Barking Dog: June 9, 2022
Jayme Stone - Hallelujah
He’s a banjo player and composer from Toronto
This is off his 2017 album Jayme Stone’s Folklife, which, in his words, “treats old field recordings not as time capsules, but as heirloom seeds passed down from a bygone generation”
He’s joined here by Moira Smiley, Sumaia Jackson, and Joe Phillips
An 1835 William Walker shape-note tune using earlier words by Charles Wesley
Emmylou Harris - Snake Song
American musician and songwriter who has won 14 Grammys and been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, among other honours
From the 2007 album “Songbird: Rare Tracks & Forgotten Gems”
It’s a Townes Van Zandt song from 1978
Katie Lee - Rapids Ahead
From an album of folk songs from the Colorado river
This song is to the tune of Ghost Riders in the Sky, by Stan Jones, which borrowed its own tune from the old country song When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again”
It was written by Trois Tripplehorn, a passenger of Norman Nevills, who designed and ran boats made to be sailed on the rapids of the Grand Canyon
David Nzomo - Alusi
He’s a musician from Kenya who recorded six albums of traditional Kenyan songs for Folkways records while he was studying at Columbia University in the 1960s and 70s
His early musical gigs were at local events like dances and wedding parties
This is a wedding song he wrote, dedicated to the bride and groom
David Francey - Red-Winged Blackbird
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
One of my favourite tunes from his first album, Torn Screen Door from 1999
Alash Ensemble - For My Son
From their 2017 album Achai
Alash are an ensemble of Tuvan musicians, who are an ethnic group indigenous to Siberia and now living in Russia, China, and Mongolia
They began playing together in 1999 while they were all studying music
It was written by legendary Tuvan musician Aleksandr Sarzhat-ool (Sarjhat-ohl)
Sandy & Jeanie Darlington - When the Curfew Blows
This is off the recent Smithsonian Folkways album The Village Out West: The Lost Tapes of Alan Oakes, which is a collection of field recordings from the 1960s California folk scene
They were a married couple who lived in England in the 1960s before moving to Berkeley, California, in the late 60s, where they performed as a duo
Woody Guthrie wrote this song and recorded it in New York in 1947
It references the migrant camps in California that he witnessed, and specifically talks about the curfews that prevented migrant workers from being on the streets outside of specific hours
Doc Watson, Clarence Ashley - Sweet Heaven When I Die
Watson a Grammy award-winning musician from North Carolina known for his fingerstyle and flatpicking skill on guitar
Clarence Ashley an earlier musician known for his performances at medicine shows in the 1920s, became known through the very influential album Anthology of American Folk Music, released in 1952
Ashley met Ralph Rinzler, a musician and the co-founder of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, in 1960 at a fiddler’s convention
Rinzler set up a recording session in Ashley’s home, and brought in Doc Watson to play guitar
First recorded by the Tenneva Ramblers in 1927
They recorded their version in Los Angeles in 1962
Uncle Sinner - Blow Gabriel
Winnipeg artist
Off his 2015 album Let the Devil In
This seems to be a song largely from the slave shout singing tradition of the islands off the coast of the state of Georgia, which involves call-and-response singing, percussive rhythm, formalized dance-like movement, and Christian belief
Both the McIntosh County Shouters and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, two prominent groups of that tradition, recorded this song in the 20th century
The Willing Four - You’ve Got to Move
They were a gospel group from Baltimore, Maryland
This seems to be the only track available from them
It’s a traditional African-American spiritual that’s been widely recorded since the mid-20th century
This version is from 1944, but we’ll hear a couple other versions after it
The Moving Star Hall Singers - You Got to Move
This is off a 1964 album recorded at the Sea Island Folk Festival, which musicologist Guy Carawan organized after five winters of living and working with the people of the Sea Islands of South Carolina
Though the islands were poor and younger generations weren’t as involved with preserving cultural traditions, the islands have been referred to as one of the heartlands of American music
The festival was created with the idea of instilling pride in the people of the islands, who had been conditioned to be ashamed of their creative expressions
The Moving Star Hall Singers were all lifelong residents of Johns Island, their ages ranging from 25 to 65 years old
Mississippi Fred McDowell - You Gotta Move
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
McDowell recorded his version in 1965, and it inspired the Rolling Stones to record a version as well
We heard a version by the Moving Star Hall Singers before that
Frank Ulwenya - Chakacha
He’s a musician from Western Kenya
He started playing guitar when he was 10, and played in four different groups as a young man in Nairobi
In 1985, he moved to Seattle where he worked for Boeing
Ulwenya met other Kenyans in his area, with whom he started playing in a group called Ujamaa
A couple years later, he started his current ensemble, L’Orchestra Afrisound, which has since become a fixture in the Seattle music scene, and Ulwenya is now seen as a standard-bearer for the East African musical community in the Pacific Northwest
This song is named after a girl’s dance style in Mobasa, Kenya
The song invites a woman to dance, and remembers the good times that were had while dancing the chakacha
David Laing - Magic Mountain
He was a geologist, singer-songwriter, and educator from New Hampshire who recorded 2 albums for Folkways records in the 1970s
His father was a novelist and his mother was the poet Dilys Laing, and he inherited his love for nature and humanity from both of them
Laing wrote songs about places that were special to him, which resulted in the album this song comes from, the title of which is also Magic Mountain
He wrote this song while travelling cross-country in 1977
Old Man Luedecke - Closing Time
