Barking Dog: June 2, 2022
Mitchell Makoons - What Could Be
Mitchell Makoons of Brandon, Manitoba
He started playing guitar when he was 7 seven to accompany his grandfather and brother as they played Metis fiddle tunes, and he still incorporates traditional Ojibway music and culture into his music
He’s currently planning a Northern Manitoba tour for August, and also working on a separate tour around Manitoba this summer
This one came out on the 27th, and it can now be found on all major streaming services
After this we’ll hear a couple other recent releases
Pharis & Jason Romero - Cannot Change It All
From Horsefly, BC
Brand new one off their forthcoming album Tell 'Em You Were Gold, which will be out on Smithsonian Folkways on June 17
Star Thistle - Bye Bye Baby
A project from the mind of Winnipeg artist Uncle Sinner
This is a new cover Star Thistle released over the weekend
It’s a song by Hayes Carll, a Texan songwriter and musician
Joseph Spence - Great God What Do I See and Hear?
Joseph Spence was a Bahamian musician known for vocalizing 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
This track was included on the 2021 Smithsonian Folkways album Encore: Unheard Recordings of Bahamian Guitar and Singing
It’s a hymn sung in Bahamian churches during Advent in the weeks before Christmas
Richard Buckner - Fater
He’s an American songwriter and musician who’s been playing professionally since the 1990s
That’s an outtake of a song called “Fater”, recorded in 1995 in Arizona
He describes it as “an unplanned duet with an uninvited guest pounding outside to get in like a locked-out ex who just wants to know why you haven't called them back”
Scott Dunbar - Memphis Mail
Recorded near Old River Lake, Mississippi, June 24, 1954
Jamie Snider - UIC
From a 1989 issue of Fast Folk Musical Magazine that highlights Canadian folk musicians
Fast Folk Musical Magazine was a cooperative that was dedicated to reinvigorating the New York folk scene, and released over 100 albums between 1982 and 1997
Snider is a St. Catharines, Ontario musician who’s been playing since the mid-1970s
Early in his career, he was a member of Newfoundland bands Figgy Duff and the Wonderful Grand Band, and he went on to work with artists like Stan Rogers and Liam Clancy, on top of releasing his own solo work
The title of this song stands for Unemployment Insurance Compensation, and the song became very popular especially in the maritime provinces, where it’s historically been harder to find work
Old Man Luedecke - Delia and Wilhelmina
From Chester, NS
This is from his 2018 album One Night Only! Live at the Chester Playhouse
Reverend Pearly Brown - Peace Will Prevail
He was a blues musician from Georgia who was known mainly as a street performer
He was blind from birth, but received an education at a school for blind people and completed eight grades in six years
He was later ordained a minister and began singing on the streets in 1939
That one is off his 1975 album It's A Mean Old World To Try To Live In, and he’s joined by his wife Christine, who provides vocals
Larry Penn, Darryl Holter - Love and the Shorter Work Week
Penn was Wisconsin’s Labour Poet Laureate, a songwriter, toymaker, activist, and union man
Holter is a musician and historian from Minneapolis
This is from their 1989 album Stickin’ with the Union: Songs from Wisconsin Labor History
This song is based on another song Holter heard at a rally for unemployed workers in 1970
It’s about the difficulties of young workers who would like to be able to spend time with their loved ones, but find it impossible because they’re working different shifts and alternate weekends
In the song, Holter suggests the solution of reducing the work week to 30 hours
Wilf Carter - What a Friend We Have in Mother
He was a very well-known country musician from Nova Scotia known as Wilf Carter in Canada and as Montana Slim in the US
That version is from 1939
Pete Seeger - What a Friend We Have in Congress
He was a folk singer and an activist who, though blacklisted during the McCarthy era, remained a prominent public figure who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and international disarmament through his music
This is his own song
It’s a parody of What a Friend We Have in Jesus, a popular traditional gospel song, also known with slightly different lyrics as What a Friend We Have in Mother, a version of which we heard before that, performed by
David Nzomo - You Must Tell Me
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
This song is about Nzomo’s frustrating experiences as he became acquainted with aspects of American culture—particularly the use of words like honey, sweetheart, darling, and baby to address people
Nzomo notes that the use of these words is “of such great significance as to stand out as a corner stone in the process of acculturation”
He also states that he lost many a possible girlfriend because he could not use those words as freely
The Folksmiths - Three White Gulls
They were eight Oberlin College students who travelled from Pennsylvania to Maine in the summer of 1957 to share their enthusiasm for folk songs, folk dances, folk games, and instrument making with camp and concert attendees
It seems to be an Italian song that travelled to the States and was sometimes used as a lullaby
The Folksmiths learned it from Tony Saletan of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is a well-known folksinger
Etta Baker - Knoxville Rag
Baker a blues guitarist and singer from North Carolina who began playing the guitar at age 3
That’s a traditional old-time country rag
Tony Schwartz - Nancy Grows Up
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
This is off his 1970 album Tony Schwartz Records the Sound of Children, which was edited from hundreds of interviews with children
On this track, we hear a girl named Nancy as she grows from a baby into a teenager
Group of men performing chimaycha with charangos and guitars - Chimaycha
Off a 2001 album of songs from the Ayacucho region of Peru, which experienced heavy conflict in the 1980s and early 90s
The chimaycha is a musical genre performed only by men, who sing the songs while playing charangos and guitars
This particular song emphasizes that “amorous aspect” of Carnival
It was recorded in 1996
Mike Seeger - John Hardy
Mike was a folklorist and musician and a member of the well-known musical Seeger family, who co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s
