Barking Dog: September 14, 2023
Kaia Kater - Valley Forge
Grenadian-Canadian musician from Toronto, ON
From her 2015 album Sorrow Bound
Tune is an old-time American reel
Joe Hickerson - Woad
Folk singer and songleader from Illinois
Was Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress for 35 years
Known for his work as a lecturer, researcher, and performer
Hickerson says “For those unacquainted with the mysteries of ancient colouration, Woad refers to a brassicaceous plant and to the bluish-purple dye derived therefrom, which was used by ancient Britons at the time of Julius Caesar for ritualistic purposes”
Arthur Russell - I Wish I Had a Brother
He was a cellist, singer, composer, and producer from Iowa who was part of the New York avant garde scene in the 1970s
He died from AIDS in 1992 at the age of 40 when his work was still somewhat obscure, but rereleases, books, and a documentary about him brought more attention to his work throughout the 2000s, and more of his recordings have been released over time
This is off the 2019 compilation album Iowa Dream
Eli Conley - All That Ends
He’s a folk musician from Virginia who states that his songs, “tell stories that aren’t often reflected in roots music,” and that he writes music for “queer and trans folks, justice seekers, and anyone who doesn’t easily fit in a box.”
This one is off his 2017 album Strong and Tender
IC Glee Quartet - I’m So Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always
They were a quartet of Illinois Central Railroad employees based in Memphis, who travelled on the New Orleans to Chicago line, singing on the trains and at every major stop
They recorded this one for OKeh Records in 1929
It’s a traditional American gospel song
Skip James - I’m So Glad
James was from Bentonia, Mississippi
He first recorded for Paramount in 1931, but his recordings did not sell well due to the Great Depression, and he faded into obscurity until the 1960s, when his music was rediscovered by blues fans, and he appeared at folk and blues festivals across the US, recorded several albums, and performed at concerts
This was recorded in New York City in 1966 for his album called Today!
The Stanley Brothers - Death Is Only A Dream
Carter and Ralph Stanley, a bluegrass duo who performed with their band the Clinch Mountain Boys
This is a gospel song written by Rev. CW Ray and AJ Buchanan in 1892
The Stanley Brothers recorded it in 1947
John Fahey - Poor Boy Long Ways From Home
He was the founder of Takoma Records, and one of three guitarists who aimed to raise steel string guitar to the level of a concert instrument
He’s considered the originator of the American primitive guitar genre
This is from his 1959 album Blind Joe Death
Traditional blues song of unknown origin also known as “Poor Boy Blues”
Fahey got his version from the Piedmont blues musician Barbecue Bob
Morley Loon - Wee Jee
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 “Is It Over”
Bob Dylan - Hard Travelin’
This is a Woody Guthrie song, recorded for a radio show hosted by Cynthia Gooding called Folksinger’s Choice on March 11, 1962
Fred Cockerham - Frankie Baker
Cockerham was a fiddle and banjo player from North Carolina
This is off musician, musicologist, photographer, and filmmaker John Cohen’s 1975 compilation album High Atmosphere, which is composed of recordings he made in 1965 of Appalachian folk music in North Carolina and Virginia
This is a traditional American song inspired by multiple murders in the late 1800s
It’s also known as Frankie and Albert
John Jackson - Frankie and Johnny
He was a piedmont blues musician from Virginia who had given up playing music in his community by the time folklorist Chuck Perdue found him in 1949
Arhoolie Records released his first recordings in the early 60s, and he toured Europe, played folk festivals, including Winnipeg Folk Fest in 1977, and recorded for a few other record companies during that time
Old Man Luedecke - Old High Way of Love
From Chester, NS
Off his 2015 album Domestic Eccentric, which he recorded inside a cabin he built in his backyard
Lucinda Williams - Little Darling Pal of Mine
She’s a musician from Louisiana who’s been performing for over 40 years
This one’s from her 1979 album Ramblin’ on My Mind
A traditional song first recorded by the Carter Family in 1928
Angel Olsen - Greenville
She’s a contemporary American musician
This track was widely released just a few days ago
It’s a version of Lucinda Williams’ song, from the 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Stanley Triggs - The Kettle Valley Line
An anthropologist and photographer who worked in logging camps, construction camps, in forestry, with survey crews, and on railroad gangs in BC
Also worked as a freelance photographer and played his music in coffee houses in the 1960s
This is a song about a scenic railway that ran from Hope, BC to Lethbridge, AB, from the perspective of a hobo riding the rails during the Great Depression
It was written by Ean Hay
Odetta - God’s Gonna Cut You Down
Born in Birmingham, Alabama
Had operatic vocal training from the age of 13
Traditional American song first recorded by the Golden Gate Quartet in 1946
Odetta included it on her 1956 album Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues
Uncle Sinner - Oh Death
From Winnipeg
Off his album Let the Devil In from 2015
It’s his version of Charley Patton’s song
Hayes McMullan - Goin’ Where the Chilly Winds Don’t Blow
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
This song is related to “Going Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” with both categorised as versions of “Lonesome Road Blues”
All these songs come from a traditional Ozark fiddle tune
Morris Houlihan - Rolling Home
This is from an album of songs from the outports of the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, compiled by MacEdward Leach and released in 1966
These outports had been settled by Irish immigrants during the famine
Leach described the record as “a sampling of what one would hear sitting in an out-port kitchen after supper was cleared away. The neighbors would drift in, ease themselves on the benches around the walls, get pipes going, discuss all the events of the day -- the state of the weather, the luck with the fish”
Sea shanty sung by Morris Houlihan of Pouch Cove
It was customary to sing this song when the anchor was weighed in advance of heading back home after a long voyage
Isaac Curry - Casey Jones
