Barking Dog: May 1, 2025
Padraic Colum - May Day
He was an Irish writer, poet, and folklore collector known as a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, which began in the late 19th century
This is from his 1965 Folkways Records album on which he recites Irish tales and poems
Colum provides background about the poem prior to reading it
Alan Mills - May Day Carol
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
This is off his 1954 album More Songs to Grow On
The “May Day Carol” was a popular song, sung to celebrate the end of winter and the arrival of spring
Young people would traditionally spend the night before May Day collecting flowers and greenery to weave garlands and baskets to give to friends, and would sometimes sing this song while they exchanged gifts
Edna Ritchie - May Day Carol
This is off the 1962 Folk-Legacy album Edna Ritchie of Viper, Kentucky
Ritchie was an older sister of “Mother of Folk” Jean Ritchie, and they both grew up in a well-known ballad-singing family in Kentucky
Though the Ritchies preserved many older English folk songs through their strong oral tradition, this song was a recent introduction to the area
The liner notes for the album state that it is “a carol Christianizing certain of the spring rites of pagan England”
Sandy Paton, Caroline Paton - Across the Blue Mountain
They were the co-founders of Folk Legacy Records, founded in Burlington, Vermont, in 1961
They were also a folk duo who sang together for over 50 years
This is from their 1966 self-titled album
They learned the song from Paul Clayton, who had collected it from the traditional singer “Maybird” McAllister of Virginia
Judy Collins - Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
She’s 86 today!
American artist who has recorded music in a number of different genres
Is also known for bringing attention to lesser-known artists, including Leonard Cohen, Ian Tyson, and Joni Mitchell, who weren’t very well-known when she recorded songs by them
This is from her 1966 album In My Life
It’s a song by Bob Dylan, from his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited
Sterling A Brown - Transfer
He was born 124 years ago today
Brown was an American folklorist, poet, and literary critic known for being the first poet laureate of the District of Columbia
From the 1973 Folkways album 16 Poems of Sterling A. Brown
This poem is about a man who broke the law in the Jim Crow South because he “didn’t say sir” on a trolley line
Alistair Hulett - Joe McDonnell
He was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland, known as a member of the folk punk band Roaring Jack
This one is from the 2012 album Live in Concert, recorded at the Melbourne Folk Club in Australia in November of 2009, just a few months before his death in January of 2010
Joe McDonnell was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who died in 1981 following the Irish hunger strike, a protest undertaken by Irish prisoners in Northern Ireland during the Troubles in an effort to gain rights including the right to wear one’s own clothes, the right not to do prison work, and the right to one visit, one letter, and one parcel per week
McDonnell died in July of 1981 after 61 days on strike
Colin Meloy, Gillian Welch, Joan Baez - Joe Hill
Meloy is the frontman for the Portland, Oregon-based indie rock band the Decemberists, and he’s also a children’s book author
Welch is one of the best-known contemporary American roots musicians, though she’s known particularly for her musical partnership with Dave Rawlings
Baez is one of the best known musicians to come out of the 1960s folk revival
She performed for over 60 years and released over 30 albums before retiring in 2019
This was recorded for the 2015 album Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’
The song is about Joe Hill, a Swedish-American labour activist and songwriter known for songs like “The Preacher and the Slave,” through which he coined the phrase “pie in the sky”, “There is Power in a Union,” and “Casey Jones, the Union Scab”
Hill was convicted of the murders of a former police officer and his son in 1914 after a controversial trial and was executed in 1915
The song was originally a poem written by Alfred Hayes around 1930, and was put to music in 1936 by Earl Robinson
Wataru Takada - Wabash Cannonball
He was a Japanese folk musician who came from a family of artists and activists, and was active in the Kansai folk movement which began in the late 1960s
In 1966, music critic Kazuo Mitsuhashi introduced him to American folk music, and he learned banjo and worked towards becoming a folksinger while still attending high school
This is from his 1969 split LP with Five Red Balloons
It’s an American railroad song written around 1882 by JA Roff, and later rewritten by William Kindt
Takada’s version is attributed to the Carter Family, who made one of the first recordings of the song in 1929
David Francey - American Blues
He’s a Juno-winning folksinger based in Elphin, Ontario, who’s been performing for over 25 years
This comes from his 2013 album So Say We All
Fraser & DeBolt - You Can’t Always Get What You Want
They were a Canadian folk duo that met at a workshop at the 1968 Mariposa Folk Festival
They were signed to Columbia Records at one point but never experienced commercial success, though their music has gained a cult following in recent decades
This is from the 2016 archival EP called Flight of the Light Air Force
It’s a song by the Rolling Stones from 1969
It was recorded live at a concert in upstate New York in February of 1970
David Nzomo - Nyie (Once You Are Born…)
He’s a musician from Kenya who recorded six albums of traditional Kenyan songs for Folkways records while he was studying at Columbia University in the 1960s and 70s
His early musical gigs were at local events like dances and wedding parties
This is off his 1973 album African Politics: More Songs from Kenya
He wrote the song during a state of emergency in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion, when the Kenya Land and Freedom Army fought the British colonizing forces, and he says that it “expresses the hopes, aspirations, and disappointments of a young man”
Martin McManus - Sally Greer
From an album of folk songs of Ontario collected by Edith Fowke and released in 1958
Sung by Martin McManus of Peterborough
It’s one of many ballads inspired by Irish immigration to Canada in the 19th century
Fowke was unable to locate the specific shipwreck described in this song, though there were many incidents of similar shipwrecks on the east coast of Canada during the nineteenth century
Lisu Musicians - Dance Tunes for Banjo
