Barking Dog: September 26, 2024
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
This is a cowboy folk song also known as “The Cowboy’s Lament” and “The Dying Cowboy”
It’s an adaptation of a sea song called "The Sailor's Grave” which was written by Edwin Hubbell Chapin, published in 1839
Maybelle Carter - (Come All Ye) Fair and Tender Ladies
Also known as “Mother Maybelle” of Carter Family fame
This one was recorded live at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, at an autoharp workshop that Mike Seeger hosted
It’s an Appalachian traditional ballad
The Carter Family recorded a version in 1952
Carolyn Hester - Carry It On
She is an American folk musician known for her involvement in the 1960s folk revival
This was recorded at Town Hall in New York City in February of 1965
Gil Turner wrote that song while he was working as a song leader in the South during the Civil Rights era
Eddy Cusic - You Don’t Love Me
He was a blues musician and mechanic from Mississippi who grew up in a farming community where adults would regularly play the blues at gatherings
This is from the 1998 album I Want to Boogie
He recorded it at his home in December of 1997
The song is by Arkansas blues singer Willie Cobbs
Tuskegee Institute Singers - Good News
Tuskegee University is a historically Black university in Tuskegee, Alabama founded by Booker T Washington in 1881, who founded the singers a year later
The group started as a quartet but grew to 100 singers by 1931
They still perform today, and have toured the United States and released a number of spiritual recordings
This recording was originally released in 1915
Horace Sprott - Freight Train: The Southern
Sprott was a wandering musician from Alabama who was recorded in the 1950s by researcher and writer Frederic Ramsey
This one was recorded near the Cahaba River in Perry County, Alabama in 1954
This is a track where he mimics the sound of a train with his harmonica, which was a very common thing to do
You can also find harmonica tracks that sound like fox chases or bagpipes
The Small Glories - Wondrous Traveler
From Winnipeg
Cara Luft and JD Edwards
The title track from their 2016 album
It’s a medley of two sacred harp songs, “Wondrous Love” and “The Traveler”
Old Harp Singers of Eastern Tennessee - Wondrous Love
This is off a 2005 Smithsonian Folkways compilation album of southern gospel music
It’s a folk hymn from the American south, first published in 1811
Bristol Sacred Harp - The Traveler
Sacred Harp is a type of traditional sacred choral music that originated in New England, and uses shape notes, a kind of musical notation that was designed to more easily facilitate congregational singing
This is from an album recorded at an all-day sacred harp singing session in Bristol, England in 2015
Jimmy Crowley, Stoker’s Lodge - The Man of Constant Sorrow
Crowley is an Irish musician who specialises in playing the traditional songs of County Cork
Stoker’s Lodge was the first band he formed, in the 1970s
This is off their second album, Camphouse Ballads, from 1979
This ballad was first published by Dick Burnett of Kentucky in 1913, though it likely came from a much older traditional tune
Kaia Kater - Often As the Autumn
Kater is a Toronto-based artist
This is from her recent album Strange Medicine, which came out in May
She based this song on an old ghost story from West Virginia in which three men staying in a cabin see a tall shadow that appears to be supernatural
Jim Ringer - Ground so Poor That Grass Won’t Grow
He was a musician born in Arkansas and raised in California who spent much of his life as a travelling labourer
This is from his first album, Waitin' for the Hard Times to Go, from 1972
George Jones wrote this song and included it on his 1969 album Where Grass Won’t Grow
Victor Jara - No Puedes Volver Atrás
He was a Chilean musician, poet, teacher, theatre director, and activist who was tortured and killed in 1973 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet
His work is widely remembered and celebrated throughout the world for its focus on peace, love, and social justice
Off his self-titled album from 1966
The title translates to “You Can’t Go Back”
Malvina Reynolds - Says the Bee
Malvina Reynolds came to folk music later in her life, when she met Pete Seeger and other folk singers when she was in her 40s
She’s known particularly for writing the song “Little Boxes,” though she wrote and recorded a large catalogue of music during her career
This is from her 1973 children’s album Funny Bugs, Giggleworms, and Other Good Friends
She wrote it in 1957
Mississippi John Hurt - Louis Collins
American country blues singer and guitarist from Avalon, Mississippi
His recordings for OkEh Records were included on the incredibly influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, and in 1963 a copy of his song “Avalon Blues” was discovered, which led the musicologist Dick Spottswood to find Hurt in Avalon
Hurt performed at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, which brought further attention to his music, and he toured extensively throughout the US and recorded 3 albums
This recording is from the 1960s, though Hurt originally recorded it in 1928
He later claimed he had written the song after overhearing a conversation about a local murder
It became one of his best-known songs, and went on to become a standard during the folk revival of the 1960s
Stan Rogers - Bluenose
