Barking Dog: January 30, 2025
Les Barker - Hard Cheese of Old England
He was born 78 years ago today
An English poet who was known primarily for his comic poetry
This is from his 1990 album Oranges and Lemmings
Snooks Eaglin - Give Me the Good Old Boxcar
Eaglin an American musician who played a wide range of styles and claimed to know about 2500 songs
Recorded in New Orleans in 1959 by Harry Oster
This is his own song
The McMillan’s Camp Boys - When I Say Hello To The Rockies
They’re a band originally from British Columbia, now based in Nova Scotia
This is from their 2023 self-titled album
The song is by Wilf Carter, a well-known country musician from Nova Scotia known as Wilf Carter in Canada and as Montana Slim in the US
David Blue - Looking for a Friend
He was a folk musician and actor from Rhode Island, known as a member of the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City
He appeared in films like Wim Wender’s The American Friend and Renaldo and Clara, which was filmed during Bob Dylan’s 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue
This is from his 1971 album Stories
Joni Mitchell - Tell Old Bill
Off the 2020 album Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 1: The Early Years
Recorded at the radio station CFQC in Saskatoon around 1963
Likely an African American song, and one of the first songs to be sung in the ragtime style
Victor Jara, Quilapayún - Plegaria a un Labrador
Jara 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
Quilapayún are a Chilean folk group that have been around since 1965, and are one of the most influential groups in the Nueva Cancion movement
Jara became their musical director in the 60s, and helped them sign with the record label Odeon Records
This is from Jara’s 1969 album Pongo en Tus Manos Abiertas, which translates to “I put in your open hands”
The title of the song translates to “Prayer to a Farmer”
Jara said that the song was a call to farmers to join the struggle for a fairer society
Harrison Kennedy, Jean-Jacques Milteau, Vincent Segal - Judgment Day
Harrison Kennedy a Hamilton artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
Milteau and Segal are French musicians
This is from their 2018 album CrossBorder Blues
Lord Melody - Canada So Cold
He was a Trinidadian calypso singer whose career lasted 40 years, from the 1940s to his death in the 1980s
This one is from his 1958 album Lord Melody Sings Calypso
Andy Merrill - Road to Nowhere
He’s an American voice actor known specifically for playing Brak on Space Ghost Coast to Coast and The Brak Show
This is his cover of the Talking Heads’ 1985 song from their album Little Creatures
Julius King - One O’Clock Boogie
Only four of his tracks were released during his career, all by Tennessee Records in 1952
This song appears on a 2005 Document Records compilation album of rural blues recordings from the mid-20th century
Shel Silverstein - Wreck of the Old ‘49
You might know Shel Silverstein as the author of popular children’s books like Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Giving Tree, but he was also a playwright and songwriter
This song comes from an album of parody folk songs called Inside Folk Songs, which Silverstein recorded in 1962
Joan Baez - Engine 143
Baez is one of the best known musicians to come out of the 1960s folk revival
She performed for over 60 years and released over 30 albums before retiring in 2019
There are a number of other American train wreck songs from the early days of the steam locomotive
This one is based on the true story of the wreck of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway’s Fast Flying Virginian on October 23, 1890
Baez included it on her 1961 album Joan Baez, Vol. 2
Fred Jordan - The Dark-Eyed Sailor
He was a farm worker from Shropshire, England, who was one of the best-known traditional English singers without a formal musical education
He learned his song from his family, his workmates, and from travelling Romani families
He was first recorded by the American folklorist Alan Lomax in the 1940s, and as a result, sang for the BBC and at concerts in London and Manchester
He remained a popular guest at folk clubs during the English folk revival of the 1950s and 60s, while still working as a labourer
This is from his 1966 album Songs of a Shropshire Farm Worker
The song is also known as “Fair Phoebe and her Dark Eyed Sailor”
Likely from the end of the 19th century, so relatively new, as far as folk songs go
It’s called a “broken token” ballad, and it’s one of many, many songs about a lover who travels and returns in disguise to test his sweetheart’s love then reveals his identity by showing her a ring they had broken together
Collected in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and North America
Ellen Stekert - Went to the Sea
She’s a folklorist, musician, and scholar from New York (now based in Minnesota) who began her career in Greenwich Village in the 1950s
In the last year or so, she’s been working with the writer Christopher Bahn on a website where they share music, writing, and photography from her archives
They’re working on putting together an album of archival recordings, and they just released this never before heard single, recorded at a rehearsal in the 1960s
Stekert’s friend Tracy Powers wrote the song
Kenneth Peacock - Green Shores of Fogo
He was an ethnomusicologist from Toronto who was on the staff for what is now the Canadian Museum of Civilization
His projects for the museum covered practically every part of Canada, and he seems to have learned this song while researching the folk music of Newfoundland in the 1950s
He’s remembered for the impact this research had on the folk music revival in Canada in the mid 20th century
This is a Newfoundland folk song from the area around Fogo, which has strong Irish ancestry
It’s likely based on the Irish-American emigrant ballad “The Country I’m Leaving Behind”
Star Thistle - Waves for Lorelei
A project from the mind of Winnipeg artist Uncle Sinner
This is a demo from 2013
Bonnie Dobson - Four Strong Winds
Canadian folksinger who joined the folk revival scene in Toronto in the 1960s, and later moved to the US and performed at coffee houses there before moving back to Canada and finally to the UK, where she’s been living since
