Barking Dog: August 22, 2024
This Week’s Theme: Songs About Hobos
This week we thought we’d cover a topic that comes up pretty regularly in folk music: hobos. I’ve been interested in the 19th and 20th century concept of the hobo for years; hobohemia is a distinct subculture that’s existed for almost 200 years and its members and their reasons for adopting the lifestyle are wide-ranging, though hobos are usually defined as people who ride the rails from town to town, finding work along the way. The subculture has its own deep history, which we’ll hear a bit about throughout the show. If you want to learn more about hobohemia, I recommend watching the films Who is Bozo Texino? by Bill Daniel and Hobo by John T Davis. You can also find a great paper about hobos in Canada in the first half of the 20th century right here.
Background audio: Last Train Out Of Los Angeles On The Santa Fe, Los Angeles To San Bernardino from A Farewell to Steam
Harry McClintock - The Big Rock Candy Mountain
American cowboy, union organiser, hobo singer, and poet from Tennessee who’s known for writing this song
He wrote the song in 1895 and first recorded it in 1928, and it’s one of several songs about a hobo’s paradise
It became more well-known through Burl Ives’ 1949 recording, which was sanitised to appeal to parents and children
One term you’ll need to know for this song and several others we’ll hear this week is “jungle,” which refers to the makeshift camps that groups of hobos would make near train yards as they waited to catch their next ride
Larry Penn - No Self-Respecting Hobo
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
His liner notes for the song read simply: “To those who say they are not sure about this song, I say, ‘Do you still ride trains?’”
Jimmie Rodgers - Hobo Bill’s Last Ride
He was a very well-known musician from Mississippi who became popular in the late 20s, and is now known as the Father of Country Music
He died from tuberculosis in 1933 at the age of 35, but is remembered for his kindness to strangers and fans and for giving free spontaneous concerts while he was on tour
This recording was made in November of 1929
John Prine - The Hobo Song
Prine was one of the most influential songwriters of his generation
He died in April of 2020 from COVID, but he’s remembered for his social commentary and his unique style of singing
This is off his 1978 album Bruised Orange
Bruce Cockburn - One Day I Walk
Singer-songwriter and guitarist from Ottawa who’s been playing professionally for over 40 years
This is off his 1987 album Waiting for a Miracle
Moondog - Be a Hobo
He was an avant-garde composer, musician, poet, and inventor from Wyoming who influenced later artists including Steve Reich and Philip Glass
This is from the 2005 compilation album The Viking of Sixth Avenue, which spans his entire music career
It was recorded in the early 1950s
Glen Reid - Dreams of the Hobo
He’s a musician from Burk’s Falls, Ontario who grew up in a musical family and got his start in the Toronto folk scene of the 1960s
This is off his 1996 album Heritage River, and it’s his own song
The Carter Family - Western Hobo
Very influential American country and folk singing family from Virginia
They recorded this one in 1929
The New Lost City Ramblers - Wild and Western Hobo
They were formed in 1958 and focused on playing music taken from 78s from the 20s and 30s
This is from their 1963 album Gone to the Country, and they got the song from the Carter Family
Utah Phillips - Starlight on the Rails
He was an anarchist folksinger, storyteller, and labour organiser from Ohio
This is from the 2005 album Starlight on the Rails: A Songbook
The spoken-word introduction to the song comes from the novel Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
Art Thieme - Hobo’s Last Ride
He was a folk musician, photographer, and radio host from Chicago who specialised in music and stories from the upper midwest United States, but he also had an interest in cowboy songs
He learned this song from a recording by Canadian musician Hank Snow that he heard on a country radio show as a child during the 1950s
It uses the same tune as “Tying Knots in the Devil’s Tail”
This one is from the 2009 album Singing Through The Hard Times: A Tribute To Utah Phillips, and the song is by AL Kirby
Harry Choates - Poor Hobo
He was a Cajun fiddler from Louisiana who was one of the most popular Cajun musicians during the 1940s
This is from the 1993 album The Fiddle King of Cajun Swing
He recorded it in 1948
The Doc Watson Family - Rambling Hobo
Watson was a Grammy award-winning musician from North Carolina known for his fingerstyle and flatpicking skill
He had a 60 year career, and often played with other skilled musicians like Jean Ritchie, Clarence Ashley, and his son, Merle Watson
This is from the album The Watson Family
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott - Hobo’s Lullaby
He’s a folk singer from New York City who was a protege of Woody Guthrie, a collaborator with Derroll Adams, and a major influence for Bob Dylan
The song is by Goebel Reeves, a folk singer from Texas who recorded throughout the 20s and 30s
It was recorded live at the Second Fret in Philadelphia in 1962
Bob Dylan - Only a Hobo
This is a recording from 1963
It’s similar to traditional songs like “Only a Miner Killed” and “Poor Miner’s Farewell”
Thomas Fraser - The Hobo’s Meditation
He was a Scottish fisherman and farmer who left behind thousands of home recordings when he died in 1978, the majority of which were country and blues songs
His grandson rediscovered the tapes and released the first album of his music in 2002, followed shortly after by two more albums
This one is from the 2008 album That Far Away Land
