Barking Dog: April 25, 2024
Jake Xerxes Fussell - Going to Georgia
He’s a musician from Georgia who grew up in an artistic family and apprenticed with the blues musician Precious Bryant from a young age
He often adapts traditional Southern folk music to his own style, and this song is no different
It’s the first single off his forthcoming album, When I’m Called, which releases on July 12
Fussell learned the song from a number of different sources, including Ralph Stanley, Paul Clayton, and Dock Walsh, though the main source he gives is a recording by the Eller Family of Hiawassee, Georgia from the 1984 album Folk Visions & Voices: Traditional Music and Song in Northern Georgia
We’ll hear that recording after this
The Eller Family - I’m Going to Georgia
Pete Seeger - Guantanamera
Even if you don’t know his music, you’ve likely heard his name--he was a very influential folk singer and an activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and peace through his music
He recorded this one in June of 1963 at Carnegie Hall in New York City
David Rovics - The St. Patrick Battalion
He’s a topical singer-songwriter based in Oregon who’s been playing since the 1990s
Off his 2007 album The Commons
This is the story of the 202 mostly Irish men who deserted the US Army during the annexation of Mexico in the 1840s and joined the Mexican Army instead
Heron - Jokerman
They’re an English folk-rock band that first performed between the late 60s and early 70s, and have reunited intermittently since the 1990s
This is the title track from their 2013 album of Bob Dylan covers
The song first appeared on Dylan’s 1983 album Infidels
Willie Dunn - Pontiac
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
From the 2021 anthology of Dunn’s music called Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies
The Four Southerners - Trouble in Mind
They were a vocal quartet that recorded two tracks for Decca Records in March of 1937
“Trouble in Mind” was written by jazz pianist Richard M Jones in the vaudeville blues style, and first recorded by Thelma La Vizzo in 1924
Has since become a standard in multiple roots genres
Lightnin’ Hopkins - Trouble in Mind
Hopkins 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
Recorded live on April 6, 1964 at Swarthmore College Folk Festival in Philadelphia
Derroll Adams - Trouble in Mind
He was a musician from Portland, Oregon who got his start busking on the West Coast of the US during the 1950s, where he met Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and the two began travelling and recording together
This one was recorded live in Haarlem in the Netherlands in 1977
Si Kahn - Aragon Mill
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
From his 1975 album New Wood
It’s his own song
The song is about the end of mill village culture
It references the city of Aragon, Georgia, which grew around its mill, and it’s also been frequently performed in Ireland, which shares a similar milling history
Frank Proffitt - Baby-O
Appalachian banjo player from North Carolina, known for preserving the traditional ballad “Tom Dooley”
Worked in a spark plug factory, as a carpenter, and as a tobacco farmer
His carpentry skills extended to making instruments—he was a talented luthier, and the banjos he played were homemade
This is from the 1962 album Frank Proffitt Sings Folk Songs
This song is used as both a lullaby and to entertain older children, and the melody is an old banjo tune
Wade Hemsworth - Aidal O’Boy
Wade Hemsworth was a folksinger from Brantford, Ontario known especially for writing the “Black Fly Song”
The song seems to be a variant of one of the many Irish songs brought over to Canada in the 1800s
This version was sung in Labrador and the melody has been used for other songs in Canada, but little else is known about this particular variant
From Hemsworth’s 1955 album Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods
Blind Boy Fuller - Careless Love
He was a popular North Carolina Piedmont blues artist who learned to play the guitar as a child
A traditional American song that’s been recorded by many blues artists
It likely came from the Appalachian region of the US, and the song has floating verses, meaning that the lyrics aren’t set but there are a number of common verses that artists might pick to use in their version
Recorded in New York City in 1937 for Melotone Records
Big Dave McLean - Atlanta Moan
A blues musician from Winnipeg who’s been playing for over 50 years
It’s off McLean’s 2008 album Acoustic Blues: Got ‘Em from the Bottom
The song is by Barbecue Bob, and was first recorded in 1931
William S Burroughs - This is Kim Carson
Burroughs was a writer and artist known as a member of the Beat Generation
This is off the 1979 album The Nova Convention
It’s an excerpt from his 1983 novel The Place of Dead Roads
Alistair Hulett, Dave Swarbrick - The Days of ‘49
Hulett was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland, known as a member of the folk punk band Roaring Jack
Swarbrick was a folk musician from England who’s known as a member of Fairport Convention, and emerged as an important member of the 1960s British folk revival
This is off their 1996 album Saturday Johnny & Jimmy the Rat
It’s an Australian workers’ rights song
Zeinab Shaath - The Urgent Call of Palestine
This is the title track from the 1972 album The Urgent Call of Palestine, which was restored and re-released in March
Shaath was only a teenager when she recorded it, and it was some of the first English-language music to bring attention to the Palestinian struggle
The lyrics to this song are by the Indian poet Lalita Panjabi
The Men of No Property - Why Are the British Troops Here?
