Barking Dog: September 22, 2022
Buster “Buzz” Ezell - Salt Water Blues
He was a blues singer, guitarist, and harmonica player who was recorded by the Library of Congress in Fort Valley, Georgia, in 1941 and 1943
Kacy & Clayton - Green Grows the Laurel
From Wood Mountain, SK
Second cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum who grew up playing music together on their family’s ranch
Song is British in origin though widespread in the US as well
Hubby Jenkins - Banjo Sam
American multi-instrumentalist from New York City
A current member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a contemporary stringband
There seem to be about three completely unrelated songs called “Banjo Sam”, but that’s a traditional song
It seems as though it comes from a number of sources, and has slowly become its own song over time
It’s related to songs like “Lulu”, “Hook and Line”, and “Jawbone”
We also hear a little hint of “Get Along Home, Cindy” in there
Pharis & Jason Romero - Black Guard Mary
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 he plays on that song is named “Big Blue”, and it was built in 2020 and was influenced by details from 19th-century banjos
Pharis wrote the words of this song after reading about the entourage that followed royalty in old Britain
She wrote it to suit Jason’s playing style
David Francey - Broken Glass
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
He’s now been performing professionally for over 20 years
From his 2003 album Skating Rink
Pete Seeger - Quite Early Morning
Pete Seeger was a very influential folk singer and activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and international disarmament, and other important social causes through his music
In 2012, he said, “I still think the human race has a 50/50 chance to be here in a century from now, and I still stick with the song I wrote about 40 years ago, ‘Quite Early Morning’”
He recorded this version in 2013, when he was almost 94 years old
Conor Oberst, Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings - Four Strong Winds
Oberst is a musician from Nebraska who’s known for his work with his band Bright Eyes
Welch and Rawlings are one of the best-known contemporary American roots duos, and they’ve been nominated for an Academy Awards and have won a Grammy together for their 2020 album All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone)
Ian Tyson composed this song in about 20 minutes while at his manager’s apartment in NYC in 1961
Joe Hickerson - Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie
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
Cowboy folk song also known as “The Cowboy’s Lament” and “The Dying Cowboy”
Adaptation of a sea song called “The Sailor's Grave” which was written by Edwin Hubbell Chapin and published in 1839
Ferron - The Wind’s All a Whisper
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
Buddy Boy Hawkins - Voice Throwin’ Blues
He was a country blues musician from either Alabama or Mississippi, and although he only recorded 12 songs during his two year recording career between 1927 and 1929, he was an influential figure in Black country music
Not much is known about him outside of his recording career, but this is a version of “Hesitation Blues” in which he employs two voices, one supposedly a ventriloquist's dummy
The song is a popular blues song that was adapted from a traditional song
The verses tend to vary widely between versions, but the refrain, as we hear on the next three songs, is pretty consistent
Taj Mahal - Hesitation Blues
Grammy-award-winning musician from New York City with a career spanning over 50 years
He recorded his version of the song live in San Francisco in 1966
Star Thistle - Hesitation Blues
A project from the mind of Winnipeg artist Uncle Sinner
This version of the song is from his debut album, The Best of Star Thistle, released in 2020
Harry and Jeanie West - What Are They Doing in Heaven Today
From a 1957 album of popular gospel songs
Harry was from Virginia and Jeanie was from North Carolina
They first met when they both attended the folk festival in Jeanie’s hometown of Asheville, and the following year, the festival director announced their marriage onstage at the Asheville auditorium
Funnily enough, Jeanie’s last name was already West before she married, so she kept her name
It’s a hymn by Charles Albert Tindley, written in 1901
Babe Stovall - The Ship Is at the Landing
Babe an American Delta blues singer and guitarist from Mississippi
He likely recorded this one in 1968 in New Orleans
There isn’t really any information available about this song, and it only seems to have been recorded by one other group, the Silver Leaf Quartette of Norfolk, in 1928
Mississippi John Hurt - Corrina, Corrina
American country blues singer and guitarist who taught himself guitar around the age of nine
This is a country blues song first recorded by Bo Carter in 1928, the same year Mississippi John Hurt began his recording career
Herta Marshall - Down in the Willow Garden
She began folk singing while on a tour with Burl Ives, and later sang and acted with Woody Guthrie and Will Geer
Traditional murder ballad
Originated in Ireland from a number of sources in the early 19th century but became popular in the Appalachian region of the US in the early 20th century
