Barking Dog: March 21, 2024
Son House - Pearline
He was born 122 years ago today
Mississippi delta blues artist who influenced Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters
Alan Lomax recorded him and his band for the Library of Congress in 1941 and 1942, and in 1943 he left Mississippi for New York and gave up music
In 1964, though, a group of record collectors located him and persuaded him to relearn his music
He reestablished his music career, playing in coffeehouses, at folk festivals, and on tours
He also recorded several albums
This is his own song, from his 1965 album Father of Folk Blues
Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues
This is an alternate take of the song, from the recording sessions for his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home
Tim O’Brien - Tombstone Blues
O’Brien is a Grammy-winning musician from West Virginia who’s been playing professionally for almost 50 years, and has performed both as a solo act and with his band Hot Rize
This is from his 1996 album Red on Blonde, a collection of Bob Dylan covers
Bob Dylan wrote the song for his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited
Réalta, Miles McCormack - The Times They Are A-Changin’
Réalta are a Belfast-based group that play traditional Irish music
McCormack is an Irish musician who appears as a guest on Réalta’s 2023 album Thing of the Earth, which is where this song comes from
It’s a version of Bob Dylan’s 1964 song
Sting - Girl from the North Country
This is from the 2012 compilation album The Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International
Kev Carmody - From Little Things Big Things Grow
He’s an Aboriginal Australian musician who’s been playing professionally since the 1980s
Off his 1993 album Bloodlines
It’s a protest song co-written by Carmody and Paul Kelly about the Gurindji Strike, which was undertaken by 200 Aboriginal Gurindji stockmen–or cowboys–servants, and their families beginning in 1966 and lasting for seven years
The strike was first interpreted as a protest against work conditions, but it later became clear that those who participated were primarily demanding about 3250 km of land back, which they were granted in 1975
It was a very significant event in the movement for Aboriginal land rights in Australia
The song borrows the melody from Bob Dylan’s “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”
John K Samson - Budget Delegations
This is a song Samson performed on March 10 at the Millennium Library as part of an event that asked for more money for services like libraries, in advance of Winnipeg’s budget week, as the Millennium Library is in danger of closing on Sundays due to budget cuts
For the first time in 20 years, the City of Winnipeg has also planned not to provide the Winnipeg Arts Council with any funding for public art in 2024
Narrative by Woman
Off the 1974 album Palestine Lives! Songs from the Struggle of the People of Palestine
This recording was made following the Six-Day War of 1967, during which around 300,000 of about 1 million Palestinians were displaced from their homes in the West Bank and Gaza
David Rovics - I Wanna Go Home
He’s a topical singer-songwriter based in Oregon who’s been playing since the 1990s
This is off his 2004 album Songs for Mahmud
Si Kahn - Like Butter Loves Bread
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
From his 1975 album New Wood
It’s his own song
Emmylou Harris - Hobo’s Lullaby
American musician and songwriter who has won 14 Grammys and been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, among other honours
This song is by Goebel Reeves, a Texan folk singer
Harris recorded it for the Grammy-winning 1988 album Folkways: A Vision Shared, which is a tribute to Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly
Rosalie Sorrels - Starlight on the Rails
She started out as a folksinger and collector of folk songs, and left her husband in the 1960s to travel across America with her five children, establishing herself as a performer and making connections with other folk musicians, writers, and artists
From her 1967 album If I Could Be the Rain
The song is by Utah Phillips, who Sorrels was friends with
Willie Dunn - Métis Red River Song
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is off his fourth album, The Vanity of Human Wishes, from 1984
Conor Ryan Hennessy - Old Black Train
He’s a contemporary musician based in Salem, Massachusetts
This is from his 2021 album All in This Together
It seems to be his own song, though it’s based on older songs where a black train symbolises death
Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni - Kel Tamashek
This is Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni of Tinariwen, a Grammy-winning group of Tuareg musicians from Mali who formed in 1979 and are considered one of the pioneering forces behind desert blues
This is a performance from the 2018 Bedstock, an online music festival where musicians play music from their beds for sick kids who are stuck in their own beds
It raises money and awareness MyMusicRx, which brings music to hospitalised kids around the US
Daniel Romano - She Was the World to Me
He’s an artist from Welland, Ontario who has covered a wide range of genres during his career
