Barking Dog: May 26, 2022
Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir - The Brandy Tree
Bok is a folklorist and musician from Maine who’s released almost 40 albums since the mid-1960s
Muir is a singer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist from Michigan
Bok and Muir were part of a trio with Maryland folksinger Ed Trickett for over 30 years
This is off Bok’s 1972 album Seal Djiril's Hymn
In the liner notes of the album, he says of this song, “I learned this from a small otter on Sherman's Point, Knox County, Maine, on a cold morning in 1966. The refrain is my own.”
Ian & Sylvia - Handsome Molly
Ian & Sylvia performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975
That recording is from their 1962 self-titled album
Jake Xerxes Fussell - Breast of Glass
Durham, NC artist who grew up travelling across the southeast US with his folklorist father
Off his album Good and Green Again, released earlier in the year
A love song from the “Handsome Molly” song family
It’s an Appalachian folk song, though it’s possible it has its roots in older English ballads
Joe Glazer - Shine On Me
He was a folk musician and labour activist from New York who recorded over 30 albums during his career
Off his 1975 album Textile Voices: Songs and Stories of the Mills
As he notes, this song was adapted from the traditional American spiritual of the same name
Fred Eaglesmith - Do You Love Me Now
He’s an Ontario musician who hopped a freight train going west as a teenager and began writing and performing his music
This is from his first album, from 1980, called Fred J. Eaglesmith
Dock Boggs - Sugar Baby
Influential old-time musician from Norton, Virginia who recorded in 1927 and 1929 but worked as a coal miner much of his life
Song known variably as Sugar Baby, Red Rocking Chair, and Red Apple Juice, amongst other names
Recorded March 9, 1927, meaning it is likely the first recording of the song and is one of the earliest country music recordings
This song wasn’t written by Boggs, as it was recorded on paper in 1909 by EC Perrow and undoubtedly existed long before then, but this recording was included on Harry Smith’s very influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music which contributed greatly to the resurgence of folk music in North America and which also resulted in the revival of Boggs’s music career in the later part of his life
Aggeok Pitseolak - Illukitaaruti (Juggling Song)
Off a 1976 album of Inuit songs and games
This is a song that accompanies a juggling game
Star Thistle - Bigger Than Me
A project from the mind of Winnipeg artist Uncle Sinner
This is from Star Thistle’s debut album, The Best of Star Thistle, released last year
Sis Cunningham - Great Dust Storm
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
That one was written by dust bowl balladeer Woody Guthrie
Jesse Fuller - Just Like a Ship on the Deep Blue Sea
Was an American one-man band born in Georgia in 1896
Though he had already learned two styles of guitar by the age of 10, he only decided to try making a living from music in the early 1950s
Started by working locally in clubs and bars in San Francisco and other nearby cities, but became better known by performing on TV
In 1958, when he was 62, Fuller recorded his first album
He could play multiple instruments simultaneously, using a harmonica holder to hold a harmonica, a kazoo, or a microphone, playing guitar, and tap-dancing or soft-shoeing as he played
This seems to be his own song
Old Man Luedecke - This May Hurt a Bit
From Chester, NS
This is from his 2015 album Tender is the Night
Kacy & Clayton - Brunswick Stew
From Wood Mountain, SK
It’s from their 2016 album Strange Country
Paul Clayton - The Seaman’s Grave
Clayton was an American folksinger and a folklorist who specialised in traditional music
From a 1956 album of Massachusetts ballads of land and sea
This song is from the log of the Lucy Ann of Wilmington, Delaware, for the years of 1837-1839
It would be sung on the occasion of a sailor’s death, when he was given a “traceless grave” wherever the ship was at the time
The liner notes of this album provide a good description of a sea burial, given in the personal journal of Robert Ferguson on October 18, 1880: “This morning we took the man who fell from aloft and sewed him up in an old piece of canvas, with iron at his feet to sink him. We laid the body on the gangplank, shoved it out, hauled back the main yard and when the captain said, "All ready, " Mr. Gifford tilted the board and let him slide over the side to a sailor's grave, without a word or a prayer or a funeral service ... "
