Barking Dog: March 20, 2025
Robbie Basho - A Song of Kings
One of the 3 guitarists signed to the Takoma record label who aimed to raise steel string guitar to the level of a concert instrument, along with Leo Kottke and John Fahey
This is from the newly released album Snow Beneath the Belly of a White Swan: The Lost Live Recordings
He recorded this one live at St. Mary’s College of California in the mid-1970s
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - All Over This World
She was born 110 years ago today
She was a musician from Arkansas who was extremely important in the creation of rock and roll and electric blues, because she was one of the first musicians to combine gospel with electric guitar, and often used distortion
She recorded this one in 1942
Don Edwards - Barbara Allen
He would’ve been 86 today
He was a cowboy singer from New Jersey who got his start after moving to Texas to work in the oil fields and was hired as a singer and actor at Six Flags
This is from his 2004 album Last of the Troubadours: Saddle Songs Vol. 2
An old Scottish ballad that has been collected all over North America and the British Isles
Jake Xerxes Fussell - Close My Eyes
He’s a North Carolina artist who was raised in an artistic family and apprenticed with the blues musician Precious Bryant from a young age
This is a brand new release, and it’s a cover of a song by Arthur Russell, who was a cellist, singer, composer, and producer from Iowa who was part of the New York avant garde scene in the 1970s
Beck - Woe On Me
Contemporary American musician who got his start as a teenager performing folk music on city buses in Los Angeles
This is from the 1994 album One Foot in the Grave
Woody Guthrie - Reckless Talk
Guthrie was an influential folk musician who’s known for his songs about the Okie migrants who travelled west during the Great Depression in search of work
This is from the 2012 Smithsonian Folkways album Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Collection
He recorded the song in April of 1944 and wrote it to caution what “reckless talk” can do when dealing with an enemy
Old Man Luedecke - Lost John
From Chester, NS
This is off his 2006 album Hinterland
Taj Mahal - Needed Time
Taj Mahal is a Grammy-winning blues musician from New York City whose career has spanned over 50 years
This is from Taj Mahal’s soundtrack for the 1972 film Sounder
“Needed Time” is a traditional American song, popularised in the 20th century by Lightnin’ Hopkins
It uses the same tune as “Daniel in the Lion’s Den”
Hopkins provided a different version of the song for the soundtrack
Kacy & Clayton - The Rio Grande
From Wood Mountain, SK
Duo of second cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum who grew up listening to and playing traditional music on their family’s ranch
From their 2016 album Strange Country
Jeff Ampolsk - How Can You Keep On Movin’?
The only information I can find about him comes from the Smithsonian Folkways website, which says: “A string of childhood offenses (from killing lizards to schoolyard fighting), being parented by a village of "home-grown southern reactionaries," dropping out of school, divorcing at age twenty, suffering harsh winters at the mercy of a New York City slumlord—these are just a few of the experiences that have contributed to folksinger/guitarist Jeff Ampolsk’s gritty message.”
The song is by Sis Cunningham, who says that it “comes out of the late thirties when certain states, especially California, were posting signs at roads crossing their borders: NO MORE MIGRATION. Armed guards were stationed at these points to direct homeseekers to turn around and ‘keep moving’.”
Margo Cilker - I’ve Got to Know
She’s a musician from California, and this is from her 2020 EP Songs From My Bucket
It’s her adaptation of Woody Guthrie’s song, who wrote it later in life, and it’s been widely recorded since
It uses the tune of the hymn “Farther Along,” which Cilker incorporates into the end of the song
Sam Amidon - Rocky Island
Contemporary musician from Vermont
This is a demo from his 2015 album But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted
A popular old Kentucky square dance tune, probably best known through the Stanley Brothers’ version
Robert Pete Williams - Motherless Children Have a Hard Time
Louisiana blues musician born in 1914
He played at small community events after buying a guitar, and played in the lumber yards where he worked between the 30s and 50s
In 1956 he was discovered in Louisiana State Penitentiary by two ethnomusicologists, who recorded him playing songs about prison life
The ethnomusicologists, Harry Oster and Richard Allen, pressured the parole board into issuing a pardon for Williams, and in December, 1958, he was released into “servitude parole”, where he had to work 80 hours of labour a week with only room and board for compensation
His music was becoming popular by this time, and in 1964 he played at the Newport Folk Festival
He toured the US in 1965, and Europe in 1966
Blues standard by Blind Willie Johnson and first recorded in 1927
The song is apparently autobiographical, as Johnson’s mother died when he was young, and his stepmother is said to have thrown lye water during a fight with his father, which got in Johnson’s eyes and blinded him
Kid Prince Moore - Sign of Judgement
He was a Piedmont blues musician who recorded 17 songs between 1936 and 1938
He recorded this one for Melotone Records in April of 1936
Georgia Sea Island Singers, Bessie Jones - Sign of the Judgment
This is from the recent Smithsonian Folkways album The Complete Friends of Old Time Music Concert
It’s a recording of a concert given by Bessie Jones, the Georgia Sea Island Singers, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Ed Young in New York City in April of 1965
Bessie Jones is known for spreading folk music to a wider audience in the 20th century
