Barking Dog: July 6, 2023
Big Bill Broonzy - Crawdad Song
He was an American blues singer and guitarist, and was one of the leading figures of the emerging folk revival of the 1950s
This is a relatively well-known song which developed out of white American play-party traditions and Black American blues songs
Other versions of the song include “Sweet Thing” and“Sugar Babe”
This is off the 1960 album The Big Bill Broonzy Story
Old Man Luedecke - Little Stream of Whiskey
From Chester, NS
This is off his 2012 album Tender Is the Night
Paul Clayton - Talt Hall
An American folksinger and folklorist who specialised in traditional music and collaborated with artists like Jean Ritchie and Dave Van Ronk
Talt Hall was a notorious outlaw from Kentucky who was appointed a deputy US Marshall and used the role to wreak vengeance on his enemies, reportedly killing around 30 men over a period of 5 or 6 years
This song is said to have been written by Uriah N Webb, who was ten years old at the time Hall was hanged for his crimes in 1892
Willie Dunn - Peruvian Dream
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
From the 2021 compilation album Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies
Boubacar Traoré - Minuit
He’s a Malian musician who became very popular in his country as a symbol of their recent independence in the early 1960s
His popularity declined through the 1970s, but interest in his music was revived in 1987 after a TV appearance
A British record producer discovered a recording of one of his performances during that time, and he signed a record deal, releasing his first album in 1990
Since then, he’s released 10 more albums, had a film made about him, and has toured internationally
This song is from his 2011 album Mali Denhou
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
Mississippi Sheiks - Sitting on Top of the World
They were an American guitar and fiddle group popular in the 1930s
They’re known for a number of songs, but particularly for their 1930 recording of this song
It’s a country blues song written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon, the core members of the Sheiks
We’ll hear a couple other versions of it after this
Othar Turner, The Rising Star Fife and Drum Band - Station Blues
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
Turner died at age 95 on February 27, 2003
Their version of the song is from their 2001 album Everybody Hollerin’ Goat
Roscoe Holcomb - Sitting on Top of This World
Holcomb was a construction worker, coal miner, and farmer much of his life
He 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 is off the posthumous album An Untamed Sense of Control, from 2003
Eddie Hodge - Sitting on Top of the World
From a collection of country blues field recordings made by George Mitchell in the Southern states between 1962 and the early 80s
Can’t find much about the guy, though this seems to have been recorded in 1982
The lyrics definitely stray from the original version, but the music is the same
Uncle Sinner - Wolves A-Howling
From Winnipeg
This is from his 2015 album Let the Devil In
It’s an old-time tune from the southwest United States
Rory and Alex McEwen - The Dowie Dens o’ Yarrow
They were Scottish aristocrats turned folk singers
The brothers were some of the first Scottish folk singers to visit the US, and they recorded several albums for Folkways Records there
This is from their first album for Folkways, Great Scottish Ballads, from 1956
It’s a well-known Scottish border ballad with many variants, and some suggest that the American ballad “Wayfaring Stranger” is descended from “The Dowie Dens o’ Yarrow”
Neil O’Brien - All ‘Round My Hat
A Nova Scotia singer recorded by Helen Creighton for her 1962 album Maritime Folk Songs from the Collection of Helen Creighton
It’s an English song from the early 19th century
Creighton recorded 4 other versions of the song throughout Nova Scotia during her travels, and noted that “It took over fifteen years to find enough singers to put their bits and pieces together and make a complete song”
Tony Schwartz - Rhymes
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 the 1953 album 1, 2, 3 and a Zing Zing Zing: Street Games and Songs of the Children of New York City
The album provides examples of what one might hear on a typical summer day in West Midtown Manhattan
This is a sampling of children’s rhymes recorded in a housing project, with the children ranging in age from 5 to 12 years old
Unspecified - Skip to My Lou
This is off a 1955 Folkways album called Skip Rope Games, recorded by Pete Seeger, which presents 33 American children’s games revolving around the jump rope
It was a popular dancing game in the 1840s
Lead Belly - Skip to My Lou
Born in Louisiana in late 1880s
Went to prison in Texas in 1918, but was released early by singing a song for the governor of Texas
He was incarcerated again in 1930, and the ethnomusicologists and folklorists John and Alan Lomax met him in prison while they were making field recordings of inmates
Once he was released, he made a number of recordings and became widely known for both his blues and folk recordings
This version was included on an album of Lead Belly songs for children
The Simpsons - The Ballad of Jebediah Springfield
This is from the season 7 Simpsons episode “Lisa the Iconoclast”
It’s the first instance of the word “embiggens,” and the episode also introduced “cromulent” into the common vernacular
It was written by Jeff Martin and performed by Rick Logan and Dick Wells, with harmonica by Tommy Morgan
Sam Hinton - A Horse Named Bill
Was an American folksinger, marine biologist, and visual artist
This is off his 1964 album of children’s songs called Whoever Shall Have Some Peanuts
The liner notes say of the song: "Some songs are put together just to see how silly they can be, and this is one of the champion silly songs of all time.”