This is from his 2010 album Workin’ for the Music Man
Alistair Hulett, Dave Swarbrick - The Merchant’s Son
Hulett was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland, known as a member of the folk punk band Roaring Jack
Swarbrick was a folk musician from England who’s known as a member of Fairport Convention, and emerged as an important member of the 1960s British folk revival
This is off Hulett and Swarbrick’s 1997 album The Cold Grey Light of Dawn
You may recognise the tune if you’re a fan of Stan Rogers, as he used it for his song “Flowers of Bermuda”
There are many different versions of this British folk song—this is a Scottish variant
Sarah Harmer - Luther’s Got the Blues
From Ontario
Off her 2005 album I’m A Mountain
Allen Ginsberg - Hum Bom
He was a poet and writer from New Jersey, known as one of the leading figures in the Beat Generation
This is from a collection of Ginsberg’s recordings called Holy Soul Jelly Roll, released in 1994
Recorded at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York City on May 12, 1993
Ginsberg wrote it over the course of 20 years, between 1971 and 1991
Kacy & Clayton - Brunswick Stew
From Wood Mountain, SK
It’s from their 2016 album Strange Country
Alice Stuart - All the Good Times
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, 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 the title track off her 1964 debut album
It’s a traditional country song
Lee Monroe Presnell - Look Up, Look Down That Old Railroad
Off a 1964 album of traditional music from Beech Mountain, NC
He was from Beech Mountain, and lived in a one-room house on his son’s land, high up on the mountain
The song is in the same family as “In the Pines” and “Lonesome Road”
Presnell learned it as a young boy, about 80 years before this recording was made
Pharis & Jason Romero - Been All Around This World
From Horsefly, BC
Off their 2022 album Tell 'Em You Were Gold, which was recorded live over six days in a 60-year-old barn beside the Little Horsefly River
Little is known about this song, aside from the fact that it’s an American song first collected in 1917
It’s known by many names, including “Hobo’s Blues” and “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”
Almanac Singers - Take It Easy
Founded by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger in 1940
This was recorded in 1942
Woody Guthrie wrote the song, though this is a version that was adapted to reference the Second World War
Southern Sons - There’s a Leak in This Old Building
They were a vocal group that formed in the 1930s and underwent several changes in membership over the years
The group remained active until at least the 1980s
Recorded in October of 1941 for Victor Records
Uncle Sinner - Your Close Friends
From Winnipeg
This song is by Reverend EW Clayborn
Algia Mae Hinton - When You Kill the Chicken Save Me the Head
She was a Piedmont blues musician from North Carolina who learned to play the guitar from her mother, an expert in the Piedmont fingerpicking style who often played at local parties and gatherings
She met the folklorist Glenn Hinson in 1978, who arranged for her to perform at the North Carolina Folklife Festival
She gave several concerts outside of North Carolina after that, even travelling to Europe to perform in 1998
This is from her 1999 album Honey Babe
Yusuf / Cat Stevens - The Wind
A version of one of his best-known songs, released on his 2006 album Footsteps in the Light 35 years after his original recording of the song
Laura Veirs - Wildwood Flower
She's an American musician based in Oregon who's been playing since the late 1990s
This is a traditional American song, popularised by the Carter Family
Veirs recorded it for her 2008 album Two Beers Veirs
Ian & Sylvia - Pride of Petrovar
Ian & Sylvia were a married duo who performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975, and each continued their music careers after their divorce
From their 1962 self-titled album
A piece written by Irish songwriters William Percy French and Houston Collisson
Alfredo Zitarrosa - Compadre Miguel (My Pal Miguel)
He was an Uruguayan musician, poet, and journalist, and was one of the most influential singer-songwriters in the nueva canción movement in Latin America
From the 1970 album Canción Protesta: Protest Song of Latin America
The song is by Yamandú Palacios, and it’s about the low wages rice-field workers made
Larry Mohr - Pay Day at Coal Creek
This is a solo by Mohr from the 1958 Odetta and Larry album The Tin Angel
Odetta and Larry were a short-lived duo, and while Odetta went on to become a highly influential folk musician, Mohr became a political scientist and professor at the University of Michigan, though the two remained friends
Mohr learned this from Pete Steele’s recording for the Library of Congress from 1938
The song references a mine explosion that happened in Coal Creek, Tennessee in 1911
Stanley Triggs - Lardeau Valley Waltz
Born in Nelson, BC in 1928
Worked in logging camps, construction camps, in forestry, with survey crews, and on railroad gangs, and as a freelance photographer and coffee house musician in the 1960s
This is his own tune in the “old-time waltz” style
