Barking Dog: March 24, 2022
Ed and Dana McCurdy - Mountain Railroad
Folksinger and actor from Pennsylvania who spent part of his life as a CBC radio host
It was through his radio show that he developed friendships with folk musicians and started learning to play folk songs
He later moved to New York City, where he fell in with the Greenwich Village folk crowd and developed friendships with artists like Odetta, Josh White Jr., and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
He’s known particularly for writing the anti-war song “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream”
Dana McCurdy is his son, and they recorded this song for their 1977 album On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand: Sacred Songs of America
This is a hymn written by M.E. Abbey in the 1890s
Josh White - While the Blood Runs Warm in Your Veins
Extremely successful musician who started playing music in the late 20s and gained fame as a blues, jazz, and folk musician, as well as a film and Broadway actor
From 1935
Seems to be an African American hymn, first recorded in 1929 by Reverend AA Gundy
Alankan
From a 1962 album of freedom songs from around the world, performed by Mrs. Thelma Patel’s 6th Grade class in Woodmere, NY
This is a Somalian freedom song, the words of which are by Ismail Ahmed with music by Abdullah Kershi
The title means “blue” or “blue flag”
Sayyid Shâh Ewaz - Saram Qurbânat, Ay Mâh-E Yagâna (I Give Up Everything for You, My One and Only Moon)
Off an album of Afghani music between 1979 and 2001 from the UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music
Ewaz a professional dambura player who played in the orchestra of Radio Kabul
Recorded in Kayan
This is a Hazara song about unrequited love
Taj Mahal - Shake Sugaree
Taj is a Grammy-award-winning blues musician from New York City whose career has spanned over 50 years
This song is by Elizabeth Cotten, and the lyrics are by her great grandchildren
Sheesham and Lotus - F and D Rag
From Wolfe Island, ON
This seems to be their own tune
Roger Sprung - Malaguena
Is an American banjo player known for introducing traditional bluegrass banjo picking to folk musicians in the northern states
This one is from 1963, and it’s an old Iberian tune by Ernesto Luecona
Narcisse & Alice Cormier - Madeleine
From a 1977 album of Cajun home music field recordings
This one was recorded in September of 1975 in Church Point, Louisiana, with Narcisse on accordion and Alice accompanying on the triangle
Ian & Sylvia - Four Rode By
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
This is their own song, and is based on the story of the Wild McLean Boys, three brothers who terrorized pioneers in the Kamloops area
Pleaz Mobley - Pretty Polly
Mid-eighteenth century American murder ballad that comes from the older “Gosport Tragedy” ballad
By the time “Pretty Polly” emerged from the older song, only the essential parts of the original remained
Cara Luft - The Blacksmiths
From Winnipeg
Off her 2003 album Tempting the Storm
A traditional English folk song first collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams in Herefordshire in 1909
Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacColl - The Ballad of Springhill
He was a well-known British folksinger and labour activist known for his involvement in the 1960s folk revival
He and Peggy Seeger were married
Peggy Seeger a member of the Seeger family—Mike and Pete Seeger brothers, father Charles Seeger, a folklorist and musicologist, mother Ruth Crawford Seeger, a composer and first woman to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship
She’s been living in the UK for over 60 years, where she is a very well-known musician
They wrote this together about the mining disaster in Springhill, Nova Scotia, in 1958, which killed 75 people
Seeger learned of the disaster while living in France, and the two first performed the song together while on tour in Canada in 1959
It’s since been recorded by artists like Peter, Paul, and Mary and U2
Tom Waits - Gun Street Girl
We’re going to hear some contemporary songs now that come from the “Lost John” tradition
“Lost John” is an old-time song from the southern US
Several tunes that refer to “Lost John” tell the story of the folk trickster figure John, an escaped enslaved or incarcerated man who outwits possible captors by wearing shoes with backwards soles
None of the songs we’re about to hear are explicitly about the folk figure, though they seem to all be adaptations of that tradition
Waits a very well known American musician, composer, and actor who’s been playing professionally for 50 years
This is off his 1985 album Rain Dogs
Uncle Sinner - Long Gone
From Winnipeg
Off his 2020 album Trouble of This World
Old Man Luedecke - Lost John
From Chester, NS
It’s off his 2006 album Hinterland
It tells of the bank robber John Dean, who escapes in the same method as Lost John
This variant is also traditional, and has been recorded a number of times since the 1920s
Covered Wagon Musicians - Rattlesnake Junction
The Covered Wagon was a group of GIs from the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, who adopted their name from an Air Force security code used when coming upon suspected sabotage
Hearing it, everyone was required to "unite in the face of a common enemy"—in their case, war, racism, and injustice
This is off their 1972 album We Say No to Your War!
