Barking Dog: April 6, 2023
Ella Jenkins - Greetings in Many Languages
An American folk singer and actress dubbed the “First Lady of the Children’s Folk Song”
This is from her 1979 album Travellin’ with Ella Jenkins: A Bi-Lingual Journey, and it seems like a nice way to start today’s show
Josh White - Waltzing Matilda
Today is Waltzing Matilda Day, which was first organised in 2012 to remind Australians of the song’s significance
White was an extremely successful musician who started playing music in the late 20s and gained fame as a blues, jazz, and folk musician, as a civil rights activist, and as a film and Broadway actor
Australian poet Banjo Paterson wrote the lyrics in 1895, and there are so many folktales surrounding the song’s creation that there is even a museum for the song located in Winton, where Paterson wrote the words
The ballad is pretty heavy on Australian slang, so I’ll translate a little for you: it’s about a “swagman”, a travelling worker or hobo, who makes billy tea at a camp and kills a stray “jumbuck”, or sheep, to eat. The jumbuck’s owner, a “squatter”, or landowner, and three policemen, called “troopers”, chase the swagman for stealing the sheep, and the swagman says “You’ll never catch me alive!” before committing suicide by drowning himself in the “billabong”, or watering hole
His ghost is then said to haunt the site
The title means to travel on foot with one’s belongings in a “matilda”, or a pack slung over one’s back
White’s version is from 1944
Bob Thomason - I’ll Fly Away
He’s a dulcimer player from Georgia, and that song is off his 1989 album Wayfaring Stranger
It’s a hymn written in 1929 by Albert E Brumley
Elizabeth Cotten - Willie
She was born into a musical family in North Carolina, and began playing her older brother’s banjo when she was seven
When she was nine, she had to quit school to work as a domestic worker, and two years later, she had earned enough money to buy herself a guitar
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 after marrying and having a child, but while she was working in a department store in the mid-1950s, she met the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger and began working as a housekeeper in the Seeger household
While she was there, she recalled playing the guitar 40 years prior
Mike Seeger, a well-known folksinger, discovered her playing the family’s guitar one day, and he began making recordings of her songs, which became an album
They started to play concerts together, and by the early 1960s, Cotten was playing with big names in folk music at national festivals
She continued touring and releasing music well into her 80s
It seems that this is an original song, though it may be based on earlier murder ballads
David Rovics - From Kabul to Khartoum
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
From his 2001 album Living in These Times
On his website, he says of this song: “Bill Clinton bombed a school in Kabul and a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum in 1998, and I wrote this song. According to something I remember Noam Chomsky mentioning, the impact of the bombing in Sudan meant that much-needed drugs were no longer being produced, and this led to lots of people dying. Even more needlessly than usual, and as a direct consequence of US foreign policy, under the leadership of the Democratic Party. To my knowledge, there has never been an apology for this war crime.”
Tom Parrott - Pinkville Helicopter
From a 1970 compilation album released by the very important folk music publication Broadside Magazine
Parrott is a folk singer from Washington, DC who was part of the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene
This is his song from 1970 about the Mỹ Lai Massacre, also known as the Pinkville Massacre, a mass killing of around 500 unarmed villagers perpetrated by US soldiers in Mỹ Lai, Vietnam in March of 1968
Augustín Lira - If You’re Homeless
He’s an activist and songwriter who’s been an important figure in the farmworker and Chicano civil rights movements
He’s joined on this song from 2016 by his trio, Alma
The liner notes state: “When a new mayor of Fresno, California, was elected, the city bulldozed homeless settlements, robbing residents of their shelter and meagre belongings”
We’ve seen very similar things happening in our own country in recent years
Morley Loon - Enu-Noog-Amun
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
This one’s from his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
Ewan MacColl - Cannily Cannily
He was a well-known British folksinger and labour activist known for his involvement in the 1960s folk revival
He wrote this song in the 1950s
It’s written in the Northumbrian dialect, and is sometimes taken for a traditional piece
Phil Ochs - Hunger and Cold
He was an American protest singer from the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene
Ochs wrote this song in 1965
Delia Murphy - Moonshiner
She was an Irish singer and ballad collector from County Mayo
Her father made a fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush, but returned to Ireland in 1901 and purchased a large estate
He encouraged his daughter’s musical interests, and because they allowed Irish Travellers to camp on their land, she learned her first ballads around their campfires
She and her husband also assisted in hiding Jews and allied soldiers during WWII while they were living in Rome
The origins of this song are disputed—some believe it comes from Ireland and made its way over to the US, some believe it’s the other way around completely
Delia Murphy was singing it as early as the 1930s in Ireland, while a popular songbook of American folksongs from 1927 credits its collection to the Combs family of Kentucky
Buell Kazee - The Moonshiner
