Barking Dog: July 4, 2024
Mika Seeger - Jingle
From an album called Sounds of Camp, which was recorded for Folkways at a children’s sleepaway camp in Hancock, Vermont, in 1958
It really brings back that childhood feeling of summer freedom, so I thought it would be nice to start the show with a track that many folks can relate to and reminisce over
The liner notes for the album state: “Each summer has its expressions and its jingles. This particular summer was the summer of "tough beans," and "rough raisins." It was also the summer of "Great Green Globs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts," here sung long after camp was over by Mika Seeger of Beacon, N.Y., a niece of the camp's owners.”
The Firesiders - Bay of Mexico
From an album called The Songs of Camp, which was recorded for Folkways in 1958
The Firesiders were made up of Joan Lerner, who leads the song, Mary Badeaux with backing vocals, Bob Stein on guitar and vocals, and Ed Badeaux providing vocals and banjo
They organised the group to stimulate interest in the camp songs
This was recorded in the same year and at the same children’s sleepaway camp as the first track
Old Man Luedecke - Big Group Breakfast
From his album One Night Only!, recorded live at the Chester Playhouse in his hometown of Chester, Nova Scotia
Woody Guthrie, Will Geer - Vigilante Man
This is off the 1956 album Bound for Glory: Songs and Stories of Woody Guthrie
Guthrie was an influential folk musician who’s known for his songs about the Okie migrants who travelled west during the Great Depression in search of work
Will Geer introduces the track—he was a well-known actor, musician, and activist from Indiana
Guthrie first released this song on his 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads
It’s about the hired thugs who chased away migrant workers in California as they tried to escape the Dust Bowl and find work during the Great Depression
Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee - Hootin’ the Blues
They were an American folk and blues duo who were very popular during the folk revival of the 1960s, and performed together for nearly 40 years
This one was recorded live at the Ash Grove in Hollywood, California in 1963
Bob Dylan - Catfish
Dylan wrote this song for his 1976 album Desire, but it was only first released in 1991 as part of his Bootleg Series of rare and unreleased recordings
It’s about the American baseball player Catfish Hunter
Terre Roche, Maggie Roche - Apostrophe to the Wind
They were sisters from New Jersey who dropped out of high school in the late 1960s to tour as a duo, and later formed a trio called The Roches with their sister Suzzy (pronounced to rhyme with “fuzzy”)
After Maggie died in 2017, two fans sent Terre tapes of live recordings that the duo had made in both 1975 and 2000, which Terre and her friend Michael Tannen compiled into the album Kin Ya See That Sun, released in 2022
Maggie wrote this song
Deerhoof - Blue Cash
They’re a band from San Francisco that formed in 1994
That one is off their 2003 album Apple O’
Enoch Kent - Bonny Lass Come O’er the Burn
A Scottish-born, Canada-based folksinger who began playing professionally in the 1950s
This was recorded in 1962, when Kent was still living in the UK
He got the song from Scottish folk singer Jeannie Robertson
Bill Cornett - Old Reuben
John Cohen made this field recording of Banjo Bill in 1959 in the mountains of Kentucky
It was a popular tune among banjo players, fiddlers, and harmonica players in the southern US
The Everly Brothers - I’m Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail
They were a duo from Tennessee known for their recordings of songs like “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie”
They released this one in 1962
The song appears to have been written by Karl Davis and Harty Taylor and first recorded in 1934, though it’s related to “Old Reuben”
Willie Dunn - Sumac Nuista
Dunn was a Mi’kmaq musician and film director from Montreal, known for songs like “I Pity the Country” and “Son of the Sun”
This is from the 1999 album Metallic
Danny Barker - I’m a Cowboy
He was a musician from New Orleans known primarily as a rhythm guitarist for jazz musicians like Cab Calloway and Benny Carter, though he also performed blues and zydeco music
Barker also served as an assistant to the curator of the New Orleans Jazz Museum during the 1960s
He recorded this one for his 1988 album Save the Bones
Malvina Reynolds, Eric Darling - The Faucets Are Dripping
Malvina Reynolds came to folk music later in her life, when she met Pete Seeger and other folk singers when she was in her 40s
She had received a doctorate from the University of California in 1938, but went back to university in the late 1950s to study music theory
She’s known particularly for writing the song “Little Boxes,” though she wrote and recorded a large catalogue of music during her career
This one is from the 1983 album We Won’t Move: Songs of the Tenants’ Movement
She originally recorded it for her 1960 album Another County Heard From
Pete Seeger, Oscar the Grouch, Brother Kirk, The Sesame Street Kids - Garbage
This is from the 1974 album Pete Seeger and Brother Kirk Visit Sesame Street
The song is by California songwriter Bill Steele, who said of it: “Most topical songs quickly become outdated; it’s unfortunate that this one hasn’t”
Kurt Vonnegut - If This Isn’t Nice I Don’t Know What Is
He was an influential American writer known for novels including Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, and Jailbird
This is from a lecture he gave at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio in 2004
He also wrote an essay based on the story, which was included in his 2005 essay collection A Man Without a Country
Stan Rogers - Down the Road
This is from the posthumous compilation album From Coffee House to Concert Hall from 1999
The song is by Mary McCaslin
Phil Ochs - There but for Fortune
He was an American protest singer who grew up all over the United States, but moved to New York City in 1962 to establish himself as a folksinger in the Greenwich Village folk scene
He wrote this song in 1963 and recorded this version in 1966
Uncle Sinner - Old Country Stomp
From Winnipeg
This is an unreleased track recorded between 2007 and 2011
Taj Mahal, N. Ravikiran, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt - Johnny Too Bad
Taj Mahal is a Grammy-winning blues musician from New York City whose career has spanned over 50 years
N Ravikiran is an Indian multi-instrumentalist and composer whose father and grandfather are also well-known musicians
At the age of 2 he was given a scholarship to the music academy, and was already able to identify hundreds of rhythmic cycles and melodic scales of Carnatic music
Bhatt is a Hindustani classical musician who plays the mohan veena, a type of slide guitar
He’s collaborated with a number of other Western artists, including Ry Cooder and Bela Fleck
Off their 1995 collaborative album, Mumtaz Mahal
It’s a version of the Slickers’ 1972 song
Periwinkle - No Tippecanoe
This is from a 1981 album called The Promised Land: American Indian Songs of Lament and Protest
There’s not much else to be found about Periwinkle, though the liner notes for the album are worth checking out because they contain a lot of background on Indigenous issues in North America
Hayes McMullan - Roll and Tumble
American Delta blues artist from Mississippi who was also a sharecropper, deacon, and civil rights activist
This is from the 2017 Light in the Attic Records album Everyday Seem Like Murder Here, which is a compilation of previously unreleased tracks by McMullan
It’s a blues standard first recorded by Hambone Willie Newbern in 1929
Jim Sharp - Mother Jones (No More Deaths for Dollars)
English folksinger
This is from his 2016 album The Songs of Ed Pickford
Pickford is an English songwriter known for writing songs in support of workers’ rights
A Critical Mass Choir - Will You Step On My Head?
