Barking Dog: July 27, 2023
Morley Loon - Caminconoch
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
This is from his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
The title translates to “Spirits”
Six Boys in Trouble - Money Honey
Off the 1959 album Street and Gangland Rhythms, Beats and Improvisations by Six Boys in Trouble
The boys were 11- and 12-year-old African American boys who lived in public housing in New York City, and they improvised their music on homemade instruments
Dave Van Ronk - Head Inspector
A member of the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City who was known as the “Mayor of MacDougal Street”, MacDougal Street being where practically every coffeehouse in New York was located in the 1960s
This is off his 1985 album Going Back to Brooklyn, which is his only album devoted entirely to his own compositions
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Don’t Get Trouble in Mind
Contemporary stringband based in Toronto
This is an American old-time tune of uncertain origin
From their 2014 album Old Time
No-No Boy, The New Celestial String Band - Nitro ‘66 Cannonball Blues
No-No Boy is a music project by Dr. Julian Saporiti that developed out of his PhD fieldwork and research, which largely focused on Asian American history and culture
This is a B-side to a single he released May
It uses the same melody as “Cannonball Blues” and takes inspiration from the American folk song, but it’s from the perspective of a Chinese American immigrant railroad worker who has been deported back to China after working on the American rail system
Ellen Froese - I Wish I Had a Foot-Long Cigarette
Contemporary artist who grew up on a dairy farm in Saskatchewan
This is from her 2017 self-titled album
Charles Stowe - Charlie Mason Pogie Boat
This is from the 1977 Folkways Records album Between the Sound and the Sea: Music of the North Carolina Outer Banks, which was compiled by the ethnomusicologist Karen G Helms after three years of fieldwork and research
Stowe lived on Hatteras Island, North Carolina, and he composed this song about an incident that occurred in 1948 off the coast of Ocracoke Island
Sarah Makem - As I Roved Out
This is from the 1960 album As I Roved Out: Field Trip—Ireland, which presents a series of recordings made by the folksinger Jean Ritchie and her husband George Pickow after Ritchie received a Fulbright scholarship in 1952 to travel to Great Britain and Ireland to trace the origins of songs she learned from her family in Kentucky
Makem was an Irish ballad singer from a big family of traditional musicians who learned many of her songs from her mother, picking them up as they did household chores together, and often remembered them after just one repetition
In fact, she committed over 500 songs to memory, and recorded many of them for collection and preservation purposes
This is an Irish song also known as “The Deluded Lover”
It’s a fragment of a longer ballad called “The Soldier and the Maid”
George Davis - Love of Polly and Jack Monroe
He started playing music when he was 27 while working as a miner
He would practice on his front porch every evening, and the miners would come and stand on the railroad tracks to listen to him
In 1947, he was invited to do his first radio show, and at one time had at least three radio shows in three different towns, driving 480 km a day to record them
This is a version of the ballad more commonly known as “Jackaroe”
It’s a traditional ballad that’s likely Scottish in origin
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - Narrative
From the 1990 compilation album Don’t Mourn—Organize!: Songs of Labour Songwriter Joe Hill
Flynn was an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World and a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union
This is from a lecture she gave at Northern Illinois University in November of 1962
Joe Glazer - The Rebel Girl
Glazer was a folk musician and labour activist from New York who recorded over 30 albums during his career
The song is by Joe Hill, a Swedish-American labour activist and union songwriter who was convicted of the murders of a former police officer and his son after a controversial trial and was executed in 1915
Hill adapted the melody from a popular tune
Although the words were progressive at the time, from a modern perspective they reflect the attitude that the role of women is secondary and supportive to that of men
Others have since updated the lyrics, but this version preserves them as Hill wrote and dedicated them to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Si Kahn - Where Have All the Good Times Gone
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
This is from his 1991 album I Have Seen Freedom
Uncle Sinner - Little Margaret
From Winnipeg
This is an English ballad from at least the 17th century, often titled “Lady Margaret and Sweet William”
The tune and most of the words of the American version come from Bascom Lamar Lunsford, a North Carolina lawyer who collected songs and accompanied himself on banjo
Beech Mountain Singers - Amazing Grace
Off a 1964 album of traditional music from Beech Mountain, NC
The liner notes state that “no hymn is more widely known and loved by the American folk community than ‘Amazing Grace’”
The tune was apparently composed by William Walker, and the text was written by John Newton
Primeaux and Mike - Amazing Grace (Navajo)
They’re Grammy-award-winning duo Verdell Primeaux and Johnny Mike, two Indigenous musicians based in Arizona
This is from their 1996 album Walk in Beauty
The music on the album is described as “healing songs in Sioux and Navajo in a newer style of soothing harmonised chants from the Native American Church”
Chumbawamba - Song on the Times
A British band active between 1982 and 2012 and best known for their 1997 hit “Tubthumping”
This is from their 2006 album Get On with It, recorded at shows they played throughout England during that year
It was originally included on their 1988 album English Rebel Songs 1381-1914
As they state, the song is from the 1840s and it was written after the repeal of the Corn Laws, which placed trade restrictions on imported cereal grains and other foods between 1815 and 1846
Josh White - One Meat Ball
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 one was recorded by Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, in the 1940s
It was one of White’s biggest hits, and one of the most popular songs in 1940s American folk music
One New Yorker critic wrote in 1945: “Listening to Josh White apply his expert talent to ‘One Meat Ball,’ I was moved to wish that the city would make it a crime for anyone else to attempt it. Come to think of it, it already is.”