A traditional American folk song based on the life of railroad worker John Hardy who worked in McDowell County, West Virginia in the Spring of 1893
Likely got into a drunken argument during a craps game and killed a man
Was subsequently found guilty of murder and hanged on January 19, 1894
The Moving Star Hall Singers - We Shall Overcome
This is off an album recorded live in San Francisco in 1967
The Moving Star Hall Singers were all lifelong residents of Johns Island, South Carolina, their ages ranging from 25 to 65 years old
Though the island was poor and younger generations weren’t as involved with preserving cultural traditions, the group of islands that Johns Island is part of has been referred to as one of the heartlands of American music
This is a gospel song that became a protest song during the Civil Right Movement
It’s likely lyrically descended from the song “I’ll Overcome Some Day”, which was written by Charles Albert Tindley and published in 1900
Five Soul Stirrers of Houston - Precious Lord
A vocal group formed in 1926, which sang in the pre-war jubilee style
They recorded that one in 1939
Blind Boy Fuller - Precious Lord
He was a popular North Carolina Piedmont blues artist known for his masterful guitar playing and expressive singing
Recorded in 1940 with Sonny Terry on harmonica and Oh Red on washboard
Words were written by Reverend Thomas A Dorsey in 1932 after the loss of his wife and infant son during childbirth
Kaia Kater - Maggie May
Grenadian-Canadian artist based in Toronto
Traditional Liverpool folk song
Was also widely circulated by skiffle bands in the 1960s
Harry Belafonte - Lord Randall
He’s an influential American singer, activist, and actor who’s been performing since 1949
This is a ballad from the English-Scottish border that is also widespread in the US
Many similar ballads in a number of languages
Most traditional English versions of the song are called Henry, My Son, though the name Donald has also been used
That version is from 1954
Eevaloo - Before We Came to This Religion
From a 1955 album of Inuit songs from Hudson Bay and Alaska
Performed by someone only identified as Eevaloo, from Southampton Island
The words of this song translate to “All songs have been exhausted / He picks up some of all / And adds his own / And makes a new song”
Algia Mae Hinton - Snap Your Fingers
She was a Piedmont blues musician from North Carolina who learned to play the guitar from her mother, an expert in the Piedmont fingerpicking style who often played at local parties and gatherings
Hinton met the folklorist Glenn Hinson in 1978, who arranged for her to perform at the North Carolina Folklife Festival
She gave several concerts outside of North Carolina after that, even travelling to Europe to perform in 1998
This is off the 1999 album Honey Babe
Ferron - The Return
She’s a Canadian musician and poet from the same generation and on the same level as people like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Cockburn, though she’s less widely known even within Canada
This is off her 2013 album Thunder and Lighten-ing
Willie Gillard - Polk County Blues
Off an album of field recordings made in Florida of African American traditional music between 1977 and 1980
This one was recorded in 1980, and Gillard likely got it from Eddie Kelly's Washboard Band’s 1937 recording
Karen James - Young Riley
A folksinger who grew up in England, Spain, and France, and moved to Canada as a teenager
More commonly known as “John Riley”, this is a traditional English folk song
The Bethels - If I Were a Black Bird
Off a 1980 album of music from the island of Carriacou in the Grenadines
Recorded in the Bethels’ house in Windward on Saturday, March 20, 1971 at 11:30 am
Mrs. Bethel sings, Mr. Bethel plays guitar, and the youngest Bethel son plays the cuatro
The liner notes state that the ballads found in the Caribbean are the least-changed British and Irish songs in the region
This is an Irish ballad related to the American ballad The Wagoner’s Lad and the more modern ballads On Top of Old Smokey and I Ride an Old Paint
Wade Hemsworth - The Bad Girl’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
Hemsworth learned this song in the Canadian North Woods, and it is closely related to early versions found in the Maritime provinces and in Maine
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, though it is the story of a young girl “gone wrong”, rather than a ballad about a misguided boy, or “rake”
Memphis Jug Band - Taking Your Place
American pre-war style jug band active from the 20s to the late 50s
This was recorded in October of 1929 in Memphis, Tennessee
Snooks Eaglin, Lucius Bridges - Bottle Up and Go
Eaglin an American musician who played a wide range of styles and claimed to know about 2500 songs
Recorded in New Orleans in 1959 by Harry Oster
Joined by Lucius Bridges
That’s a Memphis Jug Band song, and we heard the Memphis Jug Band right before that, with
Louis Killen, Stan Hugill, The X-Seamen’s Institute - The Sailor’s Alphabet
They were a quartet founded in New York City’s South Street Seaport in 1968 who were dedicated to continuing the ancient tradition of singing songs of the sea
On Tuesday evenings in the summer they performed shanties, and were joined by hundreds of members of the public
From a 1979 album called Sea Songs: Louis Killen, Stan Hugill and the X Seamen's Institute sing of Cape Horn sailing at the Seattle Chantey Festival
This is a maritime worksong found in Britain and North America
Many other professions have alphabet songs specific to their work, and we’ll hear two other alphabet songs after this
Sam Campsall - The Shantyboy’s Alphabet
Campsall from Toronto
This was probably the most widely known lumberjack songs after The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks
Comes from the older “Sailors’ Alphabet”, which we heard before that, performed by
Steve Savitsky - The Programmer’s Alphabet
He’s a hacker, songwriter, and blogger from Washington who learned both hacking and blogging beginning in the 1960s
This is off his 2007 album Coffee, Computers, and Song
It’s one of the more recent alphabets written for a specific profession
Jean Carignan - Blacksmith’s Reel
Carignan born in Levis, Quebec
Made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 as “the greatest fiddler in North America”