The words and music of this one are by Dave Davis, and it’s performed by Jim Schaffer
Unspecified - March Forward to Total Victory
This is from a 1971 album of Vietnamese songs of liberation, recorded in Vietnam
The songs celebrate the efforts of the National Liberation Front (NLF) against America’s involvement in the Vietnam war
This one is by Nguyen Thanh
It’s sung by a group of women and addresses the liberation fighters of the NLF
Sis Cunningham - No More Store Bought Teeth
Important member of the folk community for many years
Founding editor of Broadside Magazine, an important publication for the Greenwich Village folk scene
One of the first people to be blacklisted as a communist sympathiser in post WWII America
She wrote this song in 1976, and it’s also known as the “Medical Care Song”
Mark Cohen - The Thing That Fell Into Bill McCarthy’s Pond
He’s a folksinger from New York who recorded several albums for Folkways Records in the 1970s
This one is off Plutonium, from 1979
Unspecified - Zulu Music: Guitar Solo
From a 1956 album called Sounds of a South African Homestead
This is a Zulu guitar solo, and it’s noted that it’s the typical use of the instrument and is exactly how it would be heard in both the countryside and the city
Ed Young, Lonnie Young Sr., GD Young - Ida Reed
Ed was a musician from Mississippi
He’s joined by his brothers Lonnie Young Sr. on bass drum, and G.D. Young on snares
They later called themselves the Southern Fife and Drum Corps, and they appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and a Friends of Old-Time Music concert in the 1960s
American traditional song made popular in 1938 by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
Recorded in Como, Mississippi in 1959
Pete Seeger - Talking Atom Blues (Old Man Atom)
He was a folk singer and an activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and peace through his music
This song was written in 1946 by Vern Partlow, an American reporter and folksinger
Unlike many protest songs at the time, this one became well-known through the many recordings made of it
Glasgow Song Guild - I Shall Not Be Moved
From the 1962 album Ding Dong Dollar: Anti-Polaris and Scottish Republican Songs by the Anti-Polaris Singers, who started a musical movement in protest of an American nuclear submarine that sailed into the Holy Loch in the early 1960s
Polaris was the United Kingdom’s first submarine-based nuclear weapons system
This version of “I Shall Not Be Moved” was workshopped on one of the early marches
The traditional version is a spiritual that became popular as a protest song and a union song during the Civil Rights Movement
Cindy Mapes - Buffalo Holler
Words and music by Peggy Seeger
Mapes was a full-time preschool teacher in Ohio at the time this was recorded in the 1970s
This song is about the time a giant coal waste dam broke in 1972, which sent 130 million gallons of water down Buffalo Hollow
It killed 150 people and left 4,000 homeless
The mine companies then stalled efforts by families to gain compensation until 1974
Selah Jubilee Singers - What He Done for Me
An American gospel vocal quartet active from 1927-1953
Many popular doowop groups of the 50s were musically descended from prewar groups like the Selah Jubilee Singers
This seems to be a traditional African American spiritual
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - What He Done for Me
She was a musician from Arkansas who was extremely important in the creation of rock and roll music
This one is from 1942
Snooks Eaglin - Down by the Riverside
Eaglin an American musician who played a wide range of styles and claimed to know about 2500 songs
This was recorded in 1958
American spiritual that dates to before the American Civil War
Has often been used as an anti-war song
El Teatro Campesino - El Picket Sign
The Farm Workers' Theater was a satirical theatre company formed by the strikers of the Delano grape strike, which protested the exploitation of farm workers
Stanley G Triggs - The Lookout in the Sky
Born in Nelson, BC in 1928
Worked for the BC Forest Service and attended the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara
Studied folk songs and oral history and captured photos of those who he learned songs from
Later returned to school to pursue a degree in both Fine Arts and Anthropology
He wrote the tune for this song, the lyrics of which are a poem by the trapper Harold Smith
He wrote it about Bob Wallace, who was the lookout man in Duncan for the BC Forest Service for nine seasons, a position that Triggs also held for two seasons
