Barking Dog: October 10, 2024
The Dubliners - The Bonny Boy
The Dubliners were an Irish folk band who were active from 1962 until 2012
This is off their 1970 album, Revolution
It’s also known as “Young But Daily Growing” and “The Trees They Grow So High”
It’s an old British ballad, a two-verse fragment of which was found in a Scottish manuscript collection from the 1770s
It’s been connected to a marriage in the early 17th century between the juvenile Laird of Craigton and a young woman who was several years older than him, though the ballad may be significantly older
Bob Dylan - A Long Time A-Growin’
Home recording of the song, which he made in 1961 while visiting Minnesota
Joan Baez - The Trees They Do Grow High
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
This is from her second album, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, from 1961
John Hartford - Like Unto a Mockingbird
Hartford was an American roots artist known for his fiddle and banjo playing and for his knowledge of Mississippi River lore
This is a demo from the 2019 album Backroads, Rivers & Memories: The Rare & Unreleased John Hartford
Jennifer Castle - Walkin’ Down the Line
Artist from Toronto, ON
This is a song by Bob Dylan, who wrote it in 1962
Si Kahn - Rack ‘Em Up Eddie
Ben Caplan - Birds with Broken Wings
From Halifax, Nova Scotia
This song is originally off his 2015 album of the same name
This version is off his 2021 album Recollection (Reimagined)
Stan Rogers - The Mary Ellen Carter
He was a musician from Hamilton, Ontario, whose music was largely inspired by Maritime folk music and the lives of working-class Canadians
This song is from his 1979 album Between the Breaks... Live!
Bob Fox, Benny Graham - South Medomsley Strike
Fox is an English folk musician who specialises in songs from coal communities in the northeast of England
Graham is a also a musician from northeast England who began playing professionally during the folk revival of the 1960s
From their 1996 album How Are You Off For Coals?
The music is by Johnny Handle, with lyrics by Tommy Armstrong
It’s about a strike that took place at South Medomsley Colliery in 1885, when the mine owners tried to institute lower wages
Alistair Hulett - The Internationale
He was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland, known as a member of the folk punk band Roaring Jack
This is from a 2011 tribute album to Hulett called Love, Loss, and Liberty
This is an internationally popular song that has been a socialist anthem since the late 19th century, when it was written by Eugène Pottier and Pierre De Geyter
Black Diamond - Lonesome Blues
Nothing else is known about him aside from the fact that his real name was James Butler
This one was recorded in 1948 in Oakland, California
Thomas Fraser - I’m Standing at the End of My World
He was a Scottish fisherman and farmer who left behind thousands of home recordings when he died in 1978, the majority of which were country and blues songs
His grandson rediscovered the tapes and released the first album of his music in 2002, followed shortly after by two more albums
This is from the 2012 album For the Sake of Days Gone By
The song was written by American country songwriter Vic McAlpin
Harry Choates - Old Cow Blues
He was a Cajun fiddler from Louisiana who was one of the most popular Cajun musicians during the 1940s
This is a recording he made with Buddy Duhon in the summer of 1948 in Houston, Texas
It’s a version of the blues standard, written by Kokomo Arnold and first recorded in 1934
Mississippi Fred McDowell - Milk Cow Blues
He was a hill country blues musician originally from Tennessee, though he moved to Mississippi in 1928 and continued to farm there full-time while playing music on the weekends
His music caught the attention of producers and blues fans in the early 1960s due to the recordings Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins made of him while travelling across the southern states to collect field recordings
Within a couple of years of this attention, he became a professional musician and recording artist who played at folk festivals and toured clubs around the world
This is off his 1967 album Long Way From Home
Roscoe Holcomb - Milk Cow Blues
Was a construction worker, coal miner, and farmer much of his life
He was an older artist who became popular during the folk revival of the 1960s, and didn’t have a music career at all before then—though he was born in 1912, he was first discovered by John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers playing on his front porch in Daisy, Kentucky in 1958
This is from his 1975 album Close to Home
Holcomb likely learned it from old-time Kentucky musicians Sam and Kirk McGee
Lawrence Ferlinghetti - William Butler Yeats on the Third Avenue L
He was a poet, artist, and activist from New York who founded City Lights bookstore in San Francisco
Though he didn’t consider himself a Beat poet, he published many of the Beat poets, including Allen Ginsberg, and is often aligned with members of that movement
This poem appears on his 1958 album Tentative Description of a Dinner to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower and Other Poems
William Butler Yeats - The Song of the Old Mother
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and writer who was an important figure in the Irish Literary Revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
