Barking Dog: September 15, 2022
We’re going to kick off the show with music from two people who were born on this day, September 15:
Roy Acuff, The Smoky Mountain Boys - One Old Shirt
The first is Roy Acuff, a very influential country musician from Tennessee who’s known as the King of Country Music
He was born 121 years ago
Acuff began his career in the 30s as the leader of the group the Smoky Mountain Boys, who play with him on this one from 1938
It’s a version of Hard, Ain’t It Hard, which is related to the British ballad The Butcher Boy, which was a popular song for country musicians in the 20s and 30s
Margot Loyola - La Tejendera
She was a Chilean folksinger and ethnographer who was born 104 years ago today
On top of studying the traditional music of her own country, she also studied the indigenous music of Peru, as well as Argentine and Uruguayan folk music and dances
The title translates to The Weaver
The New Lost City Ramblers - Talking Hard Luck
John Cohen, Mike Seeger, Tom Paley, formed 1958, focused on playing music taken from 78s from the 20s and 30s
From 1978
They got this one from Lonnie Glosson’s 1936 song Arkansas Hard Luck Blues
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 earned a living playing in coffee houses in the 1960s
About a train line that ran across southern BC
Ana Perez - Where Does It Lead?
Off the 1962 album Folk Music of Washington Square
Washington Square Park was where all the New York City folksingers and folk musicians gathered to play together and swap songs in the 1950s and 60s
Lamont Tilden - The Murder of FC Benwell
From the 1958 album Folk Songs of Ontario
Singer a radio announcer from Toronto
Ballad about a famous Ontario murder case that happened in 1890
Tune comes from the American ballad Charles Guiteau, President Garfield’s assassin
Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Kaye, David Mansfield, Marc Ribot - New Stanzas for Amazing Grace
This was Ginsberg’s final musical project, which was released in July of 1996, 9 months before his death
He’s joined by David Mansfield, Marc Ribot, and Lenny Kaye on this one, though other tracks on the album feature Paul McCartney and Philip Glass
This is a musical version of a poem he composed at the request of the poet Ed Sanders
Angel Olsen - The Blacksmith
She’s a contemporary American musician
From the 2015 tribute album Shirley Inspired, which is a compilation album in honour of the English folk singer Shirley Collins’ 80th birthday
A traditional English folk song first collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams in Herefordshire in 1909
Joanne Shenandoah - I May Want a Man
From the 1995 album Heartbeat: Voices of First Nations Women
She was a Grammy award-winning musician and composer from the Oneida Indian Nation, based in New York, and she performed internationally, including at Carnegie Hall and the Vatican
This love song is by her sister, Danielle
Ben Lucien Burman - The Shanty Boats
He was an author and journalist from Kentucky
From a 1956 album of songs & stories of the Mississippi River
Harmonica player Eddy Manson gives musical accompaniment to that one
Orlo Brandon - The Merrimac
From an album called Songs of the Great Lakes, recorded by the folklorist Edith Fowke and released in 1964
A Civil War ballad commemorating the fight of the Union ship Cumberland with the Confederate Merrimac off the coast of Virginia in March of 1862
The Cumberland, a wooden ship, quickly sank after it was rammed by the iron-clad Merrimac
There were many poems written about the battle, though none reached the same level of popularity as two ballads that were published shortly after the event
Fowke says that “the extent to which the battle between the Cumberland and the Merrimac captured the imagination of the folk who preserve songs is indicated by the fact that [these ballads] were sung not only throughout the northern United States as might be expected, but also in the Canadian maritimes and Ontario
Brandon’s version isn’t as well preserved as the one after it
Ellen Stekert - The Cumberland and the Merrimac
From Long Island
Obtained a Master’s degree in folklore from Indiana University
Learned the 18 lumberjack songs on this 1958 album from one man named Ezra “Fuzzy” Barhight
This is the rarer of the two ballads, and it was a favourite with lumberjacks
Ferron - I Am Hungry
She’s a Canadian 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
Morley Loon - Wee Jee
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
This one’s from his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
The title translates to “Is It Over”
Hank Ferguson - One Life’s as Long as Any Man Can Live
From his 1968 album Behind These Walls
Folklorist Bruce Jackson first met Ferguson on a visit to Indiana State Penitentiary during his 15-year-long project documenting prison culture
Ferguson was an inmate nearing his release at the time, and he recorded the songs at his home in Tennessee shortly after his release
He said of this song:
"I knew a man in here once—he was sentenced to the electric chair and I think he beat it by about twenty-four hours at one time. His sentence was commuted from 'death' to 'triple life'—that's life three times. Now, we've often wondered, how can a man live three lives? But he said, one day, to me—I never will forget—he said, 'I believe I could make the first one, or the second one; it's the third one that's going to do me in.' But, anyway, I wrote a song about him and this is it."
