown, Rochelle French - Uncle Bud
This recording was made by Alan Lomax, Zora Neale Hurston, and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle in Eatonville, Florida in June of 1935
It’s sung by Rochelle French, with guitar by Gabriel Brown
David Francey - Highway 95
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who started to pursue music as a career at the age of 45 after working as a carpenter and in railyards for 20 years
From his 2004 album The Waking Hour
Mrs. Ed Gallagher - My Gallant Brigantine
Off a 1962 album of folksongs collected by the folklorist Helen Creighton in the maritime provinces
This song is performed by a woman identified only as Mrs. Edward Gallagher, and her husband was the lightkeeper at Chebucto Head, Nova Scotia when Creighton first encountered her
Creighton writes that Gallagher “radiated happiness” and that “there was always laughter and good cheer in her house. where her songs and her husband's stories were a never-failing source of enjoyment“
She learned her songs mostly from her mother
Mark Hiscock - The Night Paddy Murphy Died
He’s a traditional musician from Newfoundland, known for his work with Shanneyganock
This is from his 2007 album Newfoundland Drinking Songs 2
It’s a Newfoundland folk song about a man’s death and the fun his friends have at the traditional Irish wake
O.J. Abbott - Hogan’s Lake
Abbott was 84 when Edith Fowke recorded him in his home in 1957 for the album Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties, which was released in 1961
This song is one of many that describes daily life at a particular camp, though this song does well to highlight the differences between lumbering camps and square timber camps, which prepared wood in square timber format to be shipped to Britain with less space wasted on the ship
Fowke notes that this song likely goes back to at least the 1860s, as wood stopped being shipped as square timber around 1870
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Cluck Old Hen
From Toronto, ON
Traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo tune album off their new album Lively Times, which they recorded live in Vancouver in 2019
