Barking Dog: June 1, 2023
Marilyn Monroe - One Silver Dollar
She was born 97 years ago today
This is from the 1954 movie River of No Return
It was written by Ken Darby and Lionel Newman
Kilby Snow - The Road That’s Walked by Fools
American autoharp virtuoso from Virginia
Awarded the title of Autoharp Champion of North Carolina at the age of 5
He learned this song from a friend in Maryland named Bus Keys about 6 months before he recorded it
It was originally recorded by Jim Eanes in 1959
Pharis & Jason Romero - Going Across the Sea
From Horsefly, BC
Off their album Tell 'Em You Were Gold from 2022, which was recorded live over six days in a 60-year-old barn beside the Little Horsefly River
It’s a banjo-centric album, created to highlight the sound of the banjos that Jason makes
The banjo they use on that one is called Mother, and they built it in 2010
It was the 250th banjo they built, and was the only banjo to survive a fire in their studio in 2016
Seems to be an old-time Appalachian song
Muddy Waters - You Got to Take Sick and Die Some of These Days
Well-known American blues musician who grew up on a plantation in Mississippi
This recording is one made by the folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax at Waters’ home between 1941 and 1942, when he travelled to the plantation to record the various musicians who lived there
It seems he wrote this song
Nora Brown, Sarah Kate Morgan - Down in the Willow Garden
Brown is a 17 year-old 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
Morgan is a Tennessee musician who began learning mountain dulcimer when she was 7 on a dulcimer her grandfather had built
This is a new single recorded in Bristol, Tennessee
It’s a traditional murder ballad that originated in Ireland from a number of sources in the early 19th century but became popular in the Appalachian region of the US in the early 20th century
It’s played to the tune of the song “Rosin the Beau”
David Francey - Saints and Sinners
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who started to pursue music as a career at the age of 45 after working as a carpenter and in railyards for 20 years
From his 1999 album Torn Screen Door
Harrison Kennedy - Judgment Day
Harrison Kennedy a Hamilton, Ontario artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
From his 2014 album This is From Here
Hedy West - Little Sadie
She was a folk singer from Georgia who was heavily influenced by her upbringing in a creative, politically active family
She’s known particularly for writing the song “500 Miles”
20th century American folk ballad, the earliest known version of which is from 1922
Her version of the song is off her 1967 album Ballads
Bob Dylan - Little Sadie
Dylan includes a version of this song on his 1970 album Self Portrait
This is that version but without overdubs, released on a 2013 compilation album of recordings made between 1969 and 1971
Geraldine Sullivan - Johnson’s Hotel
From an album of Ontario folk songs, gathered by the folklorist Edith Fowke
This is a song about the Peterborough county jail, which stood on the banks of the Otonabee River across from the Quaker Oats factory
Dalton Johnston was governor from around 1920-1950
The song originated in the 1930s, likely from a prisoner at the jail
MacLeod and Holdstock - The White Cockade
This is from the 1980 album Songs of the Sea, recorded live at the National Maritime Museum Festival of the Sea at the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco in 1979
They’re Allan MacLeod and Dick Holdstock, a duo of British folksingers living in the United States
This is a Scottish ballad also found in Ireland, England, Canada, and the US
A cockade was a ribbon sewn in the shape of a rosette that was often used as decoration on hats, sometimes to signify where one’s loyalties lay
Bessie Jones - Way Go, Lily
Bessie Jones known for spreading folk songs, stories, and games to a wider audience in the 20th century, and especially for helping to preserve Black American song and dance traditions
She travelled to New York City to record her music and her biography with the ethnomusicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax, who said of her: "She was on fire to teach America. In my heart, I call her the Mother Courage of American Black traditions.”