Conor Oberst - The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska
During the pandemic, Randall Poster, a music supervisor for filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson, became highly aware of the birds he could hear in his neighbourhood
He and his colleague, Rebecca Reagan, came up with the idea to invite musicians to create music built around birdsong
The result was For the Birds: The Birdsong Project, a collection of 242 songs and poems about birds by countless artists
We’re going to hear 3 different pieces from this collection now, as well as another bird-related track from a different album
This first one is a poem by Billy Collins, the American Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, and New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006
During the lockdown period of the pandemic, Collins appeared daily on Facebook Live to read poems and talk about poetry
This one is read by Conor Oberst, a musician from Nebraska who’s known for his work with the band Bright Eyes
It’s from Collins’s 2013 book Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems
James Reaney - The Crow
From the 1958 album Six Toronto Poets
Reaney was a poet from Stratford, Ontario who became one of Canada’s best-known poets
He was a professor at the University of Manitoba in the 1950s, and later taught at the University of Western Ontario
This one is from his first book of poems, The Red Heart, from 1949
Bob Balaban - The Hidden Singer
Also from the Birdsong Project
Balaban is a well-known American actor, known for his work in Christopher Guest’s comedies, Wes Anderson’s films, and films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Midnight cowboy
The poem is by American poet, writer, environmental activist, and farmer Wendell Berry
Sam Amidon - Cuckoo
From the Birdsong Project
Contemporary folk artist from Vermont
A traditional English folk song, though it’s also popular in the US, Canada, Scotland, and Ireland
Though Amidon recorded another version of the song for his 2020 self-titled album, this one takes more strongly after older recordings of the song
Blind Willie McTell - Don’t You See How This World Made a Change
He was a piedmont blues and ragtime artist who made many recordings with different companies under different names, but who never had a major hit
Despite his lack of commercial success, he actively played and recorded during the 40s and 50s, unlike many of his peers
He did not live to see the folk revival of the 1960s through which many other bluesmen were rediscovered, but he influenced many artists, including Taj Mahal and The White Stripes
Recorded in New York City in September of 1933
Uncle Sinner - Glory in the Meeting House
From Winnipeg
From his 2020 album Trouble of This World
Old-time breakdown from the Kentucky River basin
Dave Van Ronk - Spike Driver Blues
A member of the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City, known as the “Mayor of MacDougal Street”, MacDougal Street being where practically every coffeehouse was located in the 60s
He got this one from Mississippi John Hurt, one of his major musical influences, who recorded it in 1928
Hurt’s version of the song was later included on Harry Smith’s incredibly influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music
This is one of several songs about the legend of John Henry, a railroad worker who raced a steam drill and won, but died shortly after
Hurt learned it from a railroad worker named Walter Jackson in 1916, when he was also working on the rails
Max Hunter - The Blue Ridge Mountains
From his 1963 album of Ozark Folksongs and Ballads
He collected nearly 1600 folk songs from the Ozarks while working as a travelling salesman between the 50s and 70s
His collection is now held by the Springfield-Greene County Library in Springfield, Missouri, though Missouri State University has digitised the full collection and has made it available online
Hunter got this one from Frances Majors, a student at the University of Arkansas, who learned it from Sam Stewart of Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1958
