Barking Dog: April 4, 2024
Muddy Waters - Why Don’t You Live So God Can Use You
It’s his 111th birthday today
He was a well-known American blues musician who grew up on a plantation in Mississippi, and later moved to Chicago in the 1940s to pursue a career in music, where he began performing electric blues
This recording is one made by the folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax at Waters’ home in 1942, when Lomax travelled to the Mississippi plantation to record the various musicians who lived there
It seems to be a traditional gospel song
Andrew Bird - Some of These Days
Bird is a musician from Illinois known especially for his use of violin and whistling in his music
This is off his 1998 album Thrills
It’s a Charley Patton song first recorded in 1929
Kacy & Clayton - The Downward Road
Second cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum from Wood Mountain, SK
From their 2013 album The Day is Past & Gone
It uses the same melody as “Some of These Days”
The Mountain Goats - Dirty Old Town
They’re a contemporary band formed in California in the early 1990s and currently based in North Carolina
This is from their 2001 EP Devil in the Shortwave
Ewan MacColl wrote it in 1949 as an interlude for a scene transition in a play called Landscape With Chimneys, and it was popularised later on by The Dubliners and The Pogues
Elizabeth Cotten - When I’m Gone
She was from North Carolina, and began playing the banjo when she was seven
During her teens, Cotten composed a number of songs, most notably “Freight Train”, which became a skiffle hit in the UK several decades later, in the 1950s
She gave up guitar around 1910, but she met the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger in the 1950s and began working as a housekeeper in the Seeger household
She started playing the Seeger family’s guitar one day, and Mike Seeger made recordings of her songs, which later became an album
They began playing concerts together, and by the early 1960s, Cotten was playing at national festivals
She continued touring and releasing music well into her 80s
This song was recorded in 1979, and Cotten wrote it herself
Sam Amidon - Trouble
Contemporary folk artist from Vermont
This is from a 2017 Connie Converse tribute album called Vanity of Vanities
Converse was a musician and songwriter in New York City in the 1950s
She never found commercial success, and in the 1970s, she wrote letters to friends and family saying that she intended to leave home and start a new life somewhere else
Soon after that, she drove off and was never seen again, but interest in her music was revived in the early 2000s, and several collections of her music have been released in recent years
Wade Hemsworth - The Blackfly Song
A respected Canadian folksinger from Brantford, Ontario
Wade Hemsworth’s best-known song, written in 1949 and made popular through the 1991 National Film Board short that’s based on the song
Tex Konig - The Ballad of the Springhill Mine Disaster
Konig was an American-Canadian folksinger who was active in the early Greenwich Village folk scene and moved to Canada in 1968, where he became a mainstay on the Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa folk scenes
From a 1989 issue of Fast Folk Musical Magazine that highlights Canadian folk musicians
Fast Folk Musical Magazine was a cooperative that was dedicated to reinvigorating the New York folk scene, and released over 100 albums between 1982 and 1997
This song was written by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger about a mining disaster that occurred 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
Jim Ringer - Granny’s Song
He was a musician born in Arkansas and raised in California who spent much of his life as a travelling labourer
This is from his first album, Waitin' for the Hard Times to Go, from 1972
The song was his granny’s favourite, and it shares many elements with the traditional song “Storms Are on the Ocean,” and might even be considered a variant of the song
Bob Dylan - Thirsty Boots
From the 2013 compilation album Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait
Bob Dylan recorded it in 1970 during the sessions for Self Portrait
It’s by American folksinger Eric Andersen, who said the song was written to a civil rights worker friend
Joni Mitchell - Fare Thee Well
Off the 2020 album Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 1: The Early Years
Recorded at the radio station CFQC in Saskatoon around 1963
This song is also commonly known as “Dink’s Song,” because it was originally recorded by a woman named Dink in 1909
Brion Gysin - Recalling All Active Agents
Gysin was an English-Canadian artist and writer known for his association with members of the Beat Generation, especially William S Burroughs
This is off Burroughs’ 1986 album Break Through in Grey Room
It’s an excerpt from a tape made in 1960 at BBC Studios in London using an editing technique Gysin developed
The Dubliners - I Wish (Till Apples Grow on an Ivy Tree)
The Dubliners were an Irish folk band who were active from 1962 until 2012
This is off their 1964 self-titled album
It’s a traditional ballad
Cordelia’s Dad - How Can I Keep From Singing?