The song is by Ian Tyson of the Canadian folk duo Ian & Sylvia, who wrote it in about 20 minutes in his manager’s apartment in New York City in 1962, apparently after hearing Bob Dylan perform “Blowin’ in the Wind” the previous day
Primeaux and Mike - Amazing Grace (Sioux)
They’re a Grammy-winning duo of Indigenous musicians based in Arizona
This is from their 1996 album Walk in Beauty
“Amazing Grace” is a hymn published in 1779 by John Newton
Became popular again in the 1960s and has since become a folk standard
Their version is sung in the Sioux language
Richard Brautigan - Revenge of the Lawn
Brautigan was born 90 years ago today
He was a writer from the Pacific Northwest best known for his novel Trout Fishing in America, though he wrote numerous other novels and collections of poetry and short stories
This one is from his 1970 spoken word album Listening to Richard Brautigan
It later appeared in his 1971 short story collection of the same name
The Men of No Property - Brian Boy Magee
This is from the 1977 Folkways album Ireland: The Final Struggle
The Men of No Property were Belfast-born college students who took part in protests and marches in Northern Ireland in 1969 during the Northern Ireland civil rights campaign
The poem was written by well-known 19th century poet and songwriter Ethna Carbery
It’s about a massacre that took place in 1641 in a village near Belfast
Gordon Bok - Prayer
Bok is a folklorist and musician from Maine who’s released almost 40 albums since the mid-1960s
This one is off his 2023 album Windcalling
It’s a compilation of archival recordings made in “studios, concert halls, and homes from Rockport, Maine to Stanthorpe, Australia”
The song is a Navajo prayer adapted by the songwriter Josh Bogin in the 1970s from a book of Navajo poetry his parents owned
John Sebastian - Goodnight Irene
Sebastian a singer, guitarist, harmonicist, and autoharpist known for founding The Lovin’ Spoonful
Grew up in Greenwich Village hearing artists like Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly
The song was written by Black Tin Pan Alley composer Gussie Lord Davis, who was active in the 1890s
It’s best known as Lead Belly’s signature song—he learned it from his uncle Bob
This is a performance from the 1971 album Cheapo-Cheapo Productions Presents Real Live John Sebastian
Bob Dylan, The Band - Satisfied Mind
This recording was made during the Basement Tapes sessions in 1967
It’s a country song written by Jack Rhodes and Red Hayes in 1947
Bob Dylan - A Satisfied Mind
From his 1980 album Saved
Arvella Gray - Stand By Me
He was a blues, gospel, and folk musician from Texas who spent the latter half of his life busking in Chicago
Bob Dylan stated that he learned many of his early songs from Gray
This is from his only album, The Singing Drifter, from 1973
This is a gospel hymn composed by Charles Albert Tindley in 1905
Art Bouman - Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed
He’s a Halifax-based banjo player who’s interested in reclaiming the banjo as a traditional instrument of the African diaspora and highlighting the Black banjo players whose work has historically been overlooked
This song is more commonly known as “In My Time of Dying” and it’s a song attributed to Blind Willie Johnson, though parts of it come from older gospel songs
Bouman’s version is largely inspired by Joe Ayers’ version
It’s from his new album Simple Songs For Trying Times
Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger - The Children
A well-known married duo
MacColl was a British folksinger and labour activist known for his involvement in the 1960s folk revival
Peggy is an American folksinger and member of the Seeger family who’s been living and performing in the UK for over 60 years
This is from their 1973 album Folkways Record of Contemporary Songs
Periwinkle - Feathers
This is from a 1981 album called The Promised Land: American Indian Songs of Lament and Protest
There’s not much else to be found about Periwinkle, though the liner notes for the album are worth checking out because they contain a lot of background on Indigenous issues in North America
Robert Cage - Little Eddie Blues
He was a blues musician and mechanic from Mississippi
This is from his 1998 album Can See What You’re Doing
OJ Abbott, Pete Seeger - Barley Grain
Abbott was a ballad singer who moved from England to the Ottawa Valley at a young age and worked on farms in Irish communities and in lumber camps, where he learned many traditional songs and ballads
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 over 60 years before this recording was made
This was recorded live at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival
Alan Mills, Jean Carignan - The Kangaroo
Mills was a Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec known for popularizing Canadian folk music
He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for his contributions to Canadian folklore
Carignan was from Levis, Quebec, and he was also made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for being “the greatest fiddler in North America”
This is from their 1961 album Songs, Fiddle Tunes and a Folktale from Canada
It’s described in the liner notes as “An unusual Nova Scotian variant of the well-known English folk songs “Carrion Crow”
Andrew Hogg - Kind-Hearted Blues
He was a Texan country blues musician also known as “Smokey Hogg” who made the majority of his recordings after returning from World War II, and was a popular musician in the South from the late 1940s until his death in 1960
This song is from 1937, which was his only recording session prior to the 1940s
Molly Drake - The Oak and the Ash
Molly Drake was an English poet and musician, and the mother of the musician Nick Drake, whose recordings were only released in the years following her death
This is from the 2018 album The Tide's Magnificence: Songs and Poems of Molly Drake, which is a complete collection of her songs and poems
It’s a traditional Northumbrian ballad from at least the 19th century
Sonny Terry - Shortnin’ Bread
Terry was a blind musician who lost his vision at 16, which prevented him from doing farm work and caused him to rely on music for a living
This is an African American folk song dating back to at least the 1890s that likely originated on plantations in the southern states
This is from his 1952 album of Harmonica and Vocal Solos
