Barking Dog: February 8, 2024
Lonnie Johnson - Hard Times Ain’t Gone No Where
It’s his 125th birthday today
American blues and jazz singer born into a family of Louisiana musicians in 1899
Pioneer of jazz guitar and jazz violin
Recognized as the first to play an amplified violin and as one of the originators of the single-string guitar solos that are so popular in contemporary rock, blues, and jazz
This was recorded for Decca Records in 1937
Tom Rush - I’d Like to Know
He’s 83 today
He’s a musician and songwriter from New Hampshire who began his music career in the early 1960s
This is from his 1965 self-titled album
The song is by Woody Guthrie, who wrote it later in his life, and it’s been widely recorded since
It uses the tune of the hymn “Farther Along”
Jake Xerxes Fussell - Furniture Man
From Durham, NC
This is a Lil McClintock song originally released in 1930
Fussell says of the song: “There are a lot of variants of the “furniture man” character out there in different folksongs. Country preachers even recorded sermons about the furniture man. The furniture man, the rent man, whatever you want to call him. The guy who’s always there to collect a debt of some kind, whether you really owe him or not. Devil without any horns. It was a big topic for a while there, and in many ways, it still is”
What makes this particular song interesting is that McClintock wrote and recorded the song as an advertisement for a specific furniture store, but Fussell turns it into a critique of the system that unjustly stripped people of their possessions
John Lee Hooker - How Long Blues
He was a Mississippi blues musician known for adapting the Delta blues for electric guitar, though this is an acoustic recording from the 1960 album The Country Blues of John Lee Hooker
The song was first recorded by Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell in 1928, and was one of the very first blues standards
Dick Reinhart - Rambling Lover
He was a country musician and actor from Oklahoma
This one was recorded for Brunswick Records in 1929
It’s a version of “Girl I Left Behind Me,” also known as “Maggie Walker Blues”
Terry Callier - Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be
Was a Chicago folk and jazz artist who got his start in the 60s and continued to play on-and-off until his death in 2012
This is from his 1968 album The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier
This is a traditional English song and nursery rhyme from at least the 18th century
It has also been popular in the United States for several centuries
Logan English - Little Brown Dog
He was a folksinger, playwright, and actor from Kentucky who’s known for his involvement in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene
He’s remembered particularly for being the MC at the coffeehouse Gerde’s Folk City, and for recording one of the earliest albums in tribute to Woody Guthrie
This is from his 1962 album American Folk Ballads
He got this song from a collection of children’s songs collected by composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, who got it from Herbert Halpert’s recording of a woman in Mississippi named Birmah H Grisson
Bob Dylan - Tattle O’Day
From the 2013 compilation album Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait
Recorded in 1970 during the sessions for Self Portrait
Jack Johnson - Mama You’ve Been On My Mind / A Fraction of Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie
He’s a musician from Hawai’i who’s been playing since the 1990s
This song was written by Bob Dylan in 1964
We heard part of Dylan’s poem “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” at the end
Johnson’s recording is from the soundtrack for the 2007 film I’m Not There, which is based on the different eras of Dylan’s life
Cara Luft - Black Water Side
From Winnipeg
Traditional folk song that likely originated near River Blackwater in Ulster, Ireland
This is from her 2011 album Black Water Side and Other Favourites
Angel Olsen - The Blacksmith
She’s a contemporary American musician
From the 2015 tribute album Shirley Inspired, which is a compilation album in honour of the English folk singer Shirley Collins’ 80th birthday
A traditional English folk song first collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams in Herefordshire in 1909
Jesse Matas - Sleep
From Manitoba
From his 2018 album Tamarock
Nimrod Workman - Oh Death
American singer, coal miner, and union organiser who spent much of his life in West Virginia
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
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
A traditional folk song from the Appalachian region of the United States
Reverend Anderson Johnson - Death in the Morning
He was a preacher, singer, and painter from Newport News, Virginia
He began preaching when he was 8, and travelled across the country preaching for around 40 years
This one was recorded in 1953
Hesperus & Mike Seeger - O Death / La Rota
Seeger was a folklorist and musician who co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s
Hesperus is a traditional music ensemble originally founded in 1979 to play early European music and American traditional music, though more recently it has focused on scores for 1920s silent films
From the 1988 album Crossing Over: A Fusion of Medieval and Appalachian Music
“La Rota” is a 14th century Italian dance tune
Anne Helderman - A Poor Lone Girl in Saskatchewan
This is from the 1963 album Folksongs of Saskatchewan, collected and recorded by Barbara Cass-Beggs, a folk song collector and musician from England who moved to Canada in the late 1930s
