Barking Dog: April 27, 2023
David Francey - False Knight
He’s a Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
This is a British ballad, which he included on his 2016 album Empty Train
The “false knight” in the tale is the devil in disguise, trying to trick the child he meets on the road, though as we hear, the child outwits his riddles
Phyllis Gaskins - Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss
She’s a master Galax dulcimer player and teacher from Galax, Virginia, who’s been immersed in Appalachian music since she was a child listening to her grandmother sing old folk songs on the front porch
She learned to play from Raymond Melton of Woodlawn, Virginia, whose family were prominent makers of the Galax dulcimer
There are many different versions of this song under many different names, but it seems to be from Virginia or North Carolina
The Kossoy Sisters - Bowling Green
They are Irene and Ellen, identical twin sisters from New York City who began singing together at age 6 after hearing their mother and aunt sing harmonies in their home
This is a traditional tune about which you can find nearly nothing, aside from the fact that Cousin Emmy was likely the first person to record it in 1947, and that the melody was taken from an old fife and fiddle tune
This is from their 1956 album Bowling Green and Other Folk Songs from the Southern Mountains, which they recorded when they were 17
Jack Owens - Ain’t No Loving, Ain’t No Getting Along
Owens was a blues musician from Mississippi
He learned several instruments as a child but his chosen instrument was the guitar
He never really aimed to become a professional recording artist, and instead farmed and ran a juke joint for much of his life before being recorded during the folk and blues revival of the 1960s when the musicologist David Evans learned about him from other blues musicians from his region
Owens toured throughout the US and Europe during the last decades of his life
This one was recorded between the late 70s and early 80s by Gianni Marcucci, who travelled from Italy to the United States five times during the 70s and 80s to document blues music in the country
Arthur Russell - Close My Eyes
He was a cellist, singer, composer, and producer from Iowa who was part of the New York avant garde scene in the 1970s
He died from AIDS in 1992 at the age of 40 when his work was still somewhat obscure, but rereleases, books, and a documentary about him brought more attention to his work throughout the 2000s, and more of his recordings have been released over time
This is from the posthumous compilation album Love Is Overtaking Me, released in 2004
Stanley Triggs - The Blue Velvet Band
He’s a folksinger, photographer, and anthropologist from BC
He learned this version of the song from Archie Greenlaw of Lardeau, BC in 1949
Likely from an old Irish song called “The Black Velvet Band”
Sammy Walker - Talking Dust Bowl
He’s a folksinger from Georgia who recorded his first albums in the mid 1970s
This is off his 1979 album Songs from Woody’s Pen, a collection of 11 covers of Woody Guthrie’s songs
The song was included on Guthrie’s first album, Dust Bowl Ballads (sometimes called the first concept album), from 1940
Beck - Waitin’ for a Train
Beck is a contemporary American musician who got his start as a teenager performing folk music on city buses in Los Angeles
This is from his 1994 album Stereopathetic Soulmanure
“Waiting for a Train” is by American country musician Jimmie Rodgers, who wrote it in the late 1920s
It became one of Rodgers’s most famous songs because of how relatable it was to average Americans after the stock market crashed in 1929
This version was sung by a homeless man named Ken, who Beck knew
Johnny Cash - Waiting for a Train
From the posthumous 2003 compilation album Unearthed
Maria Dunn - Freedom Here
She’s a Juno-award-winning musician based in Alberta who’s been performing since the late 1990s
This is off her 2004 album We Were Good People
Dave Van Ronk - Shanty Man’s Life
Van Ronk was a very well-read member of the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960s
He was signed to the influential folk record label Folkways for a few years, though royalties weren’t always on time—Van Ronk once wrote a letter to Moses Asch (the founder of Folkways) on a lawyer friend’s letterhead, to the effect that there would be legal repercussions if he was not paid