Gary Shearston - Put a Light in Every Country Window
He was an Australian folksinger and priest
This is a song by Don Henderson, an Australian songwriter
It was written around 1961
Rev. WM Mosley - Oh Death Spare Me Over Till Another Year
A preacher who was recorded in Atlanta, Georgia between 1926 and 1931 for Columbia records
It is possible that this song originated from Lloyd Chandler’s 1920s song “A Conversation with Death”
We’ll hear a couple other versions of it after this
Sarah Ogan Gunning - Oh, Death
She was a folksinger from Kentucky, as were her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson and brother Jim Garland
She was briefly involved in the New York folk scene in the 1930s, but her siblings’ work received more attention than hers
She was later rediscovered in Detroit in the 1960s, and played at Newport Folk Festival in 1964
Version is from 1965
The New Lost City Ramblers - Oh Death
A traditional stringband that played music taken from 78s from the 20s and 30s
This is from their 1997 album There Ain't No Way Out, which was their first new recording in 20 years
Harry McClintock - Poor Boy
American singer and poet known for his song “Big Rock Candy Mountain”
Ran away from home as a boy to join the circus
Lived an adventurous life from then on and apparently “never lost his sense of humour”
Alan Mills - I Ride An Old Paint
Mills a Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec who was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for his contributions to Canadian folklore
A traditional American cowboy song, first collected and published in Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag in 1927
From 1954
Mississippi John Hurt - Avalon Blues
American country blues singer and guitarist from Avalon, Mississippi
He made a couple of recordings for OkEh Records in the late 1920s but they were commercial failures, and when OkEh Records closed shop during the Great Depression, Hurt returned to his work as a sharecropper, continuing to play music at local events
His OkEh recordings were included on the incredibly influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, and in 1963 a copy of “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 from the series of recordings he made for the Library of Congress in 1963
Mrs. Peter Kelly - Tsimshian Song
This is from an album of Haida music recorded by the musicologist Ida Halpern and released in 1987
Halpern was originally from Austria, but arrived in Canada in 1944 to flee Nazism
She’s known mainly for her work with the First Nations people of British Columbia, which she conducted at a time when the government was working against efforts to celebrate and preserve Indigenous cultures in Canada
Reading her biography, it seems as though her work reflected more recent efforts for reciprocal relationships between ethnographers and the people whose work they study, which was pretty unusual for an ethnographer working in the 40s and 50s
She also seems to have built relationships enough to be entrusted with these songs, which were largely withheld from people outside of the communities from which they came
That was partially a response to Haida visual art being exposed by European missionaries in the 19th century, which understandably caused Haida elders to more firmly protect their creative heritage from western influence
At the same time, it’s noted that Halpern’s work is criticized for its “cultural material”, probably meaning the contextual information for the music, including misspellings and improper citation of the songwriters
Her work on the music itself is described as “flawless” though, and her contributions and many recordings are extremely valuable for the preservation of these older songs, though her work has been largely overlooked by anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnomusicologists even in recent years
This recording was made in 1974 with Mrs. Peter Kelly (the only name given)
She was the wife of a missionary and the daughter of a missionary, and was brought up accepting the social attitudes of church authorities, but also retained a strong belief in the importance of her traditional culture
Her main reason for speaking with Halpern was the fear that the old songs would be lost if they weren’t recorded
We’ll hear her talk about the song and translate the words in this recording
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Highlander’s Farewell / Monroe’s Farewell to Long Hollow
