Barking Dog: May 19, 2022
Lightnin’ Hopkins - See That My Grave is Kept Clean
Was a country blues musician from Texas who gained a broader audience with the folk revival of the 1960s after recording and performing around Texas in the 40s and 50s
His debut performance was at Carnegie Hall in October of 1960, and he shared the bill with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez
He continued to tour and record throughout the 60s and 70s, and was Houston, Texas’s poet in residence for 35 years
Written by Blind Lemon Jefferson and first recorded in 1927
Recorded January, 1959 in Texas
Sam and Kirk McGhee - Late Last Night
Duo of brothers who were one of the most enduring acts on the Grand Ole Opry in its first fifty years
They joined with Opry fiddler Arthur Smith in the 1930s and formed the stringband the Dixieliners
Became popular again during the folk revival of the 50s and 60s
They got this one from Uncle Dave Macon, with whom they often played
Also called Way Down Town
Uncle Sinner - Into Grace
From Winnipeg
Off his 2020 album Trouble of This World
Sis Cunningham - Strange Things Happenin’
Important member of the folk community for many years
Founding editor of Broadside Magazine, an important publication for the Greenwich Village folk scene
One of the first people to be blacklisted as a communist sympathiser in post WWII America
She adapted this song in 1976 from John Handcox, who was a union organizer
It’s about the plight of dispossessed sharecroppers in Arkansas
Doc Watson, Clarence Ashley - Little Sadie
A blind musician who earned the nickname “Doc” when the host of a live radio program said his given name - Arthel - was unusual, and an audience member yelled “Call him Doc!” referring to the Sherlock Holmes character
Had a 60 year career
Clarence Ashley an earlier musician known for his performances at medicine shows in the 1920s, became known through the very influential album Anthology of American Folk Music, released in 1952
Retired from medicine shows in 1943, songs revived in 50s but Ashley was nowhere to be seen, met Ralph Rinzler in 1960 at a fiddler’s convention
Rinzler set up a recording session in Ashley’s home, and brought in Doc Watson to play guitar
This is the first album on which Watson plays acoustic guitar--before this, he only played electric guitar on country records
20th century American folk ballad, the earliest known version of which is from 1922
Ed Trickett, Howie Mitchell, Joe Hickerson, Joe Dildine, Neal MacMillan, Sara Grey - Waterbound
A group of musicians from around the States who gathered several times in the 1970s in Sharon, Connecticut for several days of non-competitive, group music-making
Joe Hickerson leads this one—he’s a folk singer and songleader from Illinois who was Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress for 35 years
This is an old Appalachian song
Bernice Johnson Reagon - I Won’t Crumble with You if You Fall
Reagon is a song leader, activist, scholar, and composer who was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee’s Freedom Singers in the 1960s, and with them recognized the potential in collective singing to bring diverse groups together
Recorded November, 1974
Gordon Lightfoot - Changes
Written and recorded by Phil Ochs in 1966, the same year this cover was released
Hattie Ellis - Desert Blues
Recorded near Huntsville, Texas, May 14, 1939 at the Goree State Farm for Women by John and Ruby Lomax
Before the Lomaxes visited to make recordings, the women at the prison had become known through the local radio program “Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls,” which showcased the talents of female inmates and quickly became a nationwide hit, drawing millions of listeners and running from 1938 to 1944
Ellis was a Texan in her twenties who was serving 30 years for murder, and who had previously sung in the nightclubs of Dallas
John Lomax had heard her on the radio show and visited Goree to record her specifically
She was released the following year on conditional parole but returned to prison later in her life and never appeared on the radio again
Gale Huntington - The Garden Where the Shampeens Grow
From a 1957 album of folksongs from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
An Irish song more commonly known as “The Garden Where Praties Grow”
It’s probably from the late 19th or early 20th century
Huntington learned it from Katy Donlon, a girl who worked on Martha’s Vineyard who had emigrated from the West of Ireland
Per Henderak Haetta - Hento Risten
Off a 1956 album of Lappish Joik songs from Northern Norway
Joik singing is primarily comprised of nonsense words set to fixed melodies, though short descriptive sentences and names are occasionally interspersed
Per’s father was a very famous Joik singer, and he learned most of his songs from his father
Melody for a woman from Kautokeino, his father’s hometown
The song was about 60 years old at the time of recording
Hubby Jenkins - Jonah in the Wilderness
Born and raised in Brooklyn
From his 2020 EP The Fourth Day
Elizabeth Knight - Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be!
From a 1958 album of songs from the suffragette movement
The lyrics of this one were written by L May Wheeler
The liner notes say of the song, “While the point of view of this comparatively lighthearted song seems constantly to be shifting and it is hard to tell from stanza to stanza whether the questioner is supposed to be a stick-in-the-mud male or a replying woman, the point of the song seems pretty clear. The theme of woman's contribution to society, their reforming zeal, their nursing, etc., occurs in many other suffrage songs too.”
The Watersons - Hal An Tow
English folk group from Yorkshire, England who performed acapella traditional songs beginning in the 1960s
They were three siblings: Norma, Mike, and Elaine, and their cousin John Harrison
This is a May song often sung during the Maypole dance
Karen James - Hurrah, Lie!