We’ve played versions of the song from Ontario before
It began circulating in Ontario in the late 19th century when the young men of Ontario were being lured to Saskatchewan and Alberta by the offer of free homesteads
Once southern Saskatchewan and Alberta were settled, land offers continued in the Yukon and Northwest Territories
Helderman’s mother first learned the song when she was living in Ontario, and brought it to Manitoba in 1882 when she moved west
Anne learned it as a small child, and moved to Saskatchewan as an adult to teach, where she then changed the words to suit her environment
Everyone mentioned is someone she knew around the Regina Beach area
Wade Hemsworth - Donkey Riding
Wade Hemsworth was a respected Canadian folksinger known for the “Black Fly Song” and many others
Many believe the “donkey” referred to is the steam donkey, a type of general-purpose steam engine
Pete Seeger - Hieland Laddie
Seeger was a folk singer and activist from New York who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and other important issues through his music
This is a live recording from a concert Seeger gave at Bowdoin College in Maine in 1960
It’s a traditional Scottish folk song and sea shanty, with versions sung as far back as 1840 in Mobile Bay, Alabama and among Scottish sailors unloading cargo in Canadian ports, thus the Canadian geographical references
The college student that Seeger learned the song from was none other than Joe Hickerson, who went on to be Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress for 35 years
David Rovics - Children of Jerusalem
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
From his 2001 album Living In These Times
David Francey - Poorer Then
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
From his 2018 album The Broken Heart of Everything
Ferron - Ain’t Life a Brook
She’s a musician and poet from BC
This one’s from her 1980 album Testimony
The Osmond Davis Band - I’ve Just Seen the Rock of Ages
Manitoba band
John Brenton Preston of Paris, Kentucky composed both the lyrics and music for this song
He wrote it while he was in prison, scratching the lyrics into the floor of his cell with a pebble
Preston met Ralph Stanley of the Stanley Brothers while on parole sometime in the 1970s, and Stanley learned the song from him and popularised it through his performances
Stan Rogers - Make & Break Harbour
Born and raised in Ontario, but his music was influenced by his time spent visiting family in Nova Scotia during his childhood
This song was originally released on his 1977 album Fogarty’s Cove, but the version we heard is from the posthumously released 1993 live album, Home in Halifax, recorded in 1982
Charles Owen - The Welcome Table
From an album of folk music from Nova Scotia, recorded by folklorist Helen Creighton around 1954
This is a gospel song that was also important during the Civil Rights Movement
It was likely brought to Nova Scotia with the thousands of formerly enslaved people who immigrated there after the war of 1812
Charles Owen was 99 years old when Creighton recorded him for her album
He was still walking to town every day when weather permitted, and lived to at least the age of 101
Rev ME Holmes - Sign of Judgement
Recorded in Baltimore, Maryland around 1951
This is a traditional gospel song from the southern US
The McIntosh County Shouters - Sign of the Judgement
Many elements of the slave shout tradition come from West Africa, though the tradition is also related to other African diasporic traditions from Brazil and Cuba
The word “shout” in this case comes from an Afro-Islamic term for a sacred dance, and doesn’t refer to the vocalisation present in the songs
The McIntosh County Shouters have been performing since 1980, though the slave shout tradition has been passed down since the time of slavery
This one’s from the 1994 Folkways album Wade in the Water, Vol. 2: African-American Congregational Singing
They recorded the song at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife in the summer of 1990
Sam Amidon - I See the Sign
Contemporary folk artist from Vermont
From his 2010 album of the same name
Tony Schwartz - Rhythm and Work
He was a sound archivist, media theorist, advertising creator, and graphic designer from New York City who recorded copious amounts of ambient sounds, spoken word, and music for albums released by Folkways and Columbia and hosted a radio show called “Around New York” for 30 years on WNYC
From his 1954 album Millions of Musicians
Dave Van Ronk - Rocks and Gravel
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 in New York was located in the 1960s
Off his 1963 album In the Tradition
It’s a traditional American prison work song, first collected by Alan Lomax in the 1940s
The Men of No Property - The Internee
This is 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 song is from the perspective of a wife watching her husband being dragged from bed and interned at Long Kesh Detention Centre without charge or trial during the Troubles in the 1970s
Ernest Sellick - Drimindown
From the folklorist Helen Creighton’s 1962 album of music from the Maritime provinces
Sellick, from Charlottetown, PEI, learned this song from his father, who used to sing it as a bedtime song
It’s described as a humorous lament, and is quite possibly Irish in origin
Hobart Smith - Chinquapin Pie
An old-time musician who was rediscovered in the 60s after performing throughout the first half of the 20th century, often with his sister Texas Gladden
Smith popularised this old tune