Folk and alt rock band from Northampton, Massachusetts active between 1987 and 1998
This is off the 1998 compilation album Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger
Christian hymn with music by Robert Wadsworth Lowry
Pete Seeger popularised the song during the 60s folk revival
Willie Dunn, Ron Bankley - How Long
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
Joined by Ron Bankley, who was a guitarist, poet, and songwriter from Ontario
This is his own song, though it references Leroy Carr’s blues standard “How Long Blues”
Happy Traum - Dry Bones
Traum an artist known for his involvement in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960s and the Woodstock music scene of the 70s and 80s
This version of the song is from his 2022 album There’s a Bright Side Somewhere
Taken from Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s version that was included on Harry Smith’s very influential Anthology of American Folk Music from 1952
Old Man Luedecke - Low on the Hog
This is from his 2018 album One Night Only! recorded live at the Chester Playhouse
It’s originally from his 2015 album Domestic Eccentric
Pete Seeger - Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies
Pete Seeger was a very influential folk singer and activist from New York who advocated for important social causes through his music
It’s an Appalachian traditional ballad
Cora Mae Bryant - Oh Lordy Mamma
She was a blues musician from Georgia
This is a Piedmont blues song first recorded by Buddy Moss in 1934
It’s from her 2001 album Born With The Blues
George Harrison - If Not For You
This is a demo of the song from the second day of the recording sessions for his 1970 album All Things Must Pass
The song was written by his friend Bob Dylan and released on his 1970 album New Morning
Tony Schwartz - Calls and Whistles
He was a sound archivist, media theorist, advertising creator, and graphic designer from New York City who recorded copious amounts of ambient sounds, spoken word, and music, and hosted a radio show called Around New York on WNYC for 30 years
From his 1954 album Millions of Musicians
Africa and Palestine
This is off a 2002 album called The Roots Of Resistance: Selected Highlights From The Freedom Archives Vol. 1
The Freedom Archives is an educational archive in Berkeley, California that preserves documents of progressive movements and culture from the 1960s to the 1990s
We’ll hear recordings from Amilcar Cabral, Winnie Mandela, Chris Hani, Nelson Mandela, and June Jordan about the struggle for freedom in both Africa and Palestine
Pete Steele - Train A-Pullin’ the Crooked Hill
Ohio singer and banjo player first recorded by folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in the 1930s
In 1957 Ed Kahn and Art Rosenbaum tracked him down to record a few songs, though Pete had to use Ed’s banjo as he hadn’t played in a few months and had recently sold his own banjo to buy a pistol
Steele learned this instrumental that imitates the sound of a train from Kentucky banjo player Andy Whitaker
On Top of Old Smokey
From an album of music from the Ozarks from 1964
Origins of this song are unclear, but it appears to have been passed down through families in the Appalachian region through the oral tradition over generations
Kilby Snow - The Old Crossroads
American autoharp virtuoso from Virginia
Awarded the title of Autoharp Champion of North Carolina at the age of 5
He learned this song at church in 1928 or 29, and it was written in 1920 by James Rowe
This recording is from 1969, and Kilby’s son Jim joins him on guitar and sings the higher tenor part
Uncle Sinner - Take Sick and Die
Winnipeg
It seems that this song is by Muddy Waters
The Missionary Quartet - Give Me That Old Time Religion
Nothing is known about this group except that they were a Bahamian group recorded by jazz historian and ethnographer Marshal Stearns in 1953
This is a traditional American gospel song from at least 1873
Wash Dennis, Charlie Sims - Lead Me to the Rock
They were both singers who were recorded by John Lomax for the Library of Congress while they were inmates at Mississippi State Penitentiary in 1936
This is a traditional gospel song
Nuuskamuikkunen - Bob Dylan’s Dream
From a 1976 album of Finnish translations of Bob Dylan’s songs
If you’re a Dylan fan, you’ll likely recognise this song as “Bob Dylan’s Dream,” released in 1963 on his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Lee Wallin - Neighbor Girl
He and his wife Berzilla were members of a renowned ballad-singing family from Madison County, NC, which also included Lloyd Chandler and Dillard Chandler who we’ve played before on the show
Wallin and his wife both worked hard to keep the traditional music of their area alive for future generations
This is from the 1964 album Old Love Songs & Ballads from the Big Laurel, North Carolina
Kaia Kater - Hangman’s Reel
Based in Toronto
From her 2016 album Nine Pin
A traditional Irish tune
Eye Music - Shorelines
Another one from the 1989 issue of Fast Folk Musical Magazine that highlights Canadian folk musicians
They were a short-lived Toronto-based group that performed between 1987 and 1989
Johnie Lewis - I Got to Climb a High Mountain