Grew up in Kentucky playing traditional 5-string banjo in a style he called “thrashing”, and he also had formal voice training, which was considered unusual for a mountain musician at that time
He began recording in 1927
In fact, he’s considered one of the most successful folk musicians of the 1920s
Kazee began studying religion as a teen, and ended up spending most of life as a preacher
This recording is from 1958
Bob Dylan - Moonshiner
Recorded in October, 1962 at the Gaslight Cafe coffeehouse in New York City
David Slauenwhite - Kelly the Pirate
From the folklorist Helen Creighton’s album of Maritime folk songs from 1962
Recorded in Terence Bay, NS by Creighton in September of 1950
This seems to be a Nova Scotia song, or at least a song with a deep history in Nova Scotia
Stompin’ Tom Connors - Log Train
He was a musician from New Brunswick known for a number of classic Canadian songs like “Bud the Spud” and “The Hockey Song”
Connors grew up poor in Saint John, and first began hitchhiking at the age of 13
He was still hitchhiking around the country in his 20s, and found himself at a bar in Timmins, Ontario, where the bartender offered him a second beer if he played a few songs
From those songs, he got a 14-month run as an entertainer at the bar, a radio show, and a recording career
This one is from 1973
John O’Connor - Carpal Tunnel
He’s a musician from Iowa
This one is from his 1989 album We Ain’t Gonna Give It Back
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”
The New Lost City Ramblers - Shady Grove
John Cohen, Mike Seeger, Tracy Schwarz, formed 1958, focused on playing music taken from 78s from the 20s and 30s
Traditional Appalachian folk song
There are many variations of this song, with at least 300 stanzas recorded by the early 21st century
They got their version from the banjo player Lee Sexton
From their 1997 album There Ain’t No Way Out
Sam Amidon - Rocky Island (Demo)
Contemporary musician from Vermont
This is a demo from his 2015 album But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted
A popular old Kentucky square dance tune, probably best known through the Stanley Brothers’ version
Old Man Luedecke - Year of the Dragon
From Chester, NS
This is from his live album One Night Only! from 2018, recorded at the Chester Playhouse
It’s originally from his 2015 album Domestic Eccentric
David Francey - Long Way Home
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
From his first album, Torn Screen Door, from 1999
Sharon Burch - Hooghan
She’s a musician, composer, educator, and writer who was raised in the traditional Navajo culture in New Mexico
This is from her 1995 album Touch the Sweet Earth
Uncle Sinner - Pearline
From Winnipeg
This is a song by Son House, a Mississippi delta blues artist who influenced Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters
Uncle Sinner included it on his 2008 album Ballads and Mental Breakdowns
Willie Dunn - The Planting of the Apple Tree
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is off his fourth album The Vanity of Human Wishes, from 1984
It’s an adaptation of William Cullen Bryant’s mid-19th century poem of the same name
Kelompok Marani - Esa Na Wia-Wia Mokaria
This is off the 1999 album Music of Indonesia, Vol. 18, which focuses on the island of Sulawesi’s festival, funeral, and work music
It’s a type of song sung at work parties in the region of Minahasa, where groups of 40-100 people would plant or harvest fields, build a road, or construct a house
This specific song is associated with the activity of hoeing the ground after rice seed has been sown
The singers on this track are members of a group called Kelompok Marani, directed by Thomas Rotikan
The Weather Station - Traveller
Fronted by Tamara Lindeman of Toronto
Off the 2011 album All of It Was Mine
Cara Luft, Tim O’Brien - He Moved Through the Fair
Luft is from Winnipeg, and this is off her 2012 album Darlingford
Traditional Irish folk song usually known as “She Moved Through the Fair”
The lyrics were first published in 1909
Rosa Lee Hill - Count the Days Until I’m Gone
She was a Mississippi Hill Country blues musician and a member of the family that also includes her father, Sid Hemphill, a renowned fife and drum bandleader, and Jessie Mae Hemphill, Rosa Lee’s niece, who also specialised in the Mississippi hill country blues
This recording was made in August of 1967 by the field researcher and festival curator George Mitchell
Kaia Kater - Nine Pin
Grenadian-Canadian artist based in Toronto
From her 2016 album of the same name
Mississippi Joe Callicott - Roll and Tumble
He was a delta blues musician from Nesbit, Mississippi who began his recording career in 1929, the same year “Roll and Tumble” was first recorded by Hambone Willie Newbern
Callicott recorded his version on September 1, 1967 in Nesbit, MS
Big Joe Williams - She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain
A Delta blues musician from Mississippi, best known for the unique sound of his 9 string guitar
He began his recording career in 1934 and remained a prominent artist into the 50s and 60s, when many of his contemporaries were rediscovered during the folk revival
He became popular amongst folk blues fans and even toured Europe and Japan
The song is derived from a Christian song called “When the Chariot Comes”, which was adapted by Midwest railroad workers in the 1890s
From his 1962 album Mississippi’s Big Joe Williams and His Nine-String Guitar
Wawali Bonane - Tcheni Tcheni
From the album Safarini in Transit: Music of African Immigrants from 2000, which presents songs from musicians from Africa who now live in the United States
Bonane is from the Democratic Republic of Congo and now lives in Seattle, Washington
He’s joined on this one by his band Yoka Nzenze, with Steve Mgondo on backing vocals and Huit Kilo on guitar
The title of this song translates to “Don’t Worry, Don’t Worry”
Godfrey & Tod - Lonesome Weary Blues
Unspecified - Auld Lang Syne