This song was either written by Edwin Hubbell Chapin and published in 1839, and it’s possibly about a Massachusetts sailor named Henry M Bonney
We’ll hear a related song after this
Slim Critchlow - The Cowboy’s Lament
He was a park ranger and musician from Utah who started out playing with an old-time group on twice-weekly broadcasts in 1930
In 1956, he began appearing at folk festivals in California, wearing cowboy regalia and cowboy songs on his 8-string guitar
This is one of the oldest, and perhaps one of the best known old-time cowboy songs
It was adapted from the sea song The Sailor’s Grave, a version of which we heard before that, performed by
Charlie Sangster - I’m Gonna Tell God How You Treat Me
Born into a musical family in Brownsville, Tennessee in 1917
Learned to play mandolin and guitar at the age of 12
This song is more commonly known as I’m Gonna Cross the River of Jordan, and it’s the same song as the Welcome Table and Jacob’s Ladder, though different versions have varying lyrics that tend to emphasise different aspects of the song
It’s a traditional American gospel song likely written by an enslaved person
The song later became an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s
The Osmond Davis Band - Tear My Stillhouse Down
Manitoba
This song is by well-known contemporary roots musician Gillian Welch
She released it in 1996
Godfrey & Tod - Woman at the Well
Contemporary old-time duo from Calgary
Nathan M Godfrey and Mike Tod
This is a traditional American gospel song
Preston Fulp - Renfro Valley
He was a North Carolina artist who worked in sawmills for much of his life, playing music on weekends and at special events in the community
This song has become a country classic through versions recorded by Marty Robbins and Tex Ritter, though it was first recorded in the 1920s
It’s more commonly known as Lamp Lighting Time in the Valley
Karen Dalton, Richard Tucker - When First Unto This Country
American singer, guitarist, and banjo player known for her association with the 60s Greenwich Village folk music scene—including with artists Fred Neil and Bob Dylan
She was largely unrecognized for her contributions to the folk genre during her life, but has become an important influence for artists like Nick Cave, Devendra Banhart, and Joanna Newsom
From a newly released album of live recordings from 1963, called Shuckin’ Sugar, the reel-to-reels of which were rediscovered in 2018
She’s joined by Richard Tucker on this one, who was her husband with whom she often performed
Every version of this song seems to come from a family called the Gants, whom the Lomaxes, a family of folklorists who collected folk music from across the United States, recorded in 1934
It was likely relatively new when they made the recording, though some have noted that it has a frontierish feel
Ferron - Slender Wet Branches
She’s a Canadian musician and poet from BC
This is off her 2013 album Thunder and Lighten-ing
Tsembel - Colours Side by Side
From a 1991 album of Mongolian traditional music
At the time of recording, Tsembel was a 46-year-old librarian in the town of Bulgan
This is a dance tune played on the tobshuur
Ernest Sellick - Drimindown
From the folklorist Helen Creighton’s 1962 album of music from the Maritime provinces
Sellick, from Charlottetown, PEI learned this song from his father, who used to sing it as a bedtime song
It’s described as a humorous lament, and is quite possibly Irish in origin
Dyad - Henry Lee
From Victoria, BC
Off their 2006 album No Pedlars Or Preachers
Dick Justice’s recording of this song was included on Harry Smith’s very influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music as the opening track
This ballad has its origin in Scotland, where it’s known as Young Hunting
Shirley Collins - Scarborough Fair
She’s an English folk singer, and likely one of the best-known names from the English folk revival of the 1960s and 70s
That one is from her 1959 album False True Lovers
The song is a fragment of an incredibly old ballad called the Elfin Knight
In the original song a girl hears the distant blast of an elfin knight's horn and wishes he were in her bedroom
He immediately appears, but won’t consent to be her lover until she answers a series of riddles
The Golden Gate Quartet - Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer
They are a vocal quartet formed in Virginia by four high school students in 1934
They are still active today, but have obviously undergone multiple changes in membership
World War II song from 1943 with lyrics by Harold Adamson and music by Jimmy McHugh
Their version is from that same year
