Barking Dog: September 28, 2023
David Francey - Harbour
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
This is from his new album The Breath Between, which came out on September 15th
Victor Jara - Manifiesto
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
This is from the 1974 album also called Manifiesto, which was compiled after his death
Ani DiFranco, Ry Cooder, Dan Gellert - Deportee
This is from a 2013 album recorded live at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC to celebrate the folksinger Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday
Woody Guthrie wrote the words in 1948 as a poem about a plane crash near Los Gatos Canyon in California
32 people died, including 28 migrant farm workers who were being deported to Mexico
Guthrie recognized the racist reaction to the crash, as victims were not named in national radio and news coverage, but instead referred to just as “deportees,” and he assigned symbolic names to those who died
Martin Hoffman was a schoolteacher, and he wrote the music a decade after Guthrie wrote the words
Pete Seeger popularised it after it was turned into a song
Dan Gellert - Poor Rosy
From New Jersey
This song possibly originated among enslaved people in the United States in the 19th century
George “Bongo Joe” Coleman - Science Fiction
He was a street musician from Florida known for his drum kit, which he made from 55-gallon oil drums and perfected over the years as he performed around Texas
Coleman was well-respected and was often offered performance time at venues that would have paid more than street shows, but he preferred to play on the streets rather than the stage
This is from the only album he recorded, George Coleman: Bongo Joe from 1968, produced by Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records
Old Man Luedecke - Am I Strong Enough?
From Chester, NS
Off his 2010 album My Hands are on Fire and Other Love Songs
Rev. Edward W Clayborn - When I Lay My Burden Down
American musician known as the “Guitar Evangelist”
Traditional American spiritual which has been recorded in a number of genres
The melody is very similar to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”
Recorded in Chicago in October of 1929
Othar Turner, Rising Star Fife & Drum Band - Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!
Turner was one of the last well-known fife players in the American fife and drums blues tradition
He was born in Mississippi in 1907 and lived his life as a farmer in the Mississippi hill country
Scholars from nearby colleges recorded him and his friends in the 60s and 70s, and his band played at many local farm parties
Performed with his bandmates Jessie Mae Hemphill and Abe Young on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood in 1982, and the group began to receive wider attention in the 1990s
Turner died at age 95 on February 27, 2003
Their version of the song is from the 2001 album Everybody Hollerin’ Goat
Pete Seeger - Coal Creek March / Pay Day at Coal Creek / Roll Down the Line
Seeger was a folk singer and an activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and peace through his music
This is from a 1999 compilation album of topical songs that Seeger recorded between the 50s and the 90s
All of these songs are about labour issues at the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company in Coal Creek, Tennessee
Alan Mills - As I Roved Out
Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec
Known for popularising Canadian folk music, and for writing the music for “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly”
Made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for his contributions to Canadian folklore
From his 1953 album Folk Songs of Newfoundland
It’s an Irish song also known as “The Deluded Lover”
It’s a fragment of a longer ballad called “The Soldier and the Maid”
JD Short - It’s Hard Time
He was a blues musician from Mississippi who performed under a number of different aliases beginning in 1930
That one was recorded for Bluebird Records in 1933 under the name Joe Stone
Dan Tate - Cluck Old Hen
He was a banjo player from Fancy Gap, Virginia
Traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo tune
Recorded by Ray Alden in 1974
Blind Willie Johnson - God Moves on the Water
Texan blues singer and preacher born in 1897 who’s known for his distinctive voice and slide guitar playing
This is the first recording of the song from 1929, though he did not write it
It’s one of the best-known American disaster ballads, and one of many ballads about the Titanic
The fact that both Johnson and Mance Lipscomb, who made the two earliest recordings of the song, were both from Texas, suggests that this song may also have come from there
Bessie Jones - Titanic
Bessie Jones was one was one of the most popular performers of folk music in the 60s and 70s, and is known for spreading African American folk music to a wider audience in the 20th century
This was recorded for her 1975 album So Glad I’m Here
Rosalie Sorrels - I Am a Union Woman
She started out as a folksinger and collector of folk songs, and left her husband in the 1960s to travel across America with her five children, establishing herself as a performer and making connections with other folk musicians, writers, and artists
This is from her 2006 album Misc. Abstract Record No. 1
The song is by Aunt Molly Jackson, a folksinger and union activist from Kentucky
The “NMU” refers to the National Miners' Union
Gospel Light Jubilee Singers - Take My Hand and Lead Me On
They were a quartet that recorded for Bluebird Records in Rock Hill, South Carolina in 1939
It’s a version of the gospel song “Precious Lord,” the words of which were written by Reverend Thomas A Dorsey in 1932 after the loss of his wife and infant son during childbirth
Uncle Sinner - Pearline
From Winnipeg
This is a song by Son House, a Mississippi delta blues artist who influenced Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters
Uncle Sinner included it on his 2008 album Ballads and Mental Breakdowns
