Barking Dog: August 31, 2023
Andrew Everett - Hello Central, Give Me 209
He was a Texan musician originally from Alabama who played in turpentine camps and worked on railroad gangs and in sugar refineries
This is a field recording that Everett made for Mack McCormick, off a compilation album of McCormick’s recordings called Playing for the Man at the Door, released by Smithsonian Folkways Records on August 4
McCormick was a blues fan who became an advocate and documentarian of the genre, photographing and recording southern musicians in their own neighbourhoods and developing lifelong relationships with those he interviewed
He died in 2015 without ever releasing most of his recordings, so this album is the very first compilation of music from his collection, and it presents songs both by widely known musicians, and by performers unknown even to scholars of the blues
We’ll hear 3 other recordings from the album after this
This song was recorded in 1959 in Houston, Texas
The liner notes say that “after the invention of the telephone, the phrase ‘Hello Central’ found its way into many songs”
Joe Patterson - Quills
Patterson was known for playing the quills, a traditional African American instrument consisting of reeds bound together and blown into like a pan pipe
He was invited by the folklorist Ralph Rinzler to perform at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, and McCormick, who was interested in quills, later learned of Patterson through Rinzler
McCormick found him in a state psychiatric institution outside of Mobile, Alabama, and learned that Patterson had no instruments in the facility
He had someone harvest local cane reeds, and Patterson made a new set of quills using hospital tape to bind the reeds, and played them as McCormick recorded him
This is one of those recordings, from 1968
Lightnin’ Hopkins - Corrine, Corrina
Hopkins was a country blues musician from Texas who gained a broader audience with the folk revival of the 1960s after recording and performing around Texas in the 40s and 50s
He continued to tour and record throughout the 60s and 70s, and was Houston, Texas’s poet in residence for 35 years
McCormick recorded this in July of 1959
Hopkins told him that the song was “older than me twice, I sang it when I was young, and my daddy said he sang it when young, it may be older than him twice.”
Jimmy Womack - Atomic Energy
Son Volt - I’ve Got to Know
They’re a rock band that was formed by Jay Farrar in 1994 after his first band, Uncle Tupelo, split up
This recording is from a 2005 retrospective album, and hadn’t previously been released
The song is by Woody Guthrie, who wrote it later in life, and it’s been widely recorded since
It uses the tune of the hymn “Farther Along”
Fiver - Sacco & Vanzetti
Stage name of Toronto-based artist Simone Schmidt
This is off their 2022 album Soundtrack to A More Radiant Sphere: The Joe Wallace Mixtape
It was commissioned for the recent documentary A More Radiant Sphere, which tells the story of Joe Wallace, a Canadian communist, political prisoner and poet who was largely ignored within the country but admired in Eastern Europe and Russia
Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrant anarchists accused of murdering two men during an armed robbery in Massachusetts in 1920, and later executed
Though they were sentenced to death, they appealed several times on several factors that seriously brought into question the guilt of the two men and raised questions about the biases of the jury that sentenced them
They were nonetheless executed in 1927, and 60 years later in 1987, the governor of Massachusetts finally issued a proclamation that the two men had been unfairly tried and convicted
Bob Dylan - Lone Pilgrim
Recorded in 1993 for his album World Gone Wrong
He says of this song: “LONE PILGRIM is from an old Doc Watson record. what attracts me to the song is how the lunacy of trying to fool the self is set aside at some given point. salvation & the needs of mankind are prominent & hegemony takes a breathing spell. "my soul flew to mansions on high" what's essentially true is virtual reality. technology to wipe out truth is now available. not everybody can afford it but it's available. when the cost comes down look out! there wont be songs like these anymore. factually there aren't any now.”
The song was written by B.F. White & Adger M. Pace
Wade Hemsworth - The Franklin Expedition
A respected Canadian folksinger from Brantford, Ontario, known for songs like “The Black Fly Song,” “The Logdriver’s Waltz,” and “The Wild Goose”
The song is about the ill-fated 1845 voyage of Sir John Franklin and his crew, on which they intended to search for the Northwest Passage
It was written in England at the time the search for the Expedition was going on, and this fragment was brought to Newfoundland
It’s from Hemsworth’s 1955 album Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods
Pharis & Jason Romero - Lay Down in Sorrow
Married duo from Horsefly, BC
This is from their 2011 album A Passing Glimpse
John Bon - Way Keriba Ged
From a 1964 album of Aboriginal Australian music from Western Australia, North Queensland, and the Torres Strait
John Bon was about 20 when he recorded music 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 title translates to “This is Our Island”
Harrison Kennedy - Mountain Stomp
Hamilton, ON artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
From his 2017 album Who U Tellin’?