She also sang at Carnegie Hall, Newport Folk Festival, the Smithsonian Institution’s folklife festivals, and Central Park, with the Georgia Sea Island Singers, a folk music ensemble that’s been around since the early 1900s
This is a children’s play dance song, recorded in October of 1961
Old Man Luedecke - Inchworm
Contemporary artist from Chester, NS
From his 2010 album My Hands Are on Fire and Other Love Songs
EC & Orna Ball - Tribulations
Estil C Ball and his wife Orna, with whom he often performed
They owned and ran a general store and service station in Virginia
Estil met Alan Lomax in the early 1940s at a fiddler’s convention, who recorded him and Orna several times in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and opened the door for them to record their own albums for County and Rounder Records in the 60s and 70s
Estil is known for writing this song, which is based on the last book in the bible, Revelations
Kacy & Clayton - Dyin’ Bed Maker
Duo from Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan
Kacy wrote this murder ballad
Joseph Spence, The Pinder Family - Just a Little Talk with Jesus
Joseph Spence was a Bahamian musician known for vocalising and humming while playing guitar, and he influenced artists like Taj Mahal, The Grateful Dead, and John Renbourn, who recorded versions of his gospel arrangements
The Pinders were his sister’s family
This is off a compilation album from 1995 called Kneelin’ Down Inside the Gate: The Great Rhyming Singers of the Bahamas
Recorded in Nassau, Bahamas in June of 1965
The hymn was composed by Reverend Cleavant Derricks
Babe Stovall - The Ship Is at the Landing
Babe an American Delta blues singer and guitarist from Mississippi
He likely recorded this one in 1968 in New Orleans
There isn’t really any information available about this song, and it only seems to have been recorded by one other group, the Silver Leaf Quartette of Norfolk, in 1928
Uncle Sinner - This World Can’t Stand Long
From Winnipeg
Written by Jim Anglin and first recorded in 1947 by King’s Sacred Quartette
This is off his 2015 album Let the Devil In
Doug and Jack Wallin - My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains
The Wallins were musicians from Madison County, NC, who played the traditional songs of their renowned ballad-singing family
From their 1995 album Family Songs and Stories from the North Carolina Mountains
Jack sings and plays banjo on this one, and Doug plays the fiddle
This song was first recorded by the Carolina Tar Heels in 1929
It’s attributed to the musician Clarence Ashley, who was a member of the group
Sam Campsall - The Shantyboy’s Alphabet
Campsall from Toronto
This was probably the most widely known lumberjack song after “The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks”
Comes from the older “Sailors’ Alphabet”
In fact, many professions have alphabet songs specific to their work, including whalemen and, more recently, programmers
June Lazare - Lather and Shave
She was a musician and ethnomusicologist from California who specialised in 19th century parlour music, and she taught and performed in the clothing of the period
This is from her 1981 album of New York City folksongs from the mid 19th century
This is a traditional song that appeared in songbooks throughout the US in the 1850s and 60s
Many different tunes were suggested to be used with the lyrics
Lazare uses the tune “Jut Gannon”
Sons of the Pioneers - Way Out There
One of the earliest western bands in the US
Formed in 1933 by Roy Rogers (then known as Leonard Slye), Canadian-born Bob Nolan, and Tim Spencer
They are still together as a band but there have been countless changes in membership since the band’s beginning
They were originally called the Pioneers Trio, but a radio announcer remarked that they were too young to be pioneers, but they could be sons of pioneers
This song was written by Bob Nolan
Willie Dunn, Ron Bankley - Old Crow
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
Joined by Ron Bankley, who was an Ontario guitarist, poet, and songwriter
This is his own talking blues song, a demo recorded in July of 2002
Archie Edwards - Lovin’ Spoonful
Was a Virginian Piedmont blues artist
In the 50s he owned a barbershop which other well-known blues musicians frequented, including Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James
This is Charley Jordan song, first recorded in 1930
Edwards recorded his version in Washington, DC in October of 1980
Brandi Carlile - I Remember Everything
She’s a Grammy-award-winning musician from Washington who’s been performing since the early 2000s
This song is by John Prine, and it’s actually the last song he ever recorded
Carlile covered it for the 2021 compilation album Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine Vol. 2
Bonnie Dobson - Someday Soon
She’s a Canadian folksinger who joined the folk revival scene in Toronto in the 1960s
Later moved to the US and performed at coffeehouses there before moving back to Canada in the late 60s
This song was written by Ian Tyson and first recorded in 1964
Dobson recorded it in 1969
Stan Rogers - The Jeannie C
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 his childhood
This song is from his 1978 album Turnaround
Gary Green - Oven Fork Mining Disaster
A Tennessee folksinger
It’s about 2 mine explosions that occurred 2 days apart at Scotia Mine in Oven Fork, Kentucky, in March of 1976 that killed 26 miners
The Almanac Singers - Which Side Are You On?