From the 2009 album Sounds for the Spirits, recorded in northern Thailand by John Moore for his Indigenius label
The Lisu are an ethnic group that inhabit Myanmar, Thailand, China, and northern India
The type of banjo these tunes are played on is called a tseubeu, and it’s a long-necked fretless three-stringed instrument with a soundboard made from lizard or snake skin
It’s interesting how similar some of the basic tunes are to some well-known western banjo tunes
Rhiannon Giddens, Justin Robinson - Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss
They were both founding members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an old-time string band from North Carolina that performed between 2005 and 2014
This one’s off their new album What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow: Fiddle and Banjo Music of North Carolina
Many different versions of this song have been recorded under many different names, but the song seems to be from Virginia or North Carolina
Rev. IB Ware - You Better Quit Drinking Shine
He recorded two tracks with his wife and son for Vocalion Records in Birmingham, Alabama in 1928
It’s possible that the name was a pseudonym for another recording artist
It’s a version of “God Don’t Like It,” later recorded by artists including Blind Willie McTell and Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Uncle Sinner - God Don't Like It
Winnipeg
He recorded it in 2017
He got the words from Blind Willie McTell’s version, and the banjo from Frank Lee
Bob Dylan - Rise Again
This is a rehearsal performance from Volume 13 of his bootleg series called Trouble No More, which covers the period of his career from 1979-1981
This song was recorded in October of 1980, and it’s never been officially released
The House Committee on Un-American Activities - Eye-Witness Accounts
From the 1962 album The House Committee on Un-American Activities: Hearings in San Francisco, May, 1960, which features excerpts from the hearings, interviews outside the courtroom, and eyewitness accounts of the violent protests
HUAC was a government committee formed in the late 1930s to investigate Americans allegedly involved in subversive activities
Its hearings led to many individuals from the film industry being blacklisted from major studios, but the effects of HUAC extended far beyond Hollywood
Many folksingers were also called before the committee to deliver testimony, including Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson, with the former convicted on 10 counts of contempt of Congress and sentenced to 10 concurrent one-year prison terms, which were overturned in 1962 before he served any time
Soledad Bravo - Compadre Juan Miguel
She’s a Venezuelan singer who began performing in the 1960s
The song is by Yamandú Palacios, and it’s about the low wages rice-field workers made
This is from her 1997 compilation album Cantos revolutionarios de america latina (1968-1973)
Woody Guthrie - Danville Girl #2
Guthrie was an influential folk musician who’s known for his songs about the Okie migrants who travelled west during the Great Depression in search of work
This is from the posthumously released 1968 album Poor Boy, a collection of recordings made in the mid-1940s and originally released under the name Bed on the Floor
He’s joined on this one by Cisco Houston
Furry Lewis - Waiting for a Train
American country blues artist from Memphis, Tennessee
This is a Jimmie Rodgers song first recorded in 1929, and it’s based on the older English broadside ballad “Standing on the Platform”, from the mid-19th century
Recorded in July of 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee
Leon Redbone - Yodeling Cowboy
Redbone moved to Canada from Cyprus with his family when he was a teenager in the 1960s, and first appeared onstage in Toronto in the 1970s
It’s been suggested that he was an alternative identity for someone like Frank Zappa or Andy Kaufman due to his reluctance to discuss his past, and he was often described as both a musician and a performance artist
The song is by Jimmie Rodgers and Elsie McWilliams, and Rodgers recorded it in 1930
Art Bouman - Hard Time Killing Floor Blues
He’s a Halifax-based banjo player who’s interested in reclaiming the banjo as a traditional instrument of the African diaspora and highlighting the Black banjo players whose work has historically been overlooked
This is from his recent album Simple Songs For Trying Times
It’s a version of Skip James’ 1931 song
The Halifax Three - A Satisfied Mind
They were a folk group that formed in Halifax in 1960, performed in Montreal and Toronto, then became part of the New York City folk scene
After they broke up in 1965, one member, Zal Yanovsky, joined the Lovin’ Spoonful, while Denny Doherty joined the Mamas & the Papas
This is from their 1963 album The San Francisco Blues
It’s a country song written by Jack Rhodes and Red Hayes in 1947
The McMillan’s Camp Boys - Plea to the Prairies
They’re a band originally from British Columbia, now based in Nova Scotia
This is from their self-titled 2023 album
It’s their own song
Neil Young - Comes A Time
From his 2025 album Coastal: The Soundtrack, recorded during his 2023 solo tour
The song originally comes from his 1978 album of the same name
Wu Fei, Abigail Washburn - Water is Wide / Wusuli Boat Song
Washburn a well-known contemporary banjo player from Illinois
Wu Fei a composer and musician from Beijing who now lives in the US
They met in 2006 and started playing together in the trio The Wu Force in 2011
They released their first album together in 2021, which combines American and Chinese folk music
This is a medley of Chinese and American folk songs
As the liner notes state, “The Wusuli Boat Song” and ““The Water is Wide” are a natural match, not only because of the similar tonality and chords, but also because of the comparable themes and images that incorporate the indigenous people and their watery environment”
Rosa Lee Hill, Jessie Mae Hemphill - Lord I Feel Better
Rosa Lee 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, also appears on this recording
Sid taught Rosa Lee to play guitar when she was six, and by the time she was ten, she was playing local dances with him
This is a recording that the folklorist George Mitchell made in Senatobia, Mississippi, in August of 1967
Ken Whiteley - That’s Alright
Ken Whiteley is a musician from Toronto who’s been playing folk music since the early 1970s
This song is from his 2007 album One World Blues
“That’s All Right” is a traditional gospel song that’s likely a simplification of an older spiritual
Smith & Harper - Insurance Policy Blues
They were a duo who recorded five songs for ARC in Augusta, Georgia, in 1936
Pharis & Jason Romero, Kori Miyanishi - Sally Ann