Cover of the 1992 Leonard Cohen song off his live album, which was recorded at the Chester Playhouse in his hometown of Chester, Nova Scotia
Harrison Kennedy - Blues Solution
Juno-award-winning roots artist, active since the 1960s
This is from his 2017 album Who U Tellin’?, but this specific recording is from Hamilton, Ontario’s 2021 Winterfest
Pink Anderson - I’m Going to Walk Through the Streets of the City
Pink Anderson was an American blues singer and guitarist born in Laurens, SC
Began performing in medicine shows in 1914 and continued to perform in medicine shows for about four decades
Folklorist Paul Clayton recorded him at the Virginia State Fair in May 1950, and he also recorded an album in the 60s and played a few shows, though he reduced his activity after a stroke in the late 1960s
This song is by Reverend Gary Davis, who recorded it under the title “I’m Gonna Sit Down on the Banks of the River”
Green Paschal - Your Close Friend
He was a musician from Georgia who began playing music in the 1950s, when he was in his 30s or 40s
Recorded in Talbottom, Georgia in 1969 by the field researcher and festival curator George Mitchell
This song is by Reverend EW Clayborn
Kemuli String Band - What We Said
Off a 1999 album of 25 years of selected field recordings from a rainforest community in Papua New Guinea
A member of the band nearly married another woman before marrying his wife, but her parents refused, and she quickly moved on
He wrote this song about that situation
The message of the song is essentially, “when you are married to someone else, if that person fights with you, then you can think back to what we said to each other”
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Swimming Song
Learned piano from village nuns when living in the Laurentian mountains as children
Started writing and performing own songs in Montreal in 1960s
This is from their 1974 self-titled album
Bob Gibson - Erie Canal
Was an influential American folk singer known particularly for his work during the folk revival of the 50s and 60s
Recorded this live at Cornell University in 1957
It’s a well-known song likely written in the 1800s
Big Bill Broonzy - This Train
He was an American blues singer and guitarist
Was one of the leading figures of the emerging folk revival of the 1950s
Traditional American gospel song first recorded in 1922
This version was recorded live in Belgium in 1957
We’ll hear two songs that share the same melody after this
Jim Nollman - Froggy Went a-Courting (300 Turkeys)
Off the 1982 Folkways album Playing Music with Animals: Interspecies Communication of Jim Nollman with 300 Turkeys, 12 Wolves and 20 Orcas
The notes for the album states that the tracks differ from other touted interspecies pieces because they were mostly recorded in real time, not dubbed in the studio
The one we heard, he recorded in a farmyard surrounded by 300 tom turkeys, which respond to pitch and volume
Nollman notes that “The trick to the process is riding the shared musical energy without aggravating the turkeys,” and recalls that he was once attacked by a flock for getting to frenetic
Folk song of Scottish origin, the most early musical version of which was published in 1611
Elizabeth Mitchell - Crawdad
We just heard three songs that have a melody in common, that last one, Crawdad, by Elizabeth Mitchell
Musician from New York who began her career as part of the duo Liza and Lisa with Lisa Loeb
Relatively well-known song which developed out of white American play-party traditions and Black American blues songs
Other versions of the song called “Sweet Thing” or “Sugar Babe”
Tom Waits - Rockin’ Chair
Waits a very well known American musician, composer, and actor who’s been playing professionally for 50 years
Recorded in 1971 and included on his album The Early Years, Volume One
Karen James - But Black is the Colour
A folksinger who grew up in England, Spain, and France, and moved to Canada as a teenager
Song originated in Scotland but is popular in the Appalachian region of the US
Louisa Sera Chompi - Lullaby
Off an album of Peruvian mountain music from 1966
Chompi was woman from the village of Kiku
The lyrics translate to “Baby, that you might learn to work the potatoes, young one”
Ashley MacIsaac - Big John MacNeil
He’s a Juno-award-winning musician from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia who’s been playing since the early 1990s
He plays a right-handed fiddle left-handed, leaving it strung right-handed, which is a very unusual way to play the fiddle
This is a well-known Scottish tune also known as Lord Ramsey
Lonesome Ace Stringband - 44 Gun
From Toronto
Off their 2014 album Old Time
This is a traditional Appalachian song also recorded under the name White Oak Mountain
Pharis & Jason Romero - Old Bill’s Tune
From Horsefly, BC
Brand new one off their forthcoming album Tell 'Em You Were Gold, which will be out on Smithsonian Folkways on June 17
Jimmy Memorana - Coffee, Tea and Jam
Off a 1983 album of Inuit music from the Northwest Territories
Memorana was from Ulukhaktok on Victoria Island, though he travelled extensively around the North as a hunter, guide, and explorer, and is described by a friend as being enthusiastic, full of energy, and possessing an “ever-present sense of humour”
The lyrics translate to “First I will drink some coffee / Then I will eat a bit of biscuit / With some jam”
Fannie Lou Hamer - I’m Gonna Land on the Shore
She was a Civil Rights and women’s rights activist who co founded the Freedom Democratic Party and the National Women's Political Caucus
This song is from the 2015 album Songs My Mother Taught me, which was recorded in 1963
She recalled this song being sung in the cotton fields by her mother when Mrs. Hamer was picking cotton with her as a small child
It expresses a desire for a better life while opposing racial injustice
The Pennywhistlers - Roll On Columbia
A group of 7 women formed in 1962 who performed music reflecting their Eastern European heritage and an appreciation of international music traditions
One of 26 songs written by Woody Guthrie when he was commissioned by the Bonneville Power Administration to write songs promoting the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in 1941
Kaia Kater - Salt River
Based in Toronto
Sheesham & Lotus - Ida Red