Frank Proffitt - Reuben Train
Appalachian musician who inspired younger musicians during the 60s folk revival to play the traditional 5-string banjo
Was known as a skilled carpenter and luthier who made and played his own banjos and dulcimers
This is from the 1962 album Frank Proffitt of Reese, North Carolina
Uncle Sinner - Old Reuben
From Winnipeg
Off his 2015 album Let the Devil In
It was a popular tune among banjo players, fiddlers, and harmonica players in the southern US
He specifically got his version from Banjo Bill Cornett
Eli West - Lonesome Valley
He’s a musician from Seattle
This is from his 2016 album The Both
American traditional gospel folk song first recorded by old-time musician David Miller in 1927
Sis Cunningham - How Can You Keep On Movin’
Important member of the folk community for many years
Founding editor of Broadside Magazine, an important publication for the Greenwich Village folk scene
One of the first people to be blacklisted as a communist sympathiser in post WWII America
This is from the 1976 album Sundown
The liner notes say the song “comes out of the late thirties when certain states, especially California, were posting signs at roads crossing their borders: NO MORE MIGRATION. Armed guards were stationed at these points to direct homeseekers to turn around and ‘keep moving’.”
Phil Ochs - What Are You Fighting For
He was an American protest singer from the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene
This is from an issue of Broadside Magazine that consists entirely of Ochs’ songs, from 1976
Gordon Bok - The Wreck of the Green Cove
Bok is a folklorist and musician from Maine who’s released almost 40 albums since the mid-1960s
This is off his 1990 album Return to the Land, released by Folk Legacy Records
This song was written by the Canadian musician, photographer, and anthropologist Stanley Triggs in 1965
Mike Seeger - The New Market Wreck
Seeger was a folklorist and musician who co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s
This is from his 1966 album Tipple, Loom & Rail: Songs of the Industrialization of the South
The New Market Wreck happened on September 24, 1904, when two Southern Railway trains collided near the station in New Market, Tennessee
62 people were killed
The song was composed by Robert Hugh Brooks in 1906, and published as a broadside with a photo of the wreck on the back
George Davis - The Wreck of Main Line Number 4
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 from his 1967 album When Kentucky Had No Union Men
Sheila Kay Adams - My Dearest Dear
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 song, “My Dearest Dear,” is from her album of the same name from 2000
This is a traditional song that was found in the Ozarks and the Appalachian region after the American Civil War
Most of the lyrics used today come from Carl Sandburg’s 1927 book The American Songbag, and many versions seem to be influenced by Tommy Jarrell’s 1978 recording
George & Gerry Armstrong - Peggy-O
They were a married duo of musicians and musicologists from Chicago who were instrumental to the creation of the Old Town School of Folk Music, and helped organise the first University of Chicago Folk Festival
This is from the only record they made together, Simple Gifts, from 1961
It’s an American folk song that comes comes from the Scottish folk song “The Bonnie Lass o’ Fyvie”
They mainly got the song from a version collected in 1908 by Olive Dame Campbell
Ian & Sylvia - The Ghost Lover
Ian & Sylvia performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975
This is an English folk ballad, though several versions were collected by Maud Karpeles in Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland either in the late 20s or early 30s, which is likely where Ian & Sylvia got their version from
Pedro Pietri - The Last Game of the World Series
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
Bright Moon Quartet - I See the Sign of Judgment
They were a gospel quartet from North Carolina that recorded for Bluebird Records in 1936
This is a traditional gospel song from the southern US
We’ll hear another version of it after this
Bessie Jones, Henry Morrison, Georgia Sea Island Singers - Sign of Judgment
Bessie Jones is 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, a folk music ensemble that’s been around since the early 1900s
That one was recorded October 12, 1959 in Saint Simons, Georgia
Ken Whiteley - That’s Alright
Ken Whiteley is a musician from Toronto who’s been playing folk music since the early 1970s
This song is from his 2007 album One World Blues
“That’s Alright” is a traditional gospel song that’s likely a simplification of an older spiritual
Alan Mills - C’est l’Aviron
Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec
Made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for his contributions to Canadian folklore
This song originated in France, with parts of it dating back to the 15th century, though it is best known in Canada as a voyageur song
It’s from Mills’ 1952 album Folk Songs of French Canada
Kenneth Faulkner, Edmund Henneberry - The False Knight Upon the Road
Off a 1956 album of folk music from Nova Scotia, collected by the folklorist Helen Creighton
A field recording from Devil’s Island, Nova Scotia
Creighton describes the ballad as “one of the oldest versions of any English or Scottish popular ballad found anywhere”
She also notes that in “olden times” a suitor could win a lady’s hand by cleverly solving riddles, and vice versa
Old Man Luedecke - I’m Fine (I am, I am)
From Chester, NS
Off his 2012 album Tender Is The Night
Buffy Sainte-Marie - He Lived Alone in Town
Folk artist born on the Piapot Plains Cree First Nation Reserve in Saskatchewan
She has been active since the early 1960s and her work largely focuses on Indigenous issues
This song was written by Buffy Sainte-Marie and recorded in 1964
The folk musician Patrick Sky plays guitar on it
Kim Barlow - I Dyed My Petticoat Red
She was born in Montreal, and raised in rural Nova Scotia, though she also spent about two decades living in the Yukon
This is a traditional Irish tune
Red-dyed petticoats were a sign of loyalty to a woman’s betrothed
Precious Bryant - Fever
She was an American musician described as one of Georgia’s great blueswomen
She was first recorded by George Mitchell in 1967, and by the mid 1980s her fanbase had grown enough for her to perform internationally
This is off her 2005 album My Name is Precious
Sheesham and Lotus - Forked Deer
From Wolfe Island, ON
American old-time dance tune
