Barking Dog: June 22, 2023
Mance Lipscomb - Shorty George
Texan blues artist born Beau De Glen Lipscomb
Took the nickname Mance at a young age, which was short for emancipation
Worked as a tenant farmer in Texas most of his life, but was discovered in 1960 during the resurgence of country blues
This led to him recording an album in 1961, called Trouble in Mind, and appearing at the first Monterey Folk Festival in 1963
He recorded this one either in the summer of 1960 in Navasota, Texas, or in April, 1966 in Berkeley, California
Kokomo Arnold - Milk Cow Blues
American blues musician known for his intense style of slide guitar
Began playing in the 1920s and left the music industry in 1938 to work in a factory
When located by researchers in the early 1960s, he had no interest in returning to perform for white audiences who were showing interest in the music of Arnold and his contemporaries
This song was written and recorded by Arnold in 1934
It made him a star, and has since been adapted by many artists across different genres
Jo Ann Kelly - New Milk Cow Blues
She was an English blues musician who was well-known internationally as a skilled country blues guitarist
This is from the posthumous compilation album Blues & Gospel: Rare and Unreleased Recordings from 2004
It’s adapted from Arnold’s “Milk Cow Blues”
Cara Luft - Bye Bye Love
From Winnipeg
From her 2012 album Darlingford
Pharis & Jason Romero - Forsaken Love
From Horsefly, BC
Off their 2011 album A Passing Glimpse
Old Man Luedecke - The Rear Guard
From Chester, NS
This is from his 2010 album My Hands Are On Fire and Other Love Songs
Beck - Hollow Log
Contemporary American musician who got his start as a teenager performing folk music on city buses in Los Angeles
This is from the 1994 album One Foot in the Grave
Larry Penn - The Spike
Penn was Wisconsin’s Labour Poet Laureate, a songwriter, toymaker, activist, and union man
From his 1987 album Still Feels Like Rollin': Songs About Trucks and Trains
Willie Dunn - Wounded Lake
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
Off his 1984 album The Vanity of Human Wishes
Jason Isbell - The Devil Is My Running Mate
Grammy-award-winning musician from Alabama, known as both a solo musician and as a former member of the Drive-By Truckers
This is off his 2007 album Sirens of the Ditch
Joan Baez - Copper Kettle
She’s one of the best known musicians to come out of the 1960s folk revival
She’s performed for over 60 years and has released over 30 albums
This is off the 1962 live album In Concert, recorded during her US tour from that year
The song was written by Albert Frank Beddoe around 1946 and popularised by Baez
Bob Dylan - Copper Kettle
He initially included the song on his 1970 album Self Portrait, though this is a version of that recording without overdubs, which was released on the 2013 compilation album Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait
Victor Jara - El Pimiento
He was a Chilean musician, poet, teacher, theatre director, and activist who was tortured and killed in 1973 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet
His work is widely remembered and celebrated throughout the world for its focus on peace, love, and social justice
This is from the 1974 album Manifiesto, which was compiled after his death
The song is about a pepper plant
Mrs. William Towns - A Fair Maid Walked in Her Father’s Garden
From an album of Ontario folk songs collected by Edith Fowke and released in 1958
One of many, many songs about a lover who returns in disguise to test his sweetheart’s love then reveals his identity by showing her a ring they had broken together
The song family also includes songs like “John Riley”, “The Dark-Eyed Sailor,” and “The Plains of Waterloo”
This version has appeared in many parts of the United States and Canada under titles like "The Pretty Fair Maid" and "The Broken Token"
Other versions are similar to the Ontario variant, though most North American versions are about a sailor or a soldier instead of a gentleman
She learned it from her father, Michael Cleary, who was the first traditional folk singer Fowke recorded
Bonnie Dobson - Peggy Gordon
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
A Canadian folk song first collected mainly in Nova Scotia in the 1950s and 60s
It shares a similar melody with “A Fair Maid Walked in Her Father’s Garden”
Othar Turner & The Rising Star Fife and Drum Band - Roll and Tumble
Turner was one of the last well-known fife players in the American fife and drum blues tradition
Born in Mississippi in 1907 and lived his life in the Mississippi hill country as a farmer
Scholars from nearby colleges recorded him and his friends in the 60s and 70s, and his band played at many local farm parties
Performed as the “Mississippi Fife and Drum Corps” with his bandmates Jessie Mae Hemphill and Abe Young on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood in 1982, and the group began to receive wider attention in the 1990s
They recorded an album called Everybody Hollerin' Goat in 1998, which is where this song is from
This song doesn’t display the fife and drum tradition but it’s a great version of “Roll and Tumble Blues,” a song by Hambone Willie Newbern which is now considered a Delta blues classic, from 1929
Rosalie (Rosa Lee) Hill - Roll and Tumble
She 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, Rosalie’s niece, who also specialised in the Mississippi hill country blues
