Barking Dog: August 18, 2022
Bessie Jones - Way Down Yonder in the Brickyard
Bessie Jones known for spreading folk music to a wider audience in the 20th century
She was one of the most popular performers of folk music in the 60s and 70s, often appearing with the Georgia Sea Island Singers and performing at colleges, festivals, and political events
This is an African American play song which Jones got from her grandfather, Jet Samson
Uncle Sinner - This World Can’t Stand Long
From Winnipeg
Written by Jim Anglin and first recorded in 1947 by King’s Sacred Quartette
This is off his 2015 album Let the Devil In
Harrison Kennedy, Jean-Jacques Milteau, Vincent Segal - Judgment Day
Harrison Kennedy a Hamilton artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
Milteau a French harmonica player, singer and songwriter, and Vincent Segal a French cellist and bassist
This is from their 2018 album CrossBorder Blues
Willie Dunn - The Lovenant Chain
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is off his fourth album The Vanity of Human Wishes, from 1984
Pete Seeger - Masters of War
Seeger was a folk singer and an activist from New York who advocated for countless social causes through his music for 75 years
This is off his 1965 album Strangers And Cousins, a collection of recordings from his world tour
It’s a Bob Dylan song, and Haruhiro Fukui, Seeger’s interpreter, provides a live Japanese translation of the lyrics
Kenneth Peacock - Green Shores of Fogo
He was an ethnomusicologist from Toronto who was on the staff for what is now the Canadian Museum of Civilization
His projects for the museum covered practically every part of Canada, and he seems to have learned this song while researching the folk music of Newfoundland in the 1950s
He’s remembered for the impact this research had on the folk music revival in Canada in the mid 20th century
This is a Newfoundland folk song from the area around Fogo, which has strong Irish ancestry
It’s likely based on the Irish-American emigrant ballad “The Country I’m Leaving Behind”
Sonny Terry - Train Whistle Blues
Terry a blind musician who lost his vision at 16, which prevented him from doing farm work and caused him to rely on music as a living
Recorded in NYC 28 December 1938
This song imitates the sound of a train, and we’ll hear 2 others that also do that after this one
Snooks Eaglin - Model T and the Train
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 and Percy Randolph
Thao Salilath - Lot fay tay lang (The train goes down the track)
From a 1973 album of Laotian music compiled by Jacques Brunet, a musicologist who studies the music of Southeast Asia and Indonesia
We hear the khène on this recording, a 2 1/2 foot long mouth organ made from seven or eight pairs of bamboo pipes that sounds similar to a violin
A piece popular throughout Southern Laos and northern Thailand
It imitates a train pulling out of a station, and the liner notes state that the piece requires “great virtuosity” from the performer
Stanley Triggs - The Homesick Trapper
Born in Nelson, BC in 1928
Worked in logging camps, construction camps, in forestry, with survey crews, and on railroad gangs
Also worked as a freelance photographer and earned a living playing in coffee houses in the 1960s
He wrote this song for Slim Hatfield, a trapper from the Duncan River Valley in BC
Butch Cage, Willie B Thomas - Baby Please Don’t Go
They were a blues duo from Louisiana who performed from the 1940s until the 1970s
The musicologist Harry Oster discovered them in 1959 and promoted them at the Newport Folk Festival, and later made recordings of their music
Baby Please Don’t Go was made popular through Big Joe Williams’ 1935 recording, though it clearly originated from Another Man Done Gone, a popular blues song
Smoky Babe - I’m Going Home on the Morning Train
From an album of 17 Smoky Babe songs, recorded by the folklorist Harry Oster in the early 1960s but not released until 2014
Smoky Babe was an itinerant musician originally from Mississippi who grew up working on farms in his region, then travelled around Alabama and Louisiana working on barges and as a mechanic during the day, and playing at clubs at night
This seems to be a traditional African American spiritual, likely composed by an enslaved person and passed on through the oral tradition
Emily Wurramara - Dumugurra (Kookaburra)
She’s a Anindilyakwa musician from the Northern Territory of Australia
This is from her new EP, Ayarra Emeba, which means “Calm Songs”
