Barking Dog: September 8, 2022
We started the show this week with one from Art Rosenbaum, who sadly passed away on Sunday (September 4) at the age of 83.
Art Rosenbaum - Roll On, Babe
Rosenbaum was an art professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, a folklorist, a Grammy award-winning musician, and a visual artist
For over 50 years, he travelled across the United States with his wife, Margo, making recordings of traditional music
Many of those recordings can be heard on the album that won him his Grammy for Best Historical Album, Art Of Field Recording Volume I: Fifty Years Of Traditional American Music Documented By Art Rosenbaum
This song is from his 2015 album Iron Mountain Baby and other Railroad Songs, Banjo Songs, and Ballads
It comes from a cluster of Black railroad and mining work songs, adapted by white mountain banjo pickers
The cluster includes “Roll on John”, “Nine Pound Hammer”, and several more
Odetta - Roll On Buddy
Born in Birmingham, Alabama
Had operatic vocal training from the age of 13 and studied music at Los Angeles City College
While on tour with the musical Finian’s Rainbow, she fell in with some San Francisco balladeers and began to focus on singing folk music
From her 1976 album Odetta at the Best of Harlem, recorded live at The Best of Harlem club in Stockholm, Sweden
Morley Loon - N’doheeno
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
From his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
The title translates to “The Hunter”, and reflects the hunting and gathering traditions of Loon’s people and region
Kacy & Clayton - Wood View
Second cousins from Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan
From their 2013 album The Day Is Past & Gone
Pharis & Jason Romero - Sour Queen
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 this song is named Papillon, and it was finished right before they made the record
They describe the song as “exploring a bluesy banjo tune with lyrics from some notes scrawled down over the years”
Mvomo Asumu Andre - Preparatory Music of the Harp - Ngombi
From a 1973 album of music from the Gabonese Republic, a country on the west coast of Central Africa
It’s specifically an album of music from the Bwiti religion practised by the Fang people
The liner notes state that that harp music is played in the evening to clean out the chapel building of evil spirits while alerting ancestor spirits about the coming ceremonies
Rosalie Sorrels - Goodbye, Joe Hill
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
She died in June 2017 but is remembered for her storytelling abilities
This song is from her 1967 album If I Could Be the Rain
It’s by the folksinger and labour activist Utah Phillips
The liner notes explain the context of the song:
“In Salt Lake City there's a warm place for the floaters and drifters who come through on freights and hitchhiking. No fancy digs, you understand, but a blanket and a pallet and a meal, accompanied by the humanity of one tough hombre named Ammon Hennacy who runs the Joe Hill Friendship House. The only requirements for staying there are that you leave your liquor outside and that you listen to Ammon tell you about Anarchy. (Hennacy is a Catholic, Pacifist Anarchist, and a real man who takes care of himself and any number of others.) Every once in a while the city gets a little up-tight about either his politics or his disregard for the health department's regulations (sometimes a little of both) and they close him up. But they usually don't complain too much when he opens up again, since by that time all the bums have been sleeping on the streets and it looks like a good deal to have 'em taken care of. Utah Phillips wrote this song about Ammon and his friends after one such closing took place.”