A folksinger and daughter of Spanish musician Isabelita Alonso, who grew up in England, Spain, and France, and moved to Canada as a teenager
From her 1962 album Through Streets Broad and Narrow
She got this song from Ethel Park Richardson's 1927 book American Mountain Songs
It’s an American version of the English song Martin Said to His Men, which is from at least the mid-19th century
Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry - Walk On
Terry a blind musician who lost his vision at 16, which prevented him from doing farm work and caused him to rely on music as a living
McGhee a folk and blues singer known for his collaboration with Sonny Terry
This is from the 1965 album Lightnin’, Sonny, & Brownie
Ben Lucien Burman - Fire on the Mountain
He was an author and journalist from Kentucky
From a 1956 album of songs & stories of the Mississippi River
Harmonica player Eddy Manson gives musical accompaniment to that one
Old Man Luedecke - Salute to the Gold River
From Chester, NS
Off his 2006 album Hinterland
Brendan Gleeson - The Unfortunate Lad
Perhaps better known as an actor in films like Braveheart and Gangs of New York
This is from the Coen Brothers’ 2018 film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and it’s a member of the Unfortunate Rake song family, which includes St. James Hospital, The Cowboy’s Lament, One Morning in May, and The Young Sailor Cut Down in His Prime
Wade Hemsworth - The Bride’s Lament
A respected Canadian folksinger from Brantford, Ontario
Only wrote about 20 songs during his career, though many of them, such as The Black Fly Song, The Logdriver’s Waltz, and The Wild Goose are so ingrained in Canadian culture that people consider them traditional Canadian folk songs at this point
This song, however, is a traditional song with Irish origins, likely brought to Canada by Irish settlers in the 19th century
Hemsworth first heard it from a man who sailed boats out of Port Arthur at the head of the Great Lakes
Gene Bluestein - The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks
He was a musician, folklorist, activist, and English professor from Minnesota
This is off his 1958 album Songs of the North Star State
This is 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
Unspecified - Gumising Ka, Kabataan (Youth, Rise Up!)
From a 1976 album of Songs of the Philippine National Democratic Struggle, which protests Ferdinand Marcos’ military dictatorship and American imperialism’s role in supporting his regime
Marcos’s son has just been elected president of the Philippines, so this recording is perhaps somewhat topical again
Alan Mills - Lukey’s Boat
Quebec folksinger
This is from an album of Newfoundland folk songs
Arthur M Greenhall - At the Zoo: Rhinoceros
From a 1954 album called Sounds of Animals, an instructional recording of the sounds of different animals from the Detroit Zoo and The Cornell Behavioral Farm at Cornell University
Stan Rogers - The Flowers of Bermuda
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 the summers of his childhood
Rogers recorded this for his 1979 album Between the Breaks Live!
He wrote it in the Spring of 1978
Dyad - Soldier’s Horse
From Victoria, BC
Off their 2002 album Who’s Been Here Since I’ve Been Gone
An English ballad also known as The Trooper and the Maid or The Light Dragoon
Abdullah Kershi, Ahmed Sherif - Dulkayaga
From a 1962 album called The Freedom Songs of the Somali Republic, a country that existed until 1969, after which the Supreme Revolutionary Council seized power and renamed the country the Somali Democratic Republic
The words are by Sherif and the music is by Kershi
Gaither Carlton - Pretty Saro
Was an American old-time fiddle & banjo player from North Carolina
One of several folk songs that died out in England but was rediscovered in the Appalachian region in the early 20th century, preserved through the strong oral tradition of that area
Sam Amidon - Saro
Contemporary folk artist from Vermont, parents are also folk musicians who I’ve played on the show
From his 2008 album All Is Well
Phyllis Nafuna - M Wana Ta Li Tambula
Off an album of music from the Jewish people of Uganda from 2002
The title translates to The Child Will Never Walk
This is a traditional lullaby about a mother encouraging a baby to take its first steps
The lyrics translate to, “The child will never walk. [If he won’t walk,] buy a cloth, tie the child on the back [like a little baby]”
Kacy & Clayton - Henry Martin
Duo from rural Saskatchewan which consists of second cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum
Traditional Scottish folk song about a sailor who becomes a pirate
Grace Clergy - On Board of the Victory
From Helen Creighton’s album of Maritime folk songs from 1952
Creighton had never heard this song before or seen it in print, and Clergy learned it from his father, who was a noted singer in the area
Willie Chapman - Little Birdie
A field recording from an album called Mountain Music of Kentucky
This song is popular in the south, and has many variations
Pete Seeger - Pittsburgh
Seeger was a folk singer and an activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and peace through his music
Song written by Woody Guthrie in 1941 while he and Seeger were in the Almanac Singers together, and Seeger was the first to record the song
It talks about the labour and environmental issues the city was facing at the time the song was written
Billy Connolly - Talkin’ Blues (What’s in a Name)
Though he may be better known as a comedian and actor, he started out as a folksinger with a comedic persona in the 1960s
This one was recorded live in 1974
Tony Schwartz - Introduction: South Dakota Farmer
He was an agoraphobic sound archivist who spent much of his life documenting the sounds of his neighbourhood in New York City, though he also collected recordings from around the world by corresponding with international musicians
Off the 1958 album The World in My Mail Box, which is a collection of those recordings
The Phipps Family - Lonesome Valley
American country music group which consisted of Arthur Leroy Phipps, Kathleen Norris Helton, and their various children
Began performing in the 40s and were also part of the 60s folk revival
An old American traditional gospel folk song, dating back to its first known recording in 1927 by old-time musician David Miller
Charlie Brown - Mountain Railway
Real name was Charles Artman
Called “Utah’s first hippie”
Never wore shoes, which got him in trouble with the law on multiple occasions
Lived in a teepee, drove an old yellow bus
Hosted the Teton Tea Party, an all-night event for mountaineers and folk musicians
Which is where this recording comes from
Song is a hymn by Baptist preacher ME Abbey, put to music by Charles David Tillman in 1890
David Francey - Green Fields
Scottish-Canadian folksinger who was a railyard worker for many years before pursuing a career in music at the age of 45
Off his 2001 album Far End of Summer
Fred Cockerham - Fortune
Fiddle and banjo player from North Carolina
This is an Appalachian tune
Sheesham and Lotus - Ora Lee / Old Folks Played While the Young Folks Danced