This is from a 1978 album of non-blues secular African American music from Virginia
Curry was known as “Uncle Boo” in his region, and while he played guitar and banjo, he was particularly known for his accordion playing
He learned this song from his father, William Curry, who also played it on accordion
It’s a traditional American song about how Casey Jones and his fireman Sim Webb raced their locomotive to make up for lost time on April 30, 1900, not knowing that there was another train ahead of them on the line
Jones’s friend, Wallace Saunders, started singing the song soon after Jones’s death, to the tune of a popular song known as Jimmie Jones
Kacy & Clayton - Go And Leave Me
Wood Mountain SK
This song is also known as “Fond Affection,” and it’s known all across England and Ireland, and also found in Newfoundland
Willie Dunn - I Pity the Country
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
That one is off his 1972 self-titled album
Utah Phillips - The rich will not permit you to vote away their wealth
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 the 2011 album Making Speech Free, recorded live in May of 1999
The Lapsey Band - When I Lay My Burden Down
This is from an album of Black country brass band music from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi from 1955
Brass music has a long history in the United States, and Black brass bands started popping up just after Emancipation in 1863
Their repertoire came from church and secular songs, often songs that they had sung before blowing them through horns, and they learned all their songs by ear
By all indications, this tradition of country brass music formed a necessary ingredient of the dance music that evolved into jazz in New Orleans
It’s an instrumental version of the traditional American spiritual “When I Lay My Burden Down,” which has been recorded in a number of genres
The melody is very similar to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”
Green Paschal - Lay My Burden Down
He was a musician from Georgia who began playing music in the 1950s, when he was in his 30s or 40s
Recorded in Talbottom, Georgia in 1969 by the field researcher and festival curator George Mitchell
Harry Dean Stanton - Hand Me Down My Walking Cane
He was a musician from Kentucky, though he’s probably better known for his acting career, which included credits in films like Cool Hand Luke, Alien, Pretty in Pink, and Straight Time, which is where this recording comes from
This is an American song, possibly traditional, though it’s also been credited to James A Bland, who may have compiled it in 1880 based on a version labourers sang on the campus of Howard University
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Little Boxes (Petites Boites)
They’re sisters who learned piano from village nuns when living in the Laurentian mountains as children
They started writing and performing their own songs in Montreal in 1960s
This is from the 2001 album If I Had a Song: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Vol. 2, though the song was written by Malvina Reynolds
Connie Converse - Fortune’s Child
Began writing songs and performing for friends in NYC in the early 1950s but gave up after a decade of failed attempts at a music career and moved to Michigan to work at a university
In 1974 she wrote many letters to friends and family suggesting that she intended to start a new life somewhere else
Shortly after that she packed her things into her car and drove off, and was never seen again
Her music was widely rediscovered in 2004 when her friend Gene Deitch, who had recorded a number of her songs, played some of them on a radio show on the public radio station WNYC
In 2009 an album of 17 home recordings was released, called How Sad, How Lovely
This is from the third collection of her music that’s been released, called Musicks, which came out on August 11
Ferron - Light of My Light
She’s a musician and poet from BC
This version is off her 2013 album Thunder and Lighten-ing, though the song originally appeared on her 1978 album Backed Up
Ed Young, Lonnie Young Sr., GD Young - Hen Duck
They were brothers from Mississippi—Ed played the fife, Lonnie played bass drum, and G.D. Young played snares
They later called themselves the Southern Fife and Drum Corps, and they appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and a Friends of Old-Time Music concert in the 1960s
This was recorded by the folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in September of 1959 at the home of Ed Young in Como, Mississippi
“Hen Duck” is related to “Crawdad Song,” which developed both from play-party traditions and the blues, and shares lyrics with this song
Nancy Raven - Crawdad Song
She’s a children’s musician based in Nevada
That’s from her 2003 album People & Animal Songs
That version contains the “what did the hen duck say to the drake” line, which “Hen Duck” also uses
The Firesiders - Crawdad Song
From an album called The Songs of Camp, which was recorded for Folkways at a children’s sleepaway camp in Hancock, Vermont, in 1958
This song is performed by the Firesiders, 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
Eddie Bowles - Crawdad Song
He was a musician originally from New Orleans who spent most of his life in Cedar Falls, Iowa
That’s from an album of recordings made by the folklorist Art Rosenbaum in 1976, when Bowles was in his 90s
Si Kahn - The Gap ($8,825 An Hour)
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
This is from his 2004 album We’re Still Here
Pete Seeger - If a Revolution Comes to My Country
Seeger was a folk singer and an activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and peace through his music
This song was released in 1977 as part of the “What Now People” record series that advocated song as political movement
Pharis & Jason Romero - The Dying Soldier
Married duo from Horsefly, BC
This is a song from the American Civil War, and is reminiscent of many other songs like “The Cowboy’s Lament” and “The Sailor’s Grave”
From their 2015 album A Wanderer I’ll Stay
Angelo Dornan - Pretty Susan
Folksinger from New Brunswick who lived most of his life in Alberta
Retired to his birthplace in his 60s, where researcher Helen Creighton collected about 135 traditional songs from him in the 1950s for use in her book of New Brunswick music
From an album of lumber and river songs from the Miramichi Folk Festival in Newcastle, NB
Canadian version of an Irish ballad
Genticorum - Cardeuse et Lachance
Off their new album, Au cœur de l’aube