Robin Christenson - This Train
From an album of songs the singer and schoolteacher recorded with a group of children in summer camp in the late 1950s
Traditional American gospel song with unknown origins
It was popular in the 20s, when it was first recorded, and gained further popularity due to the field recordings made by folklorists John and Alan Lomax in the 1930s
It transitioned to more secular settings in the 50s during the American folk revival
James Shorter - Home Going
Recorded by field researcher and festival curator George Mitchell in Senatobia, Mississippi in August of 1967
An uncredited female singer, likely Jessie Mae Hemphill, joins him on that recording
Unidentified Quartet - Lord, Don't Turn Your Child Away
A quartet of unidentified incarcerated men at Cummins State Farm in Gould, Arkansas
Recorded by John Lomax in May of 1939 for the Library of Congress
Elizabeth White, Gideon Craig - Going to Lay Down My Burdens
A spiritual, the origins of which reach back to before the American Civil War
From a compilation of music from Mike Seeger’s field recordings
Elizabeth White was folksinger Josh White’s mother who played autoharp, Gideon Craig was her grandson
Recorded in Greenville, SC on June 29, 1963
Bill Cornett - Born in Old Kentucky
Off a 1960 album of Kentucky mountain music
Cornett started playing banjo when he was 8, and later picked and sang his way to his first term as a representative in the Kentucky State Legislature
He was quoted saying “You know how I win? I get the young folks with my music and the old folks by fighting for old age benefits”
He was even known for his song “Old Age Pension Blues”, which he sang on the floor of the legislature
There isn’t much information about the song, aside from the fact that it was one of the most popular ballads for early American recording artists to record, and is often called “East Virginia” instead of “Old Kentucky”
Peggy Seeger - The Wagoner’s Lad
Peggy Seeger a member of the Seeger family - Mike and Pete Seeger brothers, father Charles seeger, a folklorist and musicologist, mother Ruth Crawford Seeger, a composer and first woman to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship
She’s been living in the UK for over 60 years, where she is a very well-known musician
This is a traditional tune closely related to On Top of Old Smoky
From her 1955 album Songs of Courting and Complaint
Fiver - Rosemary & Rue
Stage name of Toronto-based artist Simone Schmidt
This is off their new album "Soundtrack to A More Radiant Sphere: The Joe Wallace Mixtape"
It was commissioned for the recent documentary "A More Radiant Sphere," which tells the story of Joe Wallace, a Canadian communist, political prisoner and poet who was largely ignored within the country but admired in Eastern Europe and Russia
Ali Farka Touré - Bakoye
Toure was an internationally known Malian musician who blended traditional Malian music with North American blues
He collaborated with many other musicians, including Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal
From his 1988 self-titled album
4 different recordings from people born on September 8th:
Bernie Sanders - Why Support the Socialist Party?
81st birthday
In 1979, he wrote and recorded a narrative album for Folkways Records about the legacy of trade unionist Eugene V. Debs, who was a major organiser of the American Railway Union and the Industrial Workers of the World
Debs received almost a million votes during his Presidential campaign in 1916 while incarcerated for his opposition to World War I
Sanders recorded this as part of his work for the American People’s Historical Society, and soon after, he began his own political career as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981
Jimmie Rodgers - Brakeman’s Blues
Born on this day 125 years ago
He was a very well-known musician from Mississippi who became popular in the late 20s, and is now known as the Father of Country Music
He died from tuberculosis in 1933 at the age of 35, but is remembered for his kindness to strangers and fans and for giving free spontaneous concerts while he was on tour
He recorded this one in 1928
Neko Case - Things That Scare Me
52 today
Contemporary American singer-songwriter
Off her 2002 album Blacklisted
Peter Sellers - Suddenly It’s Folk Song
He was born on this day 97 years ago, in 1925
He was an English comedian and actor known particularly for his role as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films
This track is a parody of the kinds of field recordings we hear on this show, with all voices done by Sellers
It parodies a bawdy song in a Somerset accent, Scottish mouth music, and an Irish Ceilidh band
He recorded it in the 50s, when the folk music revival was beginning both in the States and the UK
Old Man Luedecke - Mountain Plain
From Chester, NS
This is from his album My Hands Are on Fire and Other Love Songs from 2010
Mance Lipscomb - The Sinking of the Titanic
Texan blues artist born Beau De Glen Lipscomb
Took the nickname Mance at a young age, which was short for emancipation
Worked as a tenant farmer in Texas most of his life, but was discovered in 1960 during the resurgence of country blues
This led to him recording an album in 1961, called Trouble in Mind, and appearing at the first Monterey Folk Festival in 1963
This song is more commonly known as God Moves On the Water, and was first recorded by Blind Willie Johnson in 1929, though he did not write it