It’s a recording from reflecting on police violence that occurred at a Winnipeg Critical Mass rally in May of 2006
Critical Mass is a celebration of human-powered transportation that began in San Francisco in 1992, and has since spread to other cities worldwide
On May 3, 2006, about 50 Winnipeggers biked out to the Pioneer Arena to protest urban warfare training exercises that were taking place there
Seven people were arrested that night, one for simply photographing an arrest
23 days later, the police violently arrested 9 more people during the monthly Critical Mass ride, tackling them, holding them down with their knees, and even punching one person in the face
One of the people arrested was also beaten while in custody
Patrick Krawec, Ian La Rue, and Tara Norberg recorded this one in their kitchen in June of 2006
Utah Phillips - The Violence Within
He was an anarchist folksinger, storyteller, and labour organiser from Ohio who also rode the rails throughout the United States and worked as an archivist, a dishwasher, and a warehouse-man at various points in his life
This is from his 1991 album I’ve Got to Know
A Golden Ring of Gospel - I Want to Die Easy
From an album of communal music-making by friends at Folk Legacy Records on Sharon Mountain in Connecticut in 1982
This is a traditional African-American spiritual
Okkervil River - Oh, the Wind and Rain
They’re a band from Texas that was formed by the musician Will Sheff in 1998
This is from their 2005 album Black Sheep Boy
It’s a traditional Northumbrian murder ballad also known as “Twa Sisters” and “Cruel Sister,” among other names
The first written version appeared in a 1656 broadside, and at least 21 versions of the ballad exist in English
Etulu Etidloie - My Wonderful Woman
He was a musician and carver from Cape Dorset, Nunavut, who began writing music in the 1960s, and recorded one album for the CBC in 1978 called Today’s Thoughts, which is where this song comes from
Alistair Hulett - Destitution Road
He was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland, known as a member of the folk punk band Roaring Jack
This is off his 1991 album Dance of the Underclass
The song is about the Highland Clearances, a government-led attack on non-English-speaking societies in Scotland that occurred between 1750 and 1860
JW Warren - A Long Old Lane
He was an Alabama musician who played at local juke joints and barbeques in his youth, and even dated Big Mama Thornton when they were young
This is off an album of his music that was recorded in the early 1980s by George Mitchell
This is a version of “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” written by Blind Lemon Jefferson and first recorded in 1927
Nanci Griffith, Frank Christian - Daddy Said
She was a Grammy-winning American musician known both for her own recordings and for the songs she wrote that became popular through other artists’ recordings
She also recorded with many great artists, including Emmylou Harris, The Chieftains, and Willie Nelson
From a 1989 issue of Fast Folk Musical Magazine that highlights female folk musicians, and Frank Christian accompanies her on guitar
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
Mager Johnson - Traveling Man Blues
He was a Mississippi blues musician and brother of fellow blues musician Tommy Johnson
Gianni Marcucci travelled from Italy to the United States five times during the 70s and 80s to document blues music
Marcucci recorded Johnson at his home in Crystal Springs, Mississippi in the late 70s
Margaret Walker - Ballad of the Landlord
She was an American poet, known for her involvement in the Chicago Black Renaissance literary movement of the 30s and 40s
She taught for three decades at Jackson State University in Mississippi, and founded the Institute for the Study of History, Life, and Culture of Black People, now the Margaret Walker Center, on campus
This is off the 1975 album Margaret Walker Reads Margaret Walker and Langston Hughes
Hughes wrote this one in the 1930s about the difficulty experienced while trying to get landlords to make repairs
Dyad - Hell and Scissors
Victoria BC
This is an old-time breakdown from the southern US
One source I found notes that a “hell” is apparently a leather holster used to hold scissors, though it also suggests that “Hell and Scissors” was English slang used to express surprise, and that “Hell and Scissors” possibly referred to an area of Kentucky that was difficult to cross