Au Sisile Panpipe Ensemble - Solomon Islands: Faa ta Gwouna
This is from a 1973 album of music from the Fataleka and Baegu peoples of the Solomon Islands, which are located 1900km off the northeast coast of Australia
The recording is by an ensemble of six Fataleka musicians who each play panpipes with different tunings and wear rattles made of dried husks on their ankles
Hardy Gray - Come and Go with Me to That Land
This is a field recording that Gray 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
Gray was a musician from Alabama who McCormick recorded in 1968
It’s a spiritual of unknown origin that might date to the 1800s
It gained renewed popularity during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s
Bob Carlin - Trouble
He’s an old-time singer and banjo player from NYC
He’s toured Europe and North America playing on historical banjos, and has also learned more about African banjo traditions by collaborating with Malian musician Cheick Hamala Diabate
This is off his 1983 album Fiddle Tunes For Clawhammer Banjo
Kaia Kater - Sun to Sun
Grenadian-Canadian artist based in Toronto
This is from her 2015 album Sorrow Bound
Mike Kent - The Tree
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
This is a cumulative song also known as “The Tree in the Valley,” and it’s similar to other folk songs like “The Green Grass Grew All Around” and “The Rattlin’ Bog”
It’s been collected in the UK and Europe, and possibly was introduced to England from France
Allen Ginsberg - Squeal
He was a poet and writer from New Jersey, known as one of the leading figures in the Beat Generation
This was recorded at the Poetry Centre in San Francisco in 1959
Peggy Seeger - Space Girl’s Song
She’s an American folk singer who’s been living in the UK for over 60 years
She’s the sister of folk singers Mike and Pete Seeger, who also appear on today’s show
This is from the 1990 album A Fish That’s a Song, a Smithsonian Folkways compilation album of children’s songs
She wrote the song with her husband Ewan MacColl, and they used the music from the song “Ghost Soldier”
Lily May Ledford - Wild Bill Jones
Headed the Coon Creek Girls, one of the first all-female string bands to play on the radio
Ledford was rediscovered by Ralph Rinzler in the 60s and became popular again during the folk revival of the 1960s
The origins of this song are unclear, though it was first recorded in 1924 by Eva Davis, and is a favourite among banjo players
Bob Dylan - 1913 Massacre
That’s a live recording from November of 1961
It was written by Woody Guthrie, who wrote it in the mid 1940s about the Italian Hall Disaster, a tragedy that took place in Michigan on Christmas Eve, 1913, when striking copper miners and their families rushed to escape a Christmas party when somebody yelled “Fire,” even though there wasn’t one, and 73 people, mostly children, were trampled to death in the stairway
Willie Dunn - School Days
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
It’s based on an American popular song of the same name which was written in 1907 by Will D. Cobb and Gus Edwards
This is off his 1972 self-titled album
Fleming Brown - Shady Grove
He was a Chicago banjo player and one of the early teachers at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music
He made his living as a graphic artist and didn’t perform much outside of Chicago, though he did perform at the Newport Folk Festival
“Shady Grove” is a traditional Appalachian folk song that likely originated in Kentucky at the start of the 20th century
Big Bill Broonzy - Frankie and Johnny
He was an American blues singer and guitarist
Was one of the leading figures of the emerging folk revival of the 1950s
Traditional American song inspired by multiple murders in the late 1800s
Also known as “Frankie and Albert”
Broonzy recorded it in 1957 for Folkways Records
This recording was included on a 2009 album that presents fifteen different versions of the song
Ruby Vass - Ten Thousand Miles
Singer-guitarist who lived in and around Hillsville, Virginia all her life, and was very well-known for her singing and playing in that region
Vass was also a fan of Carter Family songs, which makes sense, as this song is essentially by the Carter Family, and was one of the first songs they recorded
It is taken from older songs about sailors leaving their lovers behind on land, and somehow became mixed up with the ever-popular line of “who will shoe my pretty little foot”, which comes from the Scottish ballad “Lord Gregory”
Mike Seeger - Cotton Mill Blues
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
Tracy Schwarz, his band member from the New Lost City Ramblers, plays guitar on this one, and his wife Marj plays autoharp
It’s a traditional song that he got from a Lee Brothers Trio recording from 1930
The liner notes call it “A twig on the multi-branched tree ‘Hard Times,’ whose roots go to a family of English 18th century satiric broadsides”
The song was printed in pocket songbooks throughout the US in the 19th century, and was often rewritten to suit different settings
Morley Loon - Nooj Meech
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
That one’s from his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
The title also translates to “Northland, My Land”
Milton Feher - Walking Without Effort
From the 1962 album The Relaxation Record, written and narrated by Milton Feher of the Milton Feher School of Dance and Relaxation
Feher was a dance instructor who cured his own arthritis after developing a method for moving based in relaxation exercises
He was still teaching in his 80s, and lived to be 98
Pharis & Jason Romero - Five Miles From Town
From Horsefly, BC
Off their 2022 album Tell 'Em You Were Gold, which was recorded over six days in a 60-year-old barn beside the Little Horsefly River
They learned this tune from Tom Sauber, Brad Leftwich, and Alice Gerrard, though it seems to be by Clyde Davenport
Johnny Brown - That’s All Right
From the 2012 Dust-to-Digital album Drop on Down in Florida