It’s her version of the Australian nursery rhyme “Kookaburra”, which she performs in both English and Anindilyakwa
The Wailin’ Jennys - Bright Morning Stars
Folk group formed in Winnipeg in 2002
From their 2011 album of the same name
This song is likely from Kentucky
Rediscovered by Robin Christenson in 1968 from the 1953 book American Folk Songs for Christmas
He arranged it to be performed at the 1968 Fox Hollow Festival, from which it entered back into the common repertoire
Kacy & Clayton - The Dalesman’s Litany
Contemporary duo from Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan
English song by Frederic William Moorman
From their 2013 album The Day is Past and Gone
W Guy Bruce - The Lily of the West
From a 1984 album of traditional music from northern Georgia, recorded by folklorist and musician Art Rosenbaum
Born 1895 in the community of Screamersville, Georgia, later renamed Welcome Hill
Learned banjo tunes and folk tales as a child as relief from the farm work he did
Later became a repairer of watches and clocks
This is a traditional Irish folk song that is now considered a traditional American folk song
The melody is related to the song Buffalo Skinners, also known as The Hills of Mexico
Bruce learned early in the century from George Brown
Unspecified - Habilin Ni Bonifacio (In Memory of Bonifacio)
From a 1976 album of Songs of the Philippine National Democratic Struggle, which protests Ferdinand Marcos’ military dictatorship and American imperialism’s role in supporting his regime
Andres Bonifacio was a founder of Katipunan, an anti-Spanish colonialist revolutionary society founded in Manila in 1892
The liner notes for the album state that Bonifacio “generates the spirit of continued struggle for national freedom and democracy,” and for that reason, he is still seen as a “prototype of the revolutionary who selflessly devotes his life to the struggle against oppression and domestic tyranny”
Fred and Finvola Redden - The Banks of the Claudy
Off a 1956 album of folk music from Nova Scotia, collected by the folklorist Helen Creighton
The singer was a farmer who learned most of his songs from his father
His daughter, Finvola, who was named after a heroine in one of her father’s favourite Irish songs, often sang with him, but for that song she accompanied him on the piano
That song is a traditional Irish song
John Angaiak - A’ka Tamaani
A Yup’ik singer-songwriter born in Nightmute, Alaska in 1941
After serving in Vietnam in the US Armed Forces, he enrolled in the University of Alaska and became active in the school’s so-called Eskimo Language Workshop
This song comes from his 1971 album, I’m Lost in the City, which is inspired by his work preserving his native language, with the first side entirely in the previously exclusively oral Yup’ik language, and the second in English
The song became a regional hit in Alaska, and Angaiak also performed it in Greenland on a tour
Pharis & Jason Romero - Going Across the Sea
From Horsefly, BC
Off their new album Tell 'Em You Were Gold, which was recorded live over six days in a 60-year-old barn beside the Little Horsefly River
It’s a banjo-centric album, created to highlight the sound of the banjos that Jason makes
The banjo they use on that one is called Mother, and they built it in 2010
It was the 250th banjo they built, and was the only banjo to survive a fire in their studio in 2016
Seems to be an old-time Appalachian song
Alash - Dynggyldai
From their 2007 self-titled album
Alash are an ensemble of Tuvan musicians, who are an ethnic group indigenous to Siberia and now living in Russia, China, and Mongolia
They began playing together in 1999 while they were all studying music
A classic Tuvan humorous song, and “dynggyldai” is a nonsense word
The Missionary Quartet - Dry Bones: Ezekiel Saw the Wheel
Nothing is known about this group except that they were a Bahamian group recorded by jazz historian and ethnographer Marshal Stearns in 1953
This is a popular African American spiritual written by William L Dawson
Woody Guthrie - Ezekiel Saw the Wheel
Dust Bowl balladeer and important figure in folk music history who’s known particularly for his songs about the Okie migrants who travelled west during the Great Depression in search of work, though he composed and recorded songs on an enormous number of topics
Recorded in April 1944 in New York, N.Y
Cisco Houston - The Cat Came Back
Today would have been his 104th birthday, so we thought we’d play one of his tunes