Sid taught her to play guitar when she was six, and by the time she was ten, she was playing local dances with him
This was recorded in Senatobia, Mississippi in August of 1967 for the musicologist George Mitchell
Kacy & Clayton - Over the River Charlie
From Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan
Originally a Scottish song, though also popular in Ireland and the US, especially Appalachian region
From at least the early 1700s
Related to “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss”
Lisa Simpson - Union Strike Folk Song
She performed this song in 1993 during a strike at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, where her father was the union leader
They earned their demands, which included an updated dental plan that allowed Lisa to get new braces
[Yeardley Smith performed this song for the 1993 Simpsons episode “Last Exit to Springfield”]
[The music was written by Jeff Martin, with lyrics by Martin, Jay Kogen, and Wallace Wolodarsky]
Fiona Fraser-Gross - Union Maid
From a 2012 compilation of Woody Guthrie songs, released for his 100th birthday to benefit the Woody Guthrie Foundation
Fraser-Gross was only about 9 or 10 when this was recorded
Guthrie wrote it in response to a request he received for a union song from a female perspective, and it’s been adapted to suit more modern perspectives several times
The melody it uses is from the 1907 popular song “Red Wing”
Si Kahn, Jane Sapp, Pete Seeger - Soup Song
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
From the 1987 album Carry It On: Songs of America’s Working People
The lyrics to this song were written by Maurice Sugar, an American labour lawyer and songwriter, around 1930, and it’s to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”
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
Etta Baker, Cora Phillips - Railroad Bill
Baker a blues guitarist and singer from North Carolina
Began playing the guitar at age 3
Phillips was her sister, and they recorded an album called Carolina Breakdown in 2006, which is where this one is from
The song is about Morris Slater, a former circus hand and turpentine worker who lived a life of danger and became Railroad Bill, an African American outlaw remembered through folklore and folk song
David Holt, Doc Watson - Railroad Bill
He was a Grammy award-winning musician from North Carolina known for his fingerstyle and flatpicking skill
Had a 60 year career, and often played with other skilled musicians like Holt, Jean Ritchie, and Clarence Ashley
Holt is a Grammy-award-winning musician from Texas who performed with Watson between 1998 and 2012
The song is from their 2002 album Legacy
Peggy Seeger - The Personals
She’s a member of the Seeger family—Mike and Pete Seeger were her brothers, her father was Charles Seeger, a folklorist and musicologist, and her mother was Ruth Crawford Seeger, a composer and the first woman to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship
She’s been living in the UK for over 60 years
This is from her 2012 album Live
Chris Coole - Thinking About Home
He’s a musician from Toronto who’s currently a member of the Lonesome Ace Stringband, though he’s played with the Foggy Hogtown Boys, Sylvia Tyson, and David Francey
This is from his 2017 album The Tumbling River
Bob Carlin - Shady Grove
He’s an old-time singer and banjo player from NYC
He’s toured Europe and North America playing on historical banjos, and has also learned more about African banjo traditions by collaborating with Malian musician Cheick Hamala Diabate
This is a traditional Appalachian folk song
There are many variations of this song, with at least 300 stanzas recorded by the early 21st century
David Francey - Torn Screen Door
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked manual labour jobs for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
This is the title song from his first album, from 1999
Marie Hare - Maid of the East
Ballad singer from Strathadam, NB, known for her performances at the Miramichi Folksong Festival
This is a relatively rare ballad, which Hare learned from her friend, who learned it from her father who was a woodsman and likely learned it in a lumber camp in the 1870s
Sarah Wood - Hard for to Love
She’s an old-time banjo player and traditional ballad singer from Kentucky
This song is off her 2017 album 25 Tunes for Old Time Banjo and Singing, Vol. 1
She seems to have gotten this song from Hayes Shepherd, also known as the Appalachia Vagabond, who recorded it in 1930 for Vocalion records
Ferron - The Wind’s All a Whisper
She’s a Canadian musician and poet from BC
This one’s off her 1992 live album Not a Still Life, recorded at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco
Joni Mitchell - Furry Sings the Blues
This was recorded live at the Bread & Roses Festival in 1978
Mitchell originally released it on her 1976 album Hejira
Furry Lewis - Farewell I’m Growing Old
American country blues artist from Memphis, Tennessee who began his recording career in 1927
Recorded by the musicologist George Mitchell in Memphis in the summer of 1967
Willard Artis “Blind Pete” Burrell - I Shall Not Be Moved
This is from an album of rural Black religious music
Burrell was a Louisiana gospel musician
“I Shall Not Be Moved” is a spiritual that became popular as a protest song and a union song during the Civil Rights Movement
Clarence Ashley - The Coo Coo Bird
Kaki King - Sad American
Union Jubilee Quartet, Bozie Sturdivant - Please Don’t Drive Me Away