It’s played to the tune of the song “Rosin the Beau”
Anna & Elizabeth - Ida Red
Contemporary folk duo from Vermont and Virginia, respectively
A traditional American fiddle tune
Their version is from their eponymous 2015 album
Ed Young, Lonnie Young Sr., GD Young - Ida Reed
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
Recorded almost exactly 63 years ago today in Como, Mississippi on September 21, 1959
They were recorded by the folklorist Alan Lomax, who made the very first recordings of fife and drum music in 1942, at a time when the rest of America wasn’t really aware the style was still being played
Lomax described it was “the greatest surprise of all my collecting trips in America”
The roots of Black fife and drum music stretch back to the American Revolutionary War, when the bands accompanied local militias, though by 1959, they played exclusively for entertainment at local events
This one is likely a local variation of Ida Red
Mungo Martin - Wolf Song
From a 1974 album of west coast Indigenous music recorded by Dr. Ida Halpern
Halpern was originally from Austria, but arrived in Canada in 1944 to flee Nazism
She’s known mainly for her work with the First Nations people of British Columbia, which she conducted at a time when the government was actively working against efforts to celebrate and preserve Indigenous cultures in Canada
Her work paved the way for more recent efforts for reciprocal relationships between ethnographers and the people whose work they study
Her contributions and many recordings are extremely valuable for the preservation of these older songs, though her work has been largely overlooked by anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnomusicologists even in recent years
Chief Mungo Martin was a Kwakwaka'wakw carver and singer considered one of the most influential carvers of the region
He was musically trained by his uncle, who was a song maker
In his 20s, he studied carving with his stepfather and with his uncle, though the demand for carvings diminished as the traditional way of life became less common, and Martin became a fisherman for a time
In 1947, the University of British Columbia asked him to restore some totem poles, and after that, he was commissioned to carve new totem poles and construct a Kwakwaka'wakw "big house" in Thunderbird Park in Victoria, BC, which both still stand today
He continued working as a carver until his death in 1962, and became a mentor for younger generations of Indigenous artists
While he was living in Vancouver, Martin met with Halpern weekly and recorded 124 songs to help preserve his traditional culture
He was apparently reproached by other chiefs for giving away his songs, but said, “I was a sick man when starting to sing for her. Now after the year’s singing I sang myself to health and am well again.”
He inherited this song, originally a Naa-chaa-nulth song, through marriage
His wife Abaya Martin, also an artist, joins him on this song
John L Handcox - Raggedy, Raggedy Are We
He was a tenant farmer and union activist from Arkansas, known for his songs and poetry
Charles Seeger and Sidney Robertson recorded him for the Library of Congress in 1937, and other political folksingers began performing his songs
He receded back into obscurity after these recordings, but reemerged in the 1980s for the 50th anniversary of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Memphis
Some of his popular songs include “Planter and the Sharecropper”, “Roll the Union On”, and “Mean Things”
He wrote this one in 1936
Harrison Kennedy - Gonna Be Alright
Harrison Kennedy a Hamilton artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
From his 2007 album High Country Blues
Tim Heidecker - To The Men
He’s a comedian and musician from Pennsylvania known particularly as part of the comedy duo Tim & Eric
He released this single in 2019 after restrictive anti-abortion laws passed in Alabama
Since the overturning of Roe V. Wade in the United States in June, abortions are now banned in at least 14 states, while in many others, the fight over abortion access is still ongoing
Unspecified - Ballada Stoczniowca (Ballad from a Shipyard)
From a 1981 album of songs from the New Polish Labour Movement, which began when Lech Walesa began the trade union movement Solidarity in 1980
It played an important role in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe
A ballad adapted from old Polish storytelling tradition, to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “North Country Blues”
Kathy Fire - Whethermen Song
She was a lesbian folksinger active during the 70s and 80s
This song is off her only release, Songs of Fire: Songs of a Lesbian Anarchist from 1978
Here’s what she had to say about the song:
“We are all potential targets for the insidious tactics and intrusive disruptions by FBI agents in their quest for self-righteous, statue-patriotic loyalty. This song, written at the time of the Susan Saxe arrest in Philadelphia, has references in it that are far more fact than fiction. As the threat of a grand jury hovered over our heads, we kept our cool and our sense of humour, educating people not to respond to questioning. Since the FBI will harass you whether you've done anything wrong or not, I call their agents ‘whethermen’.”