It shares lines with the songs “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” “Blue Stone Mountain,” and “My Father Was a Gambler,” which are all sung to the same tune
Herta Marshall - Pretty Saro
She began folk singing while on a tour with Burl Ives, and later sang and acted with Woody Guthrie and Will Geer
English folk ballad from the early 1700s
One of the folk songs that died out in England but was rediscovered in the Appalachian region in the early 20th century, preserved through the strong oral tradition of that area
Bruce Cockburn - It Won’t Be Long
Canadian singer-songwriter and skilled guitarist who’s been playing professionally for over 40 years
From his 1974 album Salt, Sun and Time
Eagle Jubilee Four - No More Weeping and Wailing
They were a gospel group that recorded for ARC records in South Carolina in 1938
This is a traditional gospel song from at least the early 20th century
Unspecified - Apakura (dirge)
From the 1952 Folkways album Maori Songs of New Zealand
This is a lament belonging to the Tuhoe tribe, and it’s chanted while a body is lying in state or at the funeral ceremony
The words refer to the existence of a supreme being known as Io Matua Kore
The Song Swappers - Banuwa Yo
Group of musicians with no formal music training, whose mission was to provide music that was accessible and easy to learn for all listeners, with songs selected to encourage group singing
Pete Seeger, the influential American folk singer and banjo player, leads this one
It’s a Liberian folk song which Liberian students at Western Reserve University in Ohio taught to their classmates
The liner notes for this album state that an annual folk festival in the city of Monrovia was held at a football stadium, and the song was sung by the entire audience
The lyrics mean “Don’t cry, pretty little girl, don’t cry”
Harrison Kennedy - Run-A-Round Blues
Harrison Kennedy a Hamilton artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
From his 2007 album High Country Blues
Tom Turner - Old Breakdown
A country blues singer and guitarist from Mississippi who was recorded by folk song collector and festival curator George Mitchell in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1967
Howie Mitchell - Kitty Alone
A Virginian dulcimer player who was first introduced to the instrument during the folk revival of the 1950s
He learned this lullaby from the folksinger Logan English, who performed it at a concert at Oberlin College in 1955
The first verse, refrain, and tune are how English performed them, though the second verse is from the song Buckeye Jim, and Mitchell made up the rest of the lyrics
The song is likely related to the Scottish drinking song “We’re All Jolly Fools”
Unspecified - Spider / Myanoh
From an album of Grenadian stories and songs, collected in 1957 by Emory Cook
OJ Abbott and Pete Seeger - Barley Grain
This is a version of the song John Barleycorn Must Die, the earliest known version of which was printed as a broadside in 1620
The song personifies barley, going through the process of planting, reaping, threshing, milling, and brewing of the grain
Abbott learned his version from Owen McCann, who he worked with on a farm 60 years before this recording was made
This is from an album of recordings made at the 1959 and 1960 Newport Folk Festivals
Bill Crofut, Stephen Addiss - Sally Garden
From a 1964 album by multi-instrumentalists Stephen Addiss and Bill Crofut
They travelled to China, Southeast Asia, and Africa in the early 1960s as part of the State Department’s Cultural Exchange Program
The album was a result of their journey, and includes both songs from their own repertoire and songs they learned on their trip
This is a short poem by Yeats set to a folk tune
Kaia Kater - Come and Rest
Grenadian-Canadian artist based in Toronto
Off her 2015 album Sorrow Bound
Inge Wessels - The Tugboat Song
She was a folksinger who came from a long line of Dutch sailors
She immigrated to BC in 1970, where she spent several years working on tugboats, and she wrote this one in 1979 while onboard a boat called the Queen
Daniel Koulack & Karrnnel - Annie and the Gals Fishing in Winnipeg
