Barking Dog: March 28, 2024
John Lee Hooker - Smokestack Lightnin’
He was a Mississippi blues musician known for adapting the Delta blues for electric guitar, though this is an acoustic recording from his 1964 album Burning Hell
This is a version of the Howlin’ Wolf song “Smokestack Lightning,” written in the 1930s and first recorded in 1951
It draws on songs like “Stop and Listen Blues” by the Mississippi Sheiks and “Moon Going Down” by Charley Patton
Ali Farka Touré - Yer Mali Gakoyoyo
Touré was an internationally known Malian musician who blended traditional Malian music with North American blues
He collaborated with many musicians, including Boubacar Traoré, Ry Cooder, and Taj Mahal
This is from the 1996 compilation album Radio Mali
It was recorded in the 1970s
Rachel Newton - For Love
She’s a contemporary Scottish singer and harpist who’s played in bands like The Shee, the Furrow Collective, and Boreas, though that song is from her solo album West, from 2018
She got her version from a recording made of Willie Mathieson in 1952, found in the School of Scottish Studies collection on the Tobar an Dualchais (“Well of Heritage”) website
Pete Seeger - Fly Through My Window
Pete Seeger was a very influential folk singer and activist from New York who advocated for important social causes through his music
This is from his album of animal songs Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Fishes (Little and Big)
Pharis & Jason Romero - Going Across the Sea
From Horsefly, BC
Off their album Tell 'Em You Were Gold from 2022, which was recorded live over six days in a 60-year-old barn beside the Little Horsefly River
It’s a banjo-centric album, created to highlight the sound of the banjos that Jason makes
The banjo they use on that one is called Mother, and they built it in 2010
It was the 250th banjo they built, and was the only banjo to survive a fire in their studio in 2016
This seems to be an old-time Appalachian song
Uncle Sinner - Jubilee
He’s from Winnipeg, but this song is a standard Appalachian party song, likely from the Ritchie family of Kentucky
The Golden Gate Quartet - Take Your Burdens to God
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 a spiritual composed by African American minister Charles A Tindley in 1916
Recorded for Montgomery Records on January 24, 1938
Joseph Spence, The Pinder Family - Take Your Burden to the Lord and Leave It There
Joseph Spence was a Bahamian musician known for vocalising and humming while playing guitar
The Pinders were his sister’s family
This recording was made by Peter K Siegel and Jody Stecher in Nassau, Bahamas in 1965
The Folk Crusaders - Jordan’s River
They were a Japanese folk group active primarily during the 1960s, when Japan experienced a folk movement that ran parallel to folk revivals in western countries
This is from their 1967 album Harench
It seems to be a traditional American spiritual
Willie Dunn - Halifax
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is off his fourth album The Vanity of Human Wishes, from 1984
Victor Jara - Qué 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
The title translates to “What do I get from praying to heaven?”
Joni Mitchell - Tell Old Bill
Off the 2020 album Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 1: The Early Years
Recorded at the radio station CFQC in Saskatoon around 1963
Likely an African American song, and one of the first songs to be sung in the ragtime style
Old Man Luedecke - A&W Song
From Chester, NS
This is from his 2012 album Tender is the Night
Martin Young, Corbett Grigsby - Rocky Island
Field recording from Hazzard, Kentucky
A popular old Kentucky square dance tune, probably best known through the Stanley Brothers’ version
Lattie Murrell - Trouble Late Last Night
A Tennessee musician nicknamed “The Wolf” because of all the Howlin’ Wolf songs he played
From the first in a series of albums called Living Country Blues USA, which comprise field recordings made of American blues artists in 1980 by two German blues enthusiasts named Axel Kustner and Siegfried Christmann
Bob Dylan - You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
This is an outtake from 1971, released on the album Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume II that same year
The song was later released on the 1975 album The Basement Tapes
The Clancy Brothers, Tommy Makem, Robbie O’Connell - When the Ship Comes In
The Clancy Brothers were a very influential Irish folk group primarily known for their involvement in the American folk revival of the 1960s
Makem was an Irish artist best-known for his work with the Clancy brothers, with whom he performed throughout the 1960s
O’Connell is the Clancy Brothers’ nephew, and a musician in his own right
He began playing in the 1970s, and joined the Clancy Brothers when Laim Clancy left to perform as a duo with Tommy Makem
This was recorded live at Madison Square Garden in New York City on October 16, 1992, during a celebration of the 30th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s career as a recording artist
Dylan released the song in 1964 on his album The Times They Are a-Changin'
The Dylan II - You Are Free
They were a Japanese folk duo active in the early 1970s
From their 1972 album I’m saying goodbye to yesterday’s memories
Ernest Stoneman, Mike Seeger - I’m Alone, All Alone