Susan Saxe is one of ten women to be put on the FBI’s Most Wanted list
She was placed on the list in 1970 after she and several others became involved in a plan to arm the Black Panther Party in response to the Vietnam War, and robbed an armoury and then a bank in Boston
She escaped and was on the run until 1975, when she was arrested in Philadelphia
Charlie Parr - 1928
Contemporary country blues musician from Minnesota
From his 2005 album Rooster
The Song Swappers - Mi Caballo Blanco
From the 1955 album Folk Songs of Four Continents
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
This is a Chilean song, written by the songwriter Francisco Floro Del Campo
The title translates to “My White Horse”
Umeno Tajima, Eikichi Kazari - Shima Sodachi
From a 1954 Folkways album of folk music from the Amami Islands in Japan
The title translates to “Island Nurture”
The instrument we hear on it is the jyabisen, a three-stringed plucked lute
It’s a contemporary song that blends both local and foreign styles, and was a major hit in Japan in the early 50s
The lyrics compare the beauty of the narrator’s sweetheart to various elements of the island: the red pods of the ripening cycad nuts, the waves of the ocean, and the warm island winds
Mitchell’s Christian Singers - Out on the Ocean Sailing
They were a gospel group from North Carolina that recorded over 80 songs between 1934 and 1940
The group were all former farmers who were good friends and began singing together after work in the evening
A talent scout for the American Record Company discovered them, and put them under the management of the singer Willie Mitchell, hence their name
After their recording career, they still performed at community events in their region
This one was recorded in April of 1936
This seems to be one of the only recordings of the song, and it’s likely a traditional American gospel song
Lesley Riddle - I’m Out on the Ocean A-Sailing
Musician who collaborated with the Carter family, gathering songs from the region around the Carter family home and memorising their melodies while AP Carter transcribed the lyrics
He learned to play the guitar while recovering from the amputation of his right leg as a young man, and developed a distinct picking and slide method
Retired from music in the 1940s but was rediscovered by Mike Seeger in 1965 and was persuaded to return to music
Over the next 13 years, Seeger made a number of recordings of his music
This one’s from the 1993 compilation album Step By Step
Furry Lewis - Furry’s Rag (Take Your Time Baby)
American country blues artist from Memphis, Tennessee
Recorded March 5, 1969 in Furry's apartment near Fourth & Beale Streets, Memphis
The album notes simply say: “Furry performed with his guitar, in bed, leg off”—his leg had been amputated in 1917 after he fell while trying to hop onto a moving train
Marvin Loewen - The Northern Trappers Rendezvous
Off a 1960 album of songs and ballads from northern Saskatchewan and northern Manitoba
It was written about the Northern Trappers Festival, still held annually in The Pas
The Rendezvous specifically refers to the dance that was held at the festival each year
The New Lost City Ramblers - Beware
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 Alfred and Orville Reed’s 1929 recording of the same name
Jim Doherty - Save Your Money While You’re Young
From the 1961 album Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties, collected by the folklorist Edith Fowke
Doherty from Peterborough
This was an old song at the time, and Doherty was the only person Fowke came across while recording who knew it
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Fox Hunt
Based in Toronto, ON
They got this one from a field recording made by Charles Seeger of Israel Alston in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1939