He was paid, but Asch told him a few days later that he was “getting smart”
“Shanty boy” and “shanty man” were old terms for lumberjacks
This song was apparently composed by George W. Stace of La Crosse Valley, Wisconsin
Annie Watson - The FFV
There are a number of American train wreck songs from the early days of the steam locomotive
This one is based on the true story of the wreck of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway’s Fast Flying Virginian on October 23, 1890
Annie Watson was the mother of the influential guitarist Doc Watson
The recording was made by folklorist Ralph Rinzler in Deep Gap, North Carolina in August of 1962
John Jacob Niles - The Hangman
Niles was an American musician, composer, folklorist, and collector of traditional ballads, and an influential figure during the folk revival of the 1960s
This one is from an album of recordings from the very first Newport Folk Festival in 1959
The song was first collected by Francis James Child in the 19th century
It’s one of many ballads with the theme of a woman pleading for someone to buy her freedom from the hangman, and it may have originated in continental Europe, as there are many versions from Finland, Sweden, and even Lithuania
Odetta - Anathea
She was a musician whose music has been called the “soundtrack to the Civil Rights movement”
Odetta was born in Birmingham, Alabama and had operatic vocal training from the age of 13
“Anathea” is credited to Lydia Wood, though Judy Collins, who popularised the song, wrote that Wood was given the lyrics as a poem when she was visiting Paris, and set the words to music
Bob Dylan - Seven Curses
He recorded it in New York City in 1963
It’s his own song, though it borrows heavily from older songs like those we heard before it, most notably “Anathea”
Lisa Null - Bonnie Blue Eyes
Null was a folk musician who performed around the Washington, DC area for more than 40 years
This is from her 2015 album Legacies, released by Folk Legacy Records
Bob Clayton plays the banjo on this one
Wade Hemsworth - The Shining Birch Tree
Hemsworth was from Brantford, Ontario and he wrote this song, which is also known as “The Land of the Muskeg”
Laura Baird - Home Is Where You Are
She’s a multi-instrumentalist from New Jersey known for her work with her sister Meg as the Baird Sisters, and with guitarist Glenn Jones
This is from her 2017 debut solo album I Wish I Were a Sparrow
Ted Hawkins - Sorry You’re Sick
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
Hawkins met several different producers and promoters throughout the years who tried to sign him to labels or record his music, though legal troubles delayed these efforts and made locating him difficult
He recorded a second album in 1986, which received good reviews but was commercially unsuccessful in the United States
It became popular in Europe, though, and he toured there and was persuaded to move to the UK, where he lived for several years
A few years after he returned to the States, Hawkins agreed to record an album for Geffen Records in 1994, which finally brought him to national attention, and he began to tour
He unfortunately died of a stroke when he was 58, a few months after the release of his breakthrough album
This song is from the 1982 album Watch Your Step, though Hawkins recorded it in the 70s
Paul Newman - Plastic Jesus
The song is by folk musicians Ed Rush and George Cromarty, who recorded it as the Goldcoast Singers in 1962
This version is from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke
The Marrs Family - Plastic Jesus
This is from a compilation album of recordings from Broadside magazine, an incredibly influential underground folk music magazine that published songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Little Boxes” for the first time
This version was recorded by Ernie Marrs, Bud Foote, Eleanor Walden, and Danny Smith for Broadside, and the song’s publication resulted in a barrage of angry letters calling the song blasphemous
The liner notes ask, “Where does the sacrilege lie really, with the song, or those greedy for profits, who debase the saviour by producing and peddling these cheap little trinkets made in his image?”