This was recorded in 1934
Kacy & Clayton - The Downward Road
Second cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum from Wood Mountain, SK
From their 2013 album The Day is Past & Gone
Gérard Dôle - Si J’aurais des Ailes
Dôle is a French ethnomusicologist, musician, and writer who became interested in traditional Cajun music in the 1960s
This is from the 1979 album Songs, Tales, Ditties and Dances (from Louisiana)
The title translates to “If I Had Wings”
Shirley Collins - Charlie
She’s an English folk singer, and likely one of the best-known names from the English folk revival of the 1960s and 70s
This is from her 1959 album Sweet England
Originally a Scottish song, though also popular in Ireland and the US, especially Appalachian region
From at least the early 1700s
Related to “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss”
Gillian Welch, David Rawlings - Lawman
Welch and Rawlings are one of the best-known contemporary American roots duos, and they’ve been nominated for an Oscar and have won a Grammy together
This is from their album Woodland, which came out in August
It’s their first album of original music since 2011 for Welch and 2017 for Rawlings
Madeleine Roger - Wildflowers
From Winnipeg
This is from her recent album Nerve, which came out at the end of August
Linda Perhacs - Children
She’s a psychedelic folk musician from California who released her first album in 1970, while she was working as a dental hygienist
The album didn’t sell well at the time, but it began to receive attention in the 1990s, and Perhacs released her second album, The Soul of All Natural Things, in 2014, which is where this song comes from
Neil O’Brien - All ‘Round My Hat
A Nova Scotia singer recorded by Helen Creighton for her album Maritime Folk Songs from the Collection of Helen Creighton
Creighton recorded 4 other versions of the song throughout Nova Scotia during her travels, and noted that “It took over fifteen years to find enough singers to put their bits and pieces together and make a complete song”
Iron Mountain String Band - Little Sparrow
This is off a 1973 album of songs that the band learned from field recordings they collected in Virginia beginning in the 1950s
They describe this song as “an example of an earliest phase ballad which is descended directly from British Isles sources”
It’s a version of the ballad commonly titled “Fair and Tender Ladies,” which is considered an Appalachian ballad
Lucy MacNeil - Fair and Tender Ladies
She’s a musician from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, who’s been performing for almost 40 years
This is from her debut solo album, Angels Whisper, which came out this year
The Men They Couldn’t Hang - Silver Dagger
They’re a folk punk band from England that formed in the mid-1980s
This is from their 2014 album Tales of Love and Hate
Lightnin’ Hopkins - World’s in a Tangle
Was a country blues musician from Texas who gained a broader audience with the folk revival of the 1960s after recording and performing around Texas in the 40s and 50s
He continued to tour and record throughout the 60s and 70s, and was the poet in residence for Houston, Texas for 35 years
This is a field recording made by Mack McCormick, off a compilation album of McCormick’s recordings called Playing for the Man at the Door, released by Smithsonian Folkways Records last year
It’s a live recording from Hopkins’ 1962 show at Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas
The liner notes for the album state that it seems improvised and possibly “loosely based on blues artist Jimmy Rogers’ Cold War-themed song from 1951 of the same title”
Michael Hurley - No, No, No, I Won’t Come Down No More
Member of the 1960s Greenwich Village scene, also a cartoonist and painter
Got mononucleosis before he was able to record his first record, had to wait a few years before it was safe
Recorded first album on the same reel-to-reel that recorded Leadbelly’s Last Sessions
This is from that album, First Songs, from 1961
David Rovics - Landlord (Song for the Rent Strike Wars)
He’s a topical singer-songwriter based in Oregon who’s been playing since the 1990s
This is from his recent album Ministry of Culture: Live at Ecosocialism 2024, which was released in July
The song is about the Anti-Rent War that took place in upstate New York between 1839 and 1845
Cheick Hamala Diabate, Bob Carlin - From Mali to America
Diabate is a Malian musician now based in Maryland who’s been performing since the mid-1980s
He primarily performs on the ngoni, and is recognized as a master of the instrument, which is related to the banjo
Carlin is 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 through his collaborations with Diabate
This is the title track from their 2007 album From Mali to America, which was nominated for a Grammy award
Odetta - God’s a Gonna Cut You Down
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 folk singing
This was recorded live at Carnegie Hall on April 8, 1960
Traditional American song first recorded by the Golden Gate Quartet in 1946
Lottie Kimbrough - Goin’ Away Blues
She was a country blues musician from either Arkansas or Missouri who recorded between 1924 and 1929
She recorded this one in 1928, with Miles Pruitt on guitar
It’s her own song
Karrnnel Sawitsky, Daniel Koulack - Goofing Off Theme