She was one of the most popular performers of folk music in the 60s and 70s, often appearing with the Georgia Sea Island Singers, a folk music ensemble that’s been around since the early 1900s
This is a traditional gospel song from the southern US
Jack Warshaw - The Grape Pickers
He’s an American musician who moved to England in the 1960s to work as an architect, and stayed there because of the folk scene and his resistance to the Vietnam War
This is from his album Long Time Gone, recorded in 1979 and remastered in 2011
Warshaw wrote it in 1970 after reading a story about the exploitation of migrant farm workers in California
David Laing - House of Green
He was a geologist, singer-songwriter, and educator from New Hampshire who recorded 2 albums for Folkways records in the 1970s
His father was a novelist and his mother was the poet Dilys Laing, and he inherited his love for nature and humanity from both of them
This is from the 1980 album Equilibrium: Songs of Nature and Humanity, produced by the Audubon Society, which consists of 9 songs written and performed by Laing, as well as several songs performed by Tom Wisner and Teresa Whitaker, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie
Laing wrote the song in 1977
Tom and Mark Wisner - Spring Lightnin’ Thunder
Tom was a musician and educator from Maryland who was passionate about the Chesapeake Bay
He’s joined on this song by his song Mark, with whom he recorded this album, his first for Folkways Records, called Chesapeake Born
Mark wrote the song after Tom told him about a man he met at a restaurant named John Evans, who told him a story about his cousin drowning
Gordon Lightfoot - Leaves of Grass
This is from his first live album, recorded at Massey Hall in Toronto and released in 1969
He never made a studio recording of the song
Karen James - Hurrah, Lie!
A folksinger and daughter of Spanish musician Isabelita Alonso, who grew up in England, Spain, and France, and moved to Canada as a teenager
From her 1962 album Through Streets Broad and Narrow
She got this song from Ethel Park Richardson's 1927 book American Mountain Songs
It’s an American version of the English song “Martin Said to His Men,” which is from at least the mid-19th century
Gabriel Brown - That’s Alright
He was a Piedmont blues musician from Florida who was recorded by folklorists Zora Neale Hurston and Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1935
That same year, he moved to New York City and joined the Federal Arts Theatre under the direction of Orson Welles
Recorded in September of 1944 in NYC
“That’s All Right” is a traditional gospel song that’s likely a simplification of an older spiritual
Willie Dunn - The Dreamer
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This song is off his 1980 album The Pacific
Yim Yames - Love You To
Also known as Jim James, singer, guitarist, and songwriter for My Morning Jacket
This is from his 2009 solo EP Tribute To, which is a tribute to George Harrison
The song is from the Beatles 1966 album Revolver
Art Bouman - Bound to Rise
He’s a Halifax-based banjo player who’s interested in reclaiming the banjo as a traditional instrument of the African diaspora and highlighting the Black banjo players whose work has historically been overlooked
This is from his recent album Simple Songs For Trying Times
It’s his own song
Uncle Sinner - Creation Myth
He’s from Winnipeg
This is off of his 2020 album Trouble of This World
Although it’s his own song, he includes a version of the old time tune “Greasy Coat” at the end
Norma Tanega - What More in the World Could Anyone Be Living For?
She was a musician and painter from California best known for her songs “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog” and “You’re Dead”
She also spent several years in New York City, where she was involved in the Greenwich Village folk scene
This is from her 1971 album I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile
Clive Palmer - Pretty Saro
One of several folk songs that died out in England but was rediscovered in the Appalachian region in the early 20th century, preserved through the strong oral tradition of that area
He was a folk musician and banjo player from England, known as a founding member of the Incredible String Band
This comes from his 2008 album The Land of No Return
William Bock - The Civil War
From an album of Saskatchewan songs collected by Barbara Cass-Beggs and released in 1963
Bock was originally from Ontario, but moved west in 1902 to homestead in Stoney Beach County, Saskatchewan
He worked several jobs, including as a lumberjack in the Rockies and a gold prospector in the Yukon
He was later elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal in 1927, and worked for the Prairie Farm Administration
He wrote this one, apparently about the controversial introduction of water mains to rural communities
The New Lost City Ramblers - White House Blues
They were a group formed by John Cohen, Mike Seeger, Tom Paley in 1958
This is from their 1959 album Songs from the Depression
It’s an American folk song, first recorded by Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers in 1926
It’s about the 1901 assassination of 25th president of the United States William McKinley
Eugene Powell - Old Home Blues
More commonly known as Sonny Boy Nelson, he was a Delta blues musician from Mississippi who played guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, horn, and harmonica
Gianni Marcucci made this recording for the Blues at Home record series
Marcucci travelled from Italy to the United States five times during the 70s and 80s to document blues music
Recorded at Powell’s home in Greenville, Mississippi in August of 1976
Sheesham & Lotus - Speed of the Plow
From Wolf Island, Ontario
Off their 2011 album Five Miles From Town
Bob Dylan - Abner Young, One Eyed Jacks