The song is by Jimmie Rodgers, who recorded it in 1932
John McLachlan, Marc Atkinson, Scott White - The Watchman’s Gone
McLachlan is a musician from BC who began performing at folk clubs in Vancouver in 1979
Atkinson is a guitarist and composer from BC, and White is a bassist and music therapist from BC now living in Berlin
This is from McLachlan’s 2023 album 50 Years Since Sundown: A Tribute to Gordon Lightfoot
John Hartford - Gentle on My Mind
Hartford was an American roots artist known for his fiddle and banjo playing and for his knowledge of Mississippi River lore
This is one of his best-known songs, though this is a demo from the 2019 album Backroads, Rivers & Memories: The Rare & Unreleased John Hartford
JW Warren - Hoboing into Hollywood
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
The folklorist Tim Duffy met him later in life when he had given up playing, and convinced him to record his music
The Music Maker Relief Foundation, which Duffy founded, provided him with grants for medication, gave him a guitar, and recorded him for several albums
This is off an album of his music that was recorded in the early 1980s by George Mitchell
Willie Dunn - Rattling Along the Freight Train (To the Spirit Land)
Dunn was a Mi’kmaq musician and film director from Montreal, known for songs like “I Pity the Country” and “Son of the Sun”
He also won the NDP’s federal nomination for the Ottawa-Vanier riding in the 1993 federal election, though he lost to the Liberal incumbent
From the 2021 anthology of Dunn’s music called Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies
Les Amis Creole - L’Hobo de Breaux Bridge
They’re three Black Creole musicians from Texas: Accordionist and fiddler Ed Poullard, guitarist James B Adams, Jr., and fiddler and singer Cedric Watson
This is off their 2006 self-titled album
Tom Brandon - The Hobo’s Grave
From an album of folk songs of Ontario collected by Edith Fowke and released in 1958
Sung by Tom Brandon of Peterborough
Brandon learned it from his brother who learned it while working in northern Ontario in the 1930s
Most hobo songs found in Ontario came from the States, but the origins of this particular one are uncertain, and this version seems to have been transformed to fit its setting
Paul Simon - Hobo’s Blues
This is an instrumental from his 1972 self-titled album, and it’s a piece written by the French violinist Stéphane Grappelli
Martha Copeland - Hobo Bill
She was a blues singer from Virginia who recorded between 1923 and 1928
This one was recorded for Columbia Records in 1927
The melody shares similarities with the outlaw ballad “Railroad Bill"
John Lee Hooker - Hobo Blues
He was a Mississippi blues musician known for adapting the Delta blues for electric guitar, though this is an acoustic performance from the 1960 Newport Folk Festival
Wilf Carter - The Hobo’s Song to the Mounties
He was a very well-known country musician from Nova Scotia known as Wilf Carter in Canada and as Montana Slim in the US
He recorded this one for Victor Records in 1934
Almoth Hodges - The Hobo from the T&P Line
This is the only recording we have from Hodges, who performed this song with Bob Miller and his Hinky Dinkers for Brunswick Records in December of 1929
Sleepy John Estes - Hobo Jungle Blues
Estes was an American blues musician from Tennessee
He recorded this one in New York in 1937 with Charlie Pickett, Hammie Nixon, and Lee Brown backing him up
Heron - I Am a Lonesome Hobo
They’re an English folk-rock band that first performed between the late 60s and early 70s, and have reunited intermittently since the 1990s
This is from their 2013 album Jokerman, which is a collection of Bob Dylan covers
Dylan wrote the song for his 1967 album John Wesley Harding
Cisco Houston - Mysteries of a Hobo’s Life
Folksinger and singer of cowboy songs born in Delaware and raised in California who regularly collaborated with artists like Woody Guthrie and Sonny Terry throughout the 30s and 40s
This one is from a 1994 compilation album of recordings he made for Folkways Records between 1944 and 1961
He likely learned the song from George Milburn’s Hobo’s Hornbook, published in 1930
Stompin’ Tom Connors - Ballad of Stompin’ Tom
He was a musician from New Brunswick known for a number of classic Canadian songs like “Bud the Spud” and “The Hockey Song”
Connors grew up poor in Saint John, and first began hitchhiking at the age of 13
He was still hitchhiking around the country in his 20s, and found himself at a bar in Timmins, Ontario, where the bartender offered him a second beer if he played a few songs
From those songs, he got a 14-month run as an entertainer at the bar, a radio show, and a recording career
This is the title track from his 2008 album The Ballad of Stompin’ Tom
The Texas Drifter (Goebel Reeves) - H.O.B.O. Calling
He was a folk and country musician from Texas who played in the style of Jimmie Rodgers
He’s known particularly for writing the song “Hobo’s Lullaby”
He recorded this song in 1932
Johnie Lewis - Hobo Blues
He was a slide guitarist and singer from Alabama who worked primarily as a house painter
He also taught himself to play guitar and sing so he could supplement his income by playing at house parties
Lewis later moved to Chicago to find work and escape the segregation of the South
The film director Harley Cokeliss learned of him through one of his painting customers and included him in his 1970 film The Chicago Blues, which resulted in two recording sessions for Arhoolie records in the early 1970s
Recorded in Chicago in 1971
Dave Baker - Canadian Hobo Lullaby
He was a musician and sailor from BC who got his start in Montreal in the late 1960s
This is from his 1998 album Songs & Sound of Canadian Steam
GT Polerson - The Life of a Hobo