Ernest Stoneman was one of the most prominent country musicians during the genre’s first decade, and was raised by his father and three musically inclined cousins, who taught him the instrumental and vocal traditions of Blue Ridge mountain culture
Mike was a folklorist and musician who co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s
This is from the album Masters of Old-time Country Autoharp, and it was recorded in December of 1961
Stoneman learned the song from a childhood friend from the Galax, Virginia area who also played autoharp
Kacy & Clayton - Over the River Charlie
From Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan
Originally a Scottish song, though it’s also popular in Ireland and the US, especially Appalachian region
It’s from at least the early 1700s, and related to the song “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss”
Suzanne Vega - Cracking
She’s a musician from California who’s been playing since the early 1980s
From the very first issue of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a cooperative that was dedicated to reinvigorating the New York folk scene, and released over 100 albums between 1982 and 1997
Richie Havens - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
He was a musician from New York City and was the opening act at Woodstock
This is his version of The Band’s song, from the 1990 album Live At The Cellar Door and the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
Ted Hawkins - Strange Conversation
He was a musician from Mississippi who had a rough childhood, and first learned to sing while he was at a reform school at the age of twelve
He drifted in and out of jail around the United States over the next few decades, recording several tunes and busking on the boardwalk in Venice Beach, California
He recorded an album in 1986 that became popular in Europe, and he toured there and lived in the UK for several years
In 1994, a few years after returning to the States, Hawkins recorded an album for Geffen Records, which finally brought him to national attention in the US, and he began to tour
He unfortunately died of a stroke when he was 58, just a few months after the release of his breakthrough album
This is a live recording from the 1998 album The Final Tour, recorded on his last concert tour in 1994
David Rovics - Gaza
He’s a topical singer-songwriter based in Oregon who’s been playing since the 1990s
This is from his 2014 album All the News That’s Fit to Sing
Napoleon Strickland - Motherless Children
He was a country blues musician from Mississippi known especially for his fife and drum music
In fact, he was described as the "fife-blowingest man in the state of Mississippi”, an impressive title to earn considering the amount of fife-blowing going on at the time
This is a blues standard apparently written 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
Ella Mae Wilson, Lillie B Williams, Richard Williams - Motherless Children
Off an album of field recordings made in Florida of African American traditional music between 1977 and 1980, called Drop on Down in Florida
Roscoe Holcomb - Motherless Children
Was a construction worker, coal miner, and farmer much of his life
He was an older artist who became popular during the folk revival of the 1960s, and didn’t have a music career at all before then—though he was born in 1912, he was first discovered by John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers playing on his front porch in Daisy, Kentucky in 1958
This is from the 1998 compilation album The High Lonesome Sound
The term “high and lonesome” was coined to describe Holcomb’s music
Neil Young - Early Morning Rain
This is from his 2014 album A Letter Home, produced by Jack White and released for Record Store Day
Young recorded it in a refurbished 1947 recording booth at Third Man Records’ studio
This song is by Gordon Lightfoot
Ian & Sylvia - CC Rider
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
Popular blues song first recorded by Ma Rainey in 1924
Also known as “Easy Rider”
Wade Hemsworth - The Jam at Gerry’s Rocks
A respected Canadian folksinger from Brantford, Ontario known for the “Black Fly Song” and many others
This is off his 1955 album Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods
It’s one of the best known lumbering songs, and describes one of the dangers of lumbering: the log jam
Log jams occurred when logs got caught as timber was drifted downriver in the spring, and hundreds of logs caught and piled up behind them
River drivers had to go out onto these unsteady masses and try to break up the jam, which would often happen quickly, engulfing the men in a torrent of logs and water, and more often than not, leaving them dead
This song is very likely Canadian, though the origin of the song and the location of the incident in the song is unknown
Hemsworth places it in New Brunswick
James Reaney - Klaxon
From the 1958 album Six Toronto Poets
Reaney was a poet from Stratford, Ontario who became one of Canada’s best-known poets
He was a professor at the University of Manitoba in the 1950s, and later taught at the University of Western Ontario
This is from his first collection of poems, The Red Heart, from 1949
Sheesham & Lotus - John Henry
From Wolf Island, Ontario
This is one of many tunes that refers to folk hero John Henry, a railroad worker who raced a steam drill and won, but died shortly after