Stanley Triggs - The Lookout in the Sky
An anthropologist and photographer who worked in logging camps, construction camps, in forestry, with survey crews, and on railroad gangs in BC
Also played in coffee houses in the 1960s
He wrote the tune for this song, the lyrics of which are a poem by the trapper Harold Smith
He wrote it about Bob Wallace, who was the lookout man in Duncan for the BC Forest Service for nine seasons, a position that Triggs also held for two seasons
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
Audrey Coppard - Hares on the Mountain
From the only album she recorded called English Folk Songs, from 1956
This song was found in the south of England and first collected at the beginning of the 20th century, though it likely comes from the early 19th century
Pete Seeger - Equinoxial (Little Phoebe)
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 peace through his music
This is from the 1956 album With Voices Together We Sing, which was recorded at a concert he gave at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for 500 university students
The liner notes say that the “story of the woman who could do more work than her husband has been a favourite subject for ballads.”
Harrison Kennedy - Shame the Devil
Harrison Kennedy a Hamilton, ON artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
From his 2011 album of the same name
Mance Lipscomb - God Moves on the Water
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
This song was first recorded by Blind Willie Johnson in 1929, though he did not write it
It’s one of the best-known American disaster ballads
The fact that both Johnson and Lipscomb, who made the two earliest recordings of the song, were both from Texas, suggests that this song may also have come from there
This is a field recording that Lipscomb made for Mack McCormick, off a forthcoming compilation album of McCormick’s recordings called Playing for the Man at the Door, which is out on August 4th
Gillian Welch - Six White Horses
She’s one of the best-known contemporary American roots musicians, and has collaborated with artists like Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, and The Decemberists, though she’s known particularly for her musical partnership with Dave Rawlings
This is from her 2011 album The Harrow & The Harvest
Alice Stuart - Black Jack David
She’s a musician from Washington who got her start in folk music at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1964, when she was 22
She returned to the festival twice in the following years, and formed a friendship with Mississippi John Hurt, who we heard earlier, and the two toured together throughout the US
She also toured with musicians like Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Van Morrison, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
Stuart was briefly a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention as well, though she didn’t end up making any recordings with the band
This is off her 1964 debut album All the Good Times
It’s a traditional Anglo-Scottish border ballad that’s extremely popular throughout Britain, Ireland, and North America
Bob Dylan - Blackjack Davey
Off his 1992 album Good as I Been to You
Pharis & Jason Romero - Out on the Western Plains
Married duo from Horsefly, BC
A Lead Belly song first recorded in 1946
They included it on their 2011 album A Passing Glimpse
OJ Abbott - By the Hush, Me Boys
Abbott was 84 when this song was recorded for the album Irish and British Songs from the Ottawa Valley, recorded by Edith Fowke in 1957
An unusual ballad about the American Civil War, though it was unknown in the United States
It’s a combination of two themes common in traditional Irish songs: emigration, and becoming involved in other countries' wars
Bill Bonyun - So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You
He was a folk singer from New York who got a degree in playwriting, tried to make it on Broadway, failed, and moved to Nova Scotia for awhile where he worked as a fisherman
Bonyun later moved back to the US and made a living as a writer and teacher, singing and researching folk music on the side
This is off a 1950 album of folk songs that illustrate American history
Woody Guthrie wrote the song
Csókolom - Dog Daze
They’re a band that play Eastern European music, mainly Hungarian and Romani folk styles
This is the title track from their 2006 album Dog Daze
David Francey - Border Line
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 1999 album Torn Screen Door
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Hills of Mexico
From Toronto
Also known as “On the Trail of the Buffalo” and “Buffalo Skinners”
From their 2014 album Old Time
Ferron - Shady Gate
She’s a 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
Nora Brown, Stephanie Coleman - Lady of the Lake
Brown is a 17 year-old banjoist and singer who carries on the old-time tradition
Coleman is a fiddle and banjo player from New York who’s been playing since she was nine years old
This is from an EP that comes out at the end of July
Margaret Dirrane - Twas Early, Early in the Spring
From a 1957 album of Gaelic songs from the west of Ireland
Dirrane learned it in the 1920s from her older sister
It’s a British folk song from the late 17th century
Judy Collins - So Early, Early in the Spring
American artist who has recorded music in a number of different genres
Is also known for bringing attention to lesser-known artists, including Leonard Cohen, Ian Tyson, and Joni Mitchell, who weren’t very well-known when she recorded songs by them
This is from her 1965 album simply called Fifth Album
Malinda Herman - 500 Miles
She’s a musician from Bangkok, Thailand who became known through her YouTube channel, where she uploads videos of herself playing traditional and popular songs
Several decades ago, she lost movement in the left side of her face after a serious car accident
Her son bought her a guitar and she began playing and singing as a form of physical therapy, and she now estimates that she’s regained about 75% of her facial movements through singing
This song was written by American folk singer Hedy West
Jerome Vanderburg - Harmonica Song
Grit Laskin - Paddy Fahey’s / The Road to Lisdoonvarna / Comb Your Hair and Curl It
George Herod - I Shall Not Be Moved