Pete Seeger - Pepsi-Cola
Seeger was a folk singer and an activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and peace through his music
Off his 1959 album Folk Songs for Young People
Jerry Houck - Sweet Sunny South
This is off the recent Smithsonian Folkways album The Village Out West: The Lost Tapes of Alan Oakes, which is a collection of field recordings from the 1960s California folk scene
Houck is from San Diego, and he worked from 1959 to 1962 at the Sign of the Sun Folk Music Center
He was deeply influenced by the musicians who performed there, including Mississippi John Hurt, Hedy West, Bessie Jones, Skip James, New Lost City Ramblers, and Rev. Gary Davis
Through the San Diego State College Folk Music Club, Sam Hinton and Stu Jamieson inspired his banjo playing and singing
This song dates back to the 19th century, though the origins aren’t exactly clear
Walter Ferguson - 72 Weeds
He is a Costa Rican calypso singer born in 1919 who has spent almost his whole life in Cahuita, a small fishing village
He started recording his music on tapes in the 1970s after one of his sons gave him a tape recorder, and he sold his music to travellers from around the world
Ferguson did this until the 1990s, when he retired from music
In 2018, to recover some of his lost music—since each tape was unique and he never wrote down his lyrics—one of his sons put out a call for help to find more of his tapes in preparation for his 100th birthday, which resulted in a worldwide effort and several volumes of newly discovered music
Ferguson is now 103 years old
Miles & Bob Pratcher - All Night Long
This is a field recording made of the Pratcher brothers on their front porch by Alan Lomax in Como, Mississippi in September of 1959
They were neighbours of the blues musician Mississippi Fred McDowell, but they came from an earlier musical generation, and retained the country dance music that would’ve been heard at local picnics and parties in their region at the turn of the century
Lomax wrote that, “Their music represents an early, important, but little known stage in the development of the blues”
Wade Hemsworth - Ye Girls of Old Ontario
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 is a lumberjack song similar in content to many other English and French shanty songs
Rosalie Sorrels - I Left My Baby
She started out as a folksinger and collector of folk songs, and left her husband in the 1960s to travel across America with her five children, establishing herself as a performer and making connections with other folk musicians, writers, and artists
She died in June 2017 but is remembered for her storytelling abilities
This song is from her 1961 album of Folk Songs of Idaho and Utah
It’s a lullaby that’s likely Gaelic in origin, as there are several lullabies from the Orneys and Hebrides that tell of a child who is carried away by fairies, and whose mother searches for him in vain
The song was previously unreported in the United States, though a version with Gaelic words, the title of which translates to The Sweet Little One, has an almost identical story and tune
Sorrels learned it from Mary Lou Rhees of Boise, Idaho.
Nora Brown - The Very Day I’m Gone
She’s a young banjoist and singer who carries on the old-time tradition
She’s found mentors in many folk masters, including the master banjo player Lee Sexton of Kentucky, the female bluegrass pioneer Alice Gerrard, and founder of the New Lost City Ramblers John Cohen
This is from her album Sidetrack My Engine, which came out last year
She learned the song from the duo Anna & Elizabeth’s version, though it’s by the ballad singer Addie Graham of Eastern Kentucky
Kaia Kater - West Virginia Boys
From Toronto
This is an American song that’s part of a long tradition of songs which advise young girls against associating with boys from neighbouring areas
Willie Dunn - The Dreamer
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This song is off his 1980 album The Pacific
Elizabeth Cotten - When I Get Home
Known primarily for her guitar picking style, though she also learned banjo at an early age
Self-taught and was left-handed but learned to play on a right-handed banjo
An old revival hymn played and sung in a sombre manner in small country churches in the early 20th century
Edmund Henneberry - Captain Conrod
This is from an album of Nova Scotia folk songs, and this one is particular to Nova Scotia, specifically Halifax
Henneberry was from Devil’s Island, NS
Bruce Cockburn - Blind Willie
Canadian singer-songwriter and skilled guitarist who’s been playing professionally for over 40 years
Off his 2019 album Crowing Ignites