From the 1971 album This is Free Belfast! Irish Rebel Songs of the Six Counties, which Smithsonian Folkways calls “a document of dissent during the period of Northern Ireland’s political and sectarian violence known as The Troubles”
This is an excerpt from “Soldiers of the Empire” by John Gray, read by an Irish rebel
William Clancy - The Rocks of Bourne
This is from the 1963 album Traditional Music of Ireland Vol. 1: The Older Traditions of Connemara and Clare
Clancy was a carpenter from the small town of Miltown Malbay on the Clare coast
Although he was considered one of the finest Uilleann pipe players in the country and was often requested for concerts throughout Ireland, he considered music “just a hobby”
This is a traditional Irish folk song, likely from County Galway
It’s unclear where exactly the rocks of Bourne, or “Bawn” as they’re more commonly called, are located
Finbar Furey - The Rocks of Bawn
He’s an Irish folk musician known as a member of the group The Fureys, which he formed with his brothers in the 1970s, though he’s been performing as a solo act since the late 1990s
This is from his 2023 album Moments in Time
Low - Blowin’ in the Wind
They were a band from Duluth, Minnesota
This is from their 2016 collection of B-sides and demos called A Lifetime of Temporary Relief
Kemuli String Band - My Mother
Off a 1999 album of 25 years of selected field recordings from a rainforest community in Papua New Guinea
One member of the band, Rebeka, composed the song about her feelings after her mother’s death
Bob Dylan, The Band - Four Strong Winds
This recording was made during the Basement Tapes sessions in 1967
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 Dylan perform “Blowin’ in the Wind” the previous day
Joseph Spence - Don’t Take Everybody to Be Your Friend
Joseph Spence was a Bahamian musician known for vocalizing and humming while playing guitar, and he influenced artists like Taj Mahal, The Grateful Dead, and John Renbourn
This is from the 1966 album The Real Bahamas (In Music And Song), recorded in New York in May 1965 during Spence's first American concert tour
Jack Kelly & His South Memphis Jug Band - RFC Blues
A Tennessee jug band that was very popular during the 1930s and continued to play through the 1950s when jug bands had declined in popularity
This one was recorded on August 1, 1933 in New York City
The RFC was apparently the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, created in 1932 to give emergency loans to banks, railroads, and farmers
Stanley Triggs - The Blue Velvet Band
He’s a folksinger, photographer, and anthropologist from BC
Learned this version from Archie Greenlaw of Lardeau, BC in 1949
Likely from an old Irish song called the “Black Velvet Band”
Pablo Milanés - Y Hay Que Andar (And We Must Go On)
Milanés was a Cuban musician, and one of the founders of Nueva Trova, a movement that occurred in Cuban music after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, alongside the nueva canción movement of other Latin American countries
From the 1970 album Canción Protesta: Protest Song of Latin America
Uncle Sinner - Prettiest Train
Winnipeg
Recorded in 2017
Comes from a recording that the folklorist Alan Lomax made of Benny Will Richardson in late 1947 while Richardson was incarcerated at Mississippi State Penitentiary
It’s also been recorded by artists like Odetta and Fred Neil
Will Shade - Won’t You Send Me John
He was a blues musician from Tennessee, best known as the bandleader for the Memphis Jug Band
This one was recorded by the music historian George Mitchell in Memphis in 1962
Mississippi Fred McDowell - Down On Dankin’s Farm
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
Recorded in 1968 in Los Angeles
It’s his own song, written after visiting a prison work farm that was operated by the state of Mississippi
Sons of the Pioneers - Bury Me Beneath the Willow
One of the earliest western bands in the US
Formed in 1933 and the band still exists but there have been countless changes in membership since the beginning
As with many folk songs, this one has unclear origins, but was first recorded by Henry Whitter in 1923
Neriah and Kenneth Benfield - Weeping Willow Tree
Father and son autoharp players from North Carolina
This is from their 1962 album Mountain Music Played on the Autoharp
Morley Loon - Amendo Na Nooch
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
This one’s from his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
Title translates to “Friendship-Kinship”
Jean Carignan - Medley, Haste to the Wedding
Carignan born in Levis, Quebec
Made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for being “the greatest fiddler in North America”
Danny MacDougal plays second violin on this, and Pete Seeger plays banjo
Paul McCartney - Calico Skies