Stan Rogers - Bluenose
Rogers was born and raised in Ontario, but known for his maritime-influenced music that was informed by his time spent visiting family in Nova Scotia during his childhood
This is one of his better-known songs
He wrote the song for the 1977 short film Bluenose in the Sun, and it was apparently his least favourite of his maritime-themed songs
It’s off the live album Home in Halifax, recorded in March of 1982 and released in 1993
Uncle Sinner - Can’t Keep from Crying
He’s from Winnipeg
This is off his album Trouble of This World, from 2020
It’s a song by Blind Willie Johnson
Morley Loon - Amendo Na Nooch
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
This one’s from his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
The title translates to “Friendship-Kinship”
Bill Cornett - Pretty Polly
This is off a 1960 album of Kentucky mountain music
Cornett started playing banjo when he was 8, and later picked and sang his way to his first term as a representative in the Kentucky State Legislature
He was quoted saying “You know how I win? I get the young folks with my music and the old folks by fighting for old age benefits”
He was known for his song “Old Age Pension Blues”, which he sang on the floor of the legislature
“Pretty Polly” is a mid-eighteenth century American murder ballad that comes from the older “Gosport Tragedy” ballad
Dirk Powell - Pretty Polly
He’s a Grammy-award-winning musician from Ohio who’s considered one of the leading experts on traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo styles
This version is from his 1996 album If I Go Ten Thousand Miles
Pharis & Jason Romero - Five Miles from Town
They’re a married duo from Horsefly, BC
Off their 2022 album Tell 'Em You Were Gold, which was recorded over six days in a 60-year-old barn beside the Little Horsefly River
They learned the tune from Tom Sauber, Brad Leftwich, and Alice Gerrard, though it seems to be by Clyde Davenport
Snooks Eaglin - Mailman Passed
Eaglin was an American musician who played a wide range of styles and claimed to know about 2500 songs
This is from the 1991 compilation album Country Boy Down in New Orleans, which was recorded by Harry Oster and Richard Allens in New Orleans in the late 1950s
Ian & Sylvia - Rambler, Gambler
Ian & Sylvia performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975
“Rambler, Gambler” is a traditional song from the American West, first collected in print by John and Alan Lomax in 1938
They learned the song from Alec Moore, a "retired cowpuncher … whose present occupation [was] riding herd on an ice-cream wagon on the streets of Austin, Texas”
Ian & Sylvia’s version is from their 1962 debut album, simply called Ian & Sylvia
Grace Clergy - Peggy Gordon
This song is from the folklorist Helen Creighton’s album of Maritime folk songs from 1962
It’s a Canadian folk song first collected mainly in Nova Scotia in the 1950s and 60s
Clergy was a fisherman from Nova Scotia, and he appears on the cover of the album this song comes from
Primeaux and Mike - Dreamz
They’re a Grammy-award-winning duo of Indigenous musicians based in Arizona
Mickey Miller - Wildwood Flower
She was a folksinger from Washington, DC, who moved to California in the 40s
This is from her 1959 album Mickey Miller Sings American Folk Songs
It’s a traditional American song, popularized by the Carter Family
Norman Rosten - Futurama Love Song
He was a poet, playwright, and novelist from New York City
This is from the 1963 Folkways album The Poems of Norman Rosten
Fred Penner - The Old Chisholm Trail
He’s a children’s musician and entertainer from Winnipeg who’s been performing professionally since the early 1970s
This is a traditional cowboy song dating back to at least the late 19th century, though it’s based on an even older English song
Penner included it on his 1992 album Ebeneezer Sneezer
Pete Seeger - Jay Gould’s Daughter
Seeger was a very influential folk singer and an activist who, though blacklisted during the McCarthy era, remained a prominent public figure who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and international disarmament through his music
This is a classic railroad song about railroad baron Jay Gould’s younger daughter Anna, who was an extravagant dresser and a social climber
The Golden Gate Quartet - Saints Go Marching In
They are a vocal quartet formed in Virginia by four high school students in 1934
They’re still active today, but have obviously undergone several changes in membership
This is a Black spiritual popular with jazz bands
It’s unclear who wrote it, though several composers have claimed its copyright through the years
This version was likely recorded in August of 1938
Old Man Luedecke - Roustabout
From Chester, NS
Off his 2006 album Hinterland
Sheesham and Lotus - Roscoe