Founded by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger in 1940
This is off their 1955 album Talking Union and Other Union Songs
The song was written in 1931 by union activist Florence Reece, whose husband was a union organiser in Harlan County, Kentucky, a region that’s historically been the site of violent labour struggles
Big Bill Broonzy - Down by the Riverside
He was an American blues singer and guitarist
Was one of the leading figures of the emerging folk revival of the 1950s
American spiritual that dates to before the American Civil War
Has often been used as an anti-war song
Tom Brandon - The Hobo’s Grave
From an album of folk songs of Ontario collected by Edith Fowke and released in 1958
Brandon was from Peterborough, and learned this song from his brother who learned it while working in northern Ontario in the 1930s
Most hobo songs found in Ontario came from the States, but the origins of this particular one are uncertain, and this version seems to have been transformed to fit its setting
Johnny Richardson - The Big Rock Candy Mountain
He was a folksinger and mechanic from South Carolina who recorded four albums of children’s music for Folkways Records between the 50s and the 80s and performed around the world
He died in 2014 at the age of 105
This is from his 1971 album Lady Bug, Lady Bug and More Children’s Songs
It’s a children’s song based on Haywire Mac McClintock’s song of the same name about a hobo’s paradise
Jean Ritchie - Bury Me Beneath the Willow
Learned traditional folksongs in the oral tradition from friends and family during her youth in Kentucky, and in adulthood moved to New York to work as a social worker, where she met folk musicians like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Alan Lomax
In 1952, she received a Fulbright scholarship to study the connections between American and British ballads, and travelled to the UK where she recorded many well-known traditional singers
She continued to perform for the rest of her life, and passed away at her home in Kentucky in 2015, at the age of 92
As with many folk songs, this one has unclear origins, but was first recorded by Henry Whitter in 1923
AL Lloyd - 1000 Miles Away
An English folk singer important to the English folk revival of the 1950s and 60s
This is from his 1960 album Outback Ballads, a collection of Australian ballads
Canray Fontenot - La Table Ronde
He was considered one of the greatest Creole fiddle players
He first learned to play on a fiddle he made out of a cigar box
Fontenot was a member of several string bands throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, though he worked primarily as a rice farmer during his life
In the 1960s, he performed outside of Louisiana for the first time, at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island
It was there that he recorded an album for the producer Dick Spottswood, and from there he began appearing at festivals around the world
This is from the 1992 compilation album Louisiana Hot Sauce, Creole Style, recorded between 1971 and 1991
This is a drinking song
Marie Hare - Green Grows the Laurel
Ballad singer from Strathadam, NB, known for her performances at the Miramichi Folksong Festival
The song is likely English or Irish in origin, though Hare’s version combines later Scottish and American variants
Josh White - Well Well Well
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
This song is more commonly known as “In My Time of Dying” and it’s a song attributed to Blind Willie Johnson, though parts of it come from older gospel songs
The version we heard is from 1944
Lightnin’ Hopkins - Mean Old Frisco Blues
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
He continued to tour and record throughout the 60s and 70s, and was Houston, Texas’s poet in residence for 35 years
This was recorded live at the Swarthmore College Folk Festival in Pennsylvania in 1965
The song is by Mississippi delta blues musician Arthur Crudup
Sheesham and Lotus - Georgia Horseshoe
From Wolfe Island, ON