Born and raised in Ontario, but known for his maritime-influenced music that was informed by his time spent visiting family in Nova Scotia during his childhood
This is one of his better-known songs
He wrote the song for the 1977 short film Bluenose in the Sun, and it was apparently his least favourite of his maritime-themed songs
It’s off the live album Home in Halifax, recorded in March of 1982 and released in 1993
Karen Dalton - Ribbon Bow
American singer, guitarist, and banjo player known for her association with the 60s Greenwich Village folk music scene—including with artists Fred Neil and Bob Dylan
She was largely unrecognised for her contributions to the folk genre during her life, but has become an important influence for artists like Nick Cave, Devendra Banhart, and Joanna Newsom
From a 2022 album of live recordings from 1963, called Shuckin’ Sugar, the reel-to-reels of which were rediscovered in 2018
This is a song by Fairport Convention, released in 1968
Yukadan - Key to the Highway
They’re a Japanese blues band that was active between the 1970s and the 1990s, and later reunited in 2013
The band name is a translation of “blues band,” and they were the first Japanese group to perform at the Chicago blues festival
They also opened for Sleepy John Estes and played with Muddy Waters
This is off their 1975 self-titled album
It’s a blues standard first recorded by pianist Charlie Segar in 1940
Neil Young - If You Could Read My Mind
This is from his 2014 album A Letter Home, produced by Jack White and released for Record Store Day
Young recorded it in a refurbished 1947 recording booth at Third Man Records’ studio
Gordon Lightfoot released the song in 1970
The Microphones - I Lost My Wind
They were a band from Olympia, Washington, fronted by Phil Elverum and primarily active between 1996 and 2003, with several reunions since
This is from the 2011 compilation single Microphones, Golden Boots, Bishop Allen, and Paleo Collaborate with a 1940s Wire Recorder, which is exactly what it sounds like
This one was recorded on a farm in August of 2007 in Washington
Unspecified - Midway: Crowd, Merry-Go-Round, Barker
This is off the 1955 album Sounds of Carnival, recorded by a group of students from the Chicago Institute of Design for a documentary about the Royal American Midway
Bob Dylan - I Ain’t Got No Home
This is a rare and early recording made in Minneapolis in December of 1961
This song is by Woody Guthrie, who was one of Dylan’s major influences at the beginning of his career
The song is based on the old gospel song “Can’t Feel at Home”, though it reflects more specifically the plight of those made homeless by the Dust Bowl that afflicted prairie states and provinces in the 1930s
Dyad - I’m Goin’ Back to North Carolina
From Victoria, BC
Off their 2006 album No Pedlars or Preachers
The song was first recorded by the Carolina Tar Heels in 1929
It’s also known as “My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains”
Big Dave McLean - Sometimes
A blues musician from Winnipeg who’s been playing for over 50 years
This is from his album This Old Life, which came out in May
Little Hat Jones - Bye Bye Baby Blues
He was a Texan blues musician who got his start busking on the streets of San Antonio in the 1920s
He got his nickname from a construction job he worked, where he wore a hat that had a torn brim
Jones recorded this one in June of 1930
Old Man Luedecke - Am I Strong Enough?
From Chester, NS
Off his 2010 album My Hands are on Fire and Other Love Songs
Delia LaFloe - Le Matelot de Montréal
This is off the 1992 album Plains Chippewa/Métis Music from Turtle Mountain, recorded on the Turtle Mountain Reservation
The title translates to “The Sailor from Montreal”
Sarah Harmer - Epilogue: White Man in Decline
From Ontario
This is off a 2013 concept album called The Kennedy Suite, which is a collection of songs written from the perspective of different people, both real and imaginary, who had a connection to the assassination of John F Kennedy on November 22, 1963
The tracks on the album were written by Toronto-based teacher and musician Scott Garbe
Utah Phillips - Riding the Peace Train
He was an anarchist folksinger, storyteller, and labour organiser from Ohio
This is from his 2003 album I’ve Got to Know
Willie Dunn - Bear and Fish
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is off the recent Light in the Attic reissue of his 2004 album Son of the Sun
Wallace Smith, Albert Webster - Tsyatkatho
We’ll hear 3 tracks now from the 2015 album Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937-1946, compiled by James P Leary, the co-founder of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin
This is an Oneida recording made in Wisconsin in September of 1946, and it’s a version of the hymn “Behold What He Hath Given Us”
Edwina Lewandowski, Stephanie Lewandowski - Goldmine in the Sky
This song was collected by the folklorist Alan Lomax in September of 1938 in Posen, Michigan
John Giezendanner, Albert Giezendanner - Echo Yodel
Recorded in August of 1946 in Barron, Wisconsin
The yodeller is accompanied on a Swiss button accordion
John Tinsley - Girl Dressed in Green
He was a musician from Chestnut Mountain, Virginia who played at local events in his youth, then quit playing for a few decades until he returned to music in the 1970s, when he played at several folk festivals across the United States
Tokai Band - Ladamai
From the album Lau Vasi, from 1976