The song was written by tin pan alley songwriters Lou Singer and Hy Zaret
Fiver - Haldimand County
Stage name of Toronto-based artist Simone Schmidt
This is from a 2017 album of fictional field recordings collected from the files of people who were incarcerated at the Rockwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Kingston, Ontario between 1856 and 1881
The album is called Audible Songs from Rockwood
Pedro Pietri - How Do Your Eggs Want You
He was a New York poet and a founding member of the Nuyorican movement, which consisted of artists of Puerto Rican descent living in New York City
This is from his 1979 album Loose Joints: Poetry by Pedro Pietri
Pete Seeger - Talking Atom (Old Man Atom)
He was a folk singer and an activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and peace through his music
This song was written in 1946 by Vern Partlow, an American reporter and folksinger
Unlike many protest songs at the time, this one became well-known through the many recordings made of it, rather than through the oral tradition
Sheila Kay Adams - Say Darlin’ Say
She’s a musician, writer, and storyteller from North Carolina who comes from a traditional ballad-singing family
She learned to sing from her great aunt Dellie Chandler Norton and other members of her community, and began performing while she was in her teens
In 2013, she received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honour in folk art in the US
This is from her album My Dearest Dear, from 2000
This is a traditional old-time song, the lyrics of which largely come from the well-known lullaby “Hush Little Baby”
Stillman Muise - Sinking of the Vestris
From the 2003 album Songs of the Sea, produced by the Helen Creighton Folklore Society
Creighton was a prolific folklorist from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, who collected, compiled, and wrote about folklore mainly from the east coast of Canada between 1928 and 1989
Recorded in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia on August 31, 1949
The Vestris was a steam ocean liner that sank off the coast of Virginia in 1928, killing more than 100 people
The captain of the Vestris, William Carey, was from Yarmouth, and he went down with the ship
John Bon - A99
From a 1964 album of Aboriginal Australian music from Western Australia, North Queensland, and the Torres Strait
John Bon was about 20 when he was recorded for this album, and he belonged to the Meriam people of the inner eastern Torres Strait Islands
He accompanies himself on guitar on that recording, and the lyrics speak directly to a pearling lugger ship as if it were a bird
The title, “A99,” refers to the registration number of that lugger
Old Man Luedecke - Chester Boat Song
From Chester, NS
Off his 2015 album Domestic Eccentric, which he recorded inside a cabin he built in his backyard
Pharis & Jason Romero - Ballad of Old Bill
From Horsefly, BC
This is from their album A Wanderer I’ll Stay, from 2015
Fred Cockerham - Little Satchel
Fiddle and banjo player from North Carolina
This is his own song, though he took elements from the older tune “Silver Dagger”
John Snipes - Going Where I’ve Never Been Before
He was a farmer and banjo player from Chatham County, NC
He was known in the region for being a marathon dance musician, and would often play a single tune at lightning speed for as long as an hour
This tune uses what are often called “wandering” or “floating lyrics”, which are used in a number of different traditional songs and are often swapped out depending on the song’s desired meaning
Kenneth S Goldstein - The Wild Lumberjack
This one comes from a 1960 Folkways album which focuses on the “Unfortunate Rake” song family, which includes “St. James Hospital,” “Streets of Laredo,” and “One Morning in May,” among others
The performance is by Kenneth S Goldstein, who worked as a record producer, folklorist, and educator
David Francey - Paper Boy
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
Off his 2001 album Far End of Summer
Guy Carawan - Freight Train
He was a musicologist, performer, and producer from Los Angeles
This song is by the American musician Elizabeth Cotten
Ian & Sylvia - CC Rider
Ian & Sylvia performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975
Popular blues song first recorded by Ma Rainey in 1924
Also known as “Easy Rider”
Phil Ochs - Ballad of John Henry Faulk
He was an American protest singer from the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene
Faulk was an American radio show host who was blacklisted from the radio and TV industry in the 1950s after being linked to a communist conspiracy
He successfully sued for damages in 1962, but only collected a small amount of the sum he was awarded
Willie Dunn - The Dreamer
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This song is off his 1980 album The Pacific
Furry Lewis - Longing Blues
American country blues artist from Memphis, Tennessee who began his recording career in 1927
This one was recorded in Memphis, Tennessee on October 3, 1959 by the music historian Samuel Charters
Roscoe Holcomb - Baby Let Your Hair Roll Down
Holcomb was a construction worker, coal miner, and farmer much of his life
Holcomb was first discovered by John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers playing on his front porch in Daisy, Kentucky in 1958, and became popular during the folk revival of the 1960s
This song is more commonly known as “Mole in the Ground,” and it’s a traditional American folk song that’s been widely commercially recorded
Ed Young, Hobart Smith - Joe Turner
Young was a fife player and Smith a banjo player
Both of them were from Virginia, and the folklorist Alan Lomax brought them together in 1960 for the film Music of Williamsburg, which he was music supervisor for
Kaia Kater - Rose on the Mountain
Grenadian-Canadian artist based in Toronto
This is a reel from Kentucky
Dirk Powell - Near and Far