He was a folksinger and a singer of cowboy songs born in Delaware and raised in California
He’s known particularly for his collaborations with musicians like Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Sonny Terry in the 30s and 40s
Humorous parlour song written by Harry S Miller in 1893
Houston adapted it into a contemporary setting
John H Gerwing - The Orphan Girl
From an album of Saskatchewan songs collected by Barbara Cass-Beggs and released in 1963
His father immigrated to Minnesota from Germany in the 19th century, and Gerwing moved to Lake Lenore, Saskatchewan in 1903 because of the German Catholic settlement there
Gerwing learned this song from his father, and often sang it when he was doing farm work or driving the cattle home at night
The song’s narrator wishes they could see their parents again, and asks that children listening to the song make sure that their parents’ days are happy
Morley Loon - Caminconoch
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
That one’s from his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
The title translates to “Spirits”
Rolando Alarcón - Coplas del Pajarito
From the 1970 album Cancion Protesta: Protest song of Latin America
Alarcon wrote the song, and it’s a song about class disparity
Mississippi John Hurt - Louis Collins
American country blues singer and guitarist from Avalon, Mississippi
He made a couple of recordings for OkEh Records in the late 1920s, but when OkEh Records closed shop during the Great Depression, Hurt returned to his work as a sharecropper, continuing to play music at local events
His OkEh recordings were included on the incredibly influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, and in 1963 the musicologist Dick Spottswood located Hurt in Avalon
Hurt performed at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, which brought further attention to his music, and he toured extensively throughout the US and recorded 3 albums
This recording is from the 1960s, though Hurt originally recorded it in 1928
He later claimed he had written the song after overhearing a conversation about a local murder
It became one of his best-known songs, and went on to become a standard during the folk revival of the 1960s
We’ll hear a more recent version after this
Sam Amidon - Louis Collins
Contemporary folk artist from Vermont
From his 2015 album But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted
Walker Calhoun - Guide Me, Jehovah
Off a 2004 anthology of hymns and songs in indigenous languages, presented by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian
Calhoun was a Cherokee musician, teacher, and dancer from North Carolina who worked to preserve his cultural traditions, learning much of what he knew from his uncle, Will West Long
In 1992, he received the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, the highest honour in folk art in the US
That’s one of the most popular Cherokee hymns, and Calhoun recorded it in 2002
Peyton Hopkins - Down Too Long
He was a pastor, musician, and poet from Oklahoma who recorded two albums of union and labour songs in the 1980s
He later ran a furniture ministry in Florida, driving around and giving furniture to those in need
From the 1981 album They Moved My Job to Georgia or Was It Tennessee?
Old Man Luedecke - I Am Fine
From Chester, NS
That recording from his 2018 album One Night Only! recorded live at the Chester Playhouse
Hammie Nixon, Walter Cooper - Someday Baby
Nixon was a Tennessee harmonica player and singer known for his partnership with Sleepy John Estes, which lasted from the 1930s until the 1970s when Estes died
Cooper, presumably a friend of Nixon’s, plays guitar on this one
From the 4th album in a series called Living Country Blues USA, which comprise field recordings made of American blues artists in 1980 by two German blues enthusiasts named Axel Kustner and Siegfried Christmann
Song was first recorded as Someday Baby Blues by Nixon and Sleepy John Estes in 1935, and is credited to Estes
Quilapayun, Victor Jara - Hush a Bye
Jara 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
Quilapayun are a Chilean folk group that have been around since 1965, and are one of the most influential groups in the Nueva Cancion Chilena
Jara became their musical director in the 60s, and helped them sign with the record label Odeon Records
From the 1968 album Canciones Folklóricas De América
It’s a version of All the Pretty Little Horses, a traditional folk song and children’s lullaby
Jean Carignan - Bank