The fact that both Johnson and Lipscomb, who made the two earliest recordings of the song, were both from Texas, suggests that this song may also have come from there
Ousmane M’Baye - Inspiration: Ousmane M’Baye’s Lament
From his 1975 Folkways album Songs of Senegal
That’s his own song
Dyad - Roustabout
From Victoria, BC
From their album Who’s Been Here Since I’ve Been Gone from 2002
This song is essentially Hop High My Lula Gal
Algia Mae Hinton - I Ain’t the One You Love
She was a Piedmont blues musician from North Carolina who learned to play the guitar from her mother, an expert in the Piedmont fingerpicking style who often played at local parties and gatherings
She met the folklorist Glenn Hinson in 1978, who arranged for her to perform at the North Carolina Folklife Festival
She gave several concerts outside of North Carolina after that, even travelling to Europe to perform in 1998
From her 1999 album Honey Babe
Harrison Kennedy - Hummin’ Blues
Harrison Kennedy a Hamilton artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
From his 2005 album Voice + Story
Joined by Jan Mittendorp and Nico Heilijgers
Kenny Winfree - Cotton Mill Dreams
He’s a folksinger from Tennessee who’s been called his generation’s Woody Guthrie
He started out working in the same textile mill that his father, mother, and several uncles had worked at, and when his union heard his music, they sent it to Joe Glazer, who asked him to record for his label
He’s since recorded two solo albums and performed at countless events, and he now works at a large aircraft plant in Texas
From his first album, Down at the Union Hall, from 1986
The Stanley County Cutups - Russian Grass
A bluegrass group from Winnipeg that’s been playing together in some form or another for nearly 20 years
This is a Merle Watson instrumental piece, which they give a slightly Russian twist
Ruby Vass - Lonesome Day
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
From a 1968 album of songs from the Blue Ridge Mountains
The song is better known as See That My Grave is Kept Clean, and it’s largely credited to Blind Lemon Jefferson
It’s based in African American musical traditions
The song spread in the area due to a version recorded by the Carter Family in the 1930s
Three songs about dreams:
Magdalena Takažauskienė - Susapnavu Dimna Sapna (I Dreamed a Strange Dream)
Off a 1955 Folkways album called Lithuanian Folk Songs in the United States
She immigrated to the States in 1904, and lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
She was 72 when she recorded this song in 1949, and she also recorded 64 other songs and 12 tales
This was a popular song in many Slavic countries, though not particularly in Lithuania
It narrates a dream about a swan “arranging silks of green” and “scattering pearls of white”
The narrator asks their mother to explain the dream, and she says that the white swan means hardship, the green silks mean trouble, and the white pearls mean tears
Guy Davis - Dreams About Life
Davis is a musician from New York City who grew up hearing about life in the rural south from his parents and his grandparents
He first learned about the blues at a summer camp in Vermont that was run by Pete Seeger’s brother John Seeger
He also learned to play the banjo there
From his 1978 album of the same name
Pete Seeger - Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
I tend to assume everyone knows who Pete Seeger was but that’s probably not the case, so if you aren’t familiar with him, he was a very influential folk singer and an activist who, though blacklisted during the McCarthy era, remained a prominent public figure who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and international disarmament through his music
This song by Ed McCurdy
Frank Hanson - EP Walker
From an album of Saskatchewan songs collected by Barbara Cass-Beggs and released in 1963
The song was collected from Mrs. Winnifred Turner of Swift Current
It was composed in the fall of 1912, during the delays of threshing, by young homesteaders who made up the threshing crew
EP Walker’s threshing machine was the first in the district of Malvern Link
All the names in the song are accurate, and so are the incidents mentioned
It’s to the tune of the American railroad song “Casey Jones”
Precious Bryant - Sitting Tight
She was an American musician described as one of Georgia’s great blueswomen
She was first recorded by George Mitchell in 1967, and by the mid 1980s her fanbase had grown enough for her to perform internationally
From her 2005 album My Name Is Precious
Irene Scruggs - The Voice of the Blues
She was a Piedmont and country blues musician from Mississippi who made recordings in the early 20th century for OKeh, Victor, Paramount and Gennett Records
She retired from music in the 30s and moved to Europe, where she made some recordings for BBC Radio in the 50s
A version of Stop and Listen Blues, recorded in Richmond, Indiana in August of 1930 and popularised by the Mississippi Sheiks that same year
Malvina Reynolds - The Judge Said (Intro)
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
Had received a doctorate from the University of California in 1938, but went back to university in the late 1950s to study music theory
She’s known particularly for writing the song Little Boxes, but I’m going to leave you with a spoken word track in which she talks about songwriting
It comes from a documentary about her called Love It Like a Fool, which is available on YouTube
Jean Carignan - Gaspe Reel
