Barking Dog: July 11, 2024
Suzanne Vega - Saint Clare
It’s her 65th birthday today
She’s a musician from California who’s been playing since the early 1980s
This is from a 2016 tribute to Jack Hardy, who founded Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a cooperative that was dedicated to reinvigorating the New York folk scene, and released over 100 albums between 1982 and 1997
Hardy wrote the song in the 90s, and Gerry Leonard plays the guitar on this track
John Prine - Loretta
Prine was one of the most influential songwriters of his generation
He died in April of 2020 from COVID, but he’s remembered for his social commentary and his unique style of singing
This is from the 2001 album Poet: A Tribute to Townes Van Zandt
The song was first released on his 1977 album Live at the Old Quarter
The Weather Station - Yarrow and Mint
From Toronto
Off the 2011 album All Of It Was Mine
Morley Loon - N’doheeno
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
This one’s from his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
The title translates to “The Hunter”
Yusuf / Cat Stevens - Where Do the Children Play?
This was recorded live in Los Angeles in 1970 and included on the 2020 super deluxe version of his 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman
Gary Green - You’re Just As Guilty
Musician from Tennessee
From his 1977 album Gary Green, Vol. 1: These Six Strings Neutralize the Tools of Oppression
The Almanac Singers - I Don’t Want Your Millions, Mister
Founded by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger in 1940
This is off their 1955 album Talking Union and Other Union Songs
The lyrics are by Jim Garland, who wrote it in 1932 during the Great Depression after a miners’ strike in Harlan County, Kentucky resulting in him being blacklisted from working
It uses the same tune as “Green Back Dollar” and “East Virginia”
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott - He Was a Friend of Mine
He’s a folk singer from New York City who was a protege of Woody Guthrie, a collaborator with Derroll Adams, and a major influence for Bob Dylan
This is from Elliott’s 1998 album Friends of Mine, and the conversation before the song is with Jerry Jeff Walker
The song is descended from the traditional American dirge “Shorty George”
Rolf Cahn was the first professional musician to pick up the song from the Library of Congress collection, and it became a favourite of folksingers during the folk revival
Utah Phillips - I Got to Know Why
He was an anarchist folksinger, storyteller, and labour organiser from Ohio
This is from his 1999 album Making Speech Free
Woody Guthrie wrote the song later in his life, and it’s been widely recorded since
It uses the tune of the hymn “Farther Along”
Barbara Dane - The Kent State Massacre
She’s a folk, jazz, and blues singer from Detroit whose voice was described by Time Magazine as "pure, rich ... rare as a 20 carat diamond"
This is off her 1973 album I Hate the Capitalist System, and she wrote the lyrics with Jack Warshaw
The melody is by Jim Garland
Bob Dylan - It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding
This is a live performance from 1981 that was released on the bootleg album Stadiums of the Damned
Dylan originally released the song on his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home
Grateful Dead - Wake Up Little Susie
This is from their 1973 live album History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One, which was recorded in February of 1970 in New York City
The song was written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant and published in 1957
Ulahi, Eyo:bo - Singing with Afternoon Cicadas
Off a 2001 album of 25 years of selected field recordings from a rainforest community in Papua New Guinea
This particular track was recorded in 1977
In the first song, Ulahi greets the arrival of the afternoon cicadas, with the words imitating and harmonising with the insects
In the second song, Ulahi and Eyo:bo sing about Mt. Bosavi
Moondog - Trees Against the Sky
He was an avant-garde composer, musician, poet, and inventor from Wyoming who influenced later artists including Steve Reich and Philip Glass
This is off his 1956 self-titled album, which he recorded while living in New York City
Unspecified - Tao Ang Mahalaga (The People Are the Decisive Force)
From the 1976 album Songs of the Philippine National Democratic Struggle, which protests Ferdinand Marcos’ military dictatorship and American imperialism’s role in supporting his regime
The Men of No Property - If They Come in the Morning
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
Jack Warshaw composed the song in 1974
He’s an American musician who moved to England in the 1960s to work as an architect, and stayed there because of the folk scene and his resistance to the Vietnam War
Richard Inman - Lake Town Blues
Folk and country artist from Winnipeg
This is from his 2016 self-titled album
New Harmony Sisterhood Band - Ballad
This is from the 1977 album ...And Ain't I a Woman?
The New Harmony Sisterhood Band was formed in the mid-1970s by students at the Goddard-Cambridge Graduate School for Social Change
This one was written by Deborah Silverstein in 1974
Unspecified - Bolivariana
This is from the 1975 album Chile: Songs for the Resistance
The song is by Patricio Manns, and it’s about Simón Bolivar, a Venezuelan military leader who led the fight for Latin American independence from Spain during the early 19th century
Leon Rosselson, Roy Bailey - They’re Going to Build a Motorway
Rosselson is a musician and children’s book writer from England who first became widely known in the 1960s by performing his satirical songs on the BBC show That Was the Week That Was
Bailey was an English sociologist and musician, and the two were both members of the group Three City Four
From the 1975 album That’s Not the Way It’s Got to Be!: Songs of Life from a Dying British Empire
The song is by Rosselson, and the spoken-word piece that precedes it is a quotation from a newspaper that describes an old man’s reaction to a road-widening project in London
Pete Seeger - Declaration of Independence
Seeger was a folk singer and an activist from New York who advocated for countless social causes through his music for 75 years
This is off his 1958 album Gazette, which is a collection of topical songs
The writer and critic Walcott Gibbs credited this song to his son, saying: “My four-year-old son has made up a song, or a chant, or a poem, or something that he sings every evening in his bathtub… even this fragment seems to me one of the handsomest literary efforts of the year, as well as proof that children are the really pure artists, with complete access to their thoughts and no foolish reticence. I reprint it here because seldom, I think, has the vision of any heart’s desire been put down so explicitly”
Pablo and Frank Huerito - Moccasin Game Song: Chickadee Song
This is from a 1992 album of Navajo songs, collected in 1933 and 1940 by the American ethnomusicologist Laura Boulton
The track was recorded at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition in August of 1933
The Hueritos were father and son, and the lyrics of the song are “The small birds, in a flock, are moving forward, the chickadees are moving forward to the waterhole”
Moccasin Game songs were sung while playing a gambling game, which the liner notes state comes “from creation times when the night creatures and the day creatures played to decide whether day or night should prevail”
Most of the songs that go along with the game refer to the appearance and behaviour of animals
Old Man Luedecke - Closing Time
Cover of the 1992 Leonard Cohen song off Luedecke’s live album, which was recorded at the Chester Playhouse in his hometown of Chester, Nova Scotia
Yeli (No. 1)
This is from a 2011 album of music from the Forest People of Central Africa, recorded by Nathalie Fernando between 2005 and 2008
It’s an example of yeli singing, which is physiologically similar to yodelling
Ferron - Our Purpose Here
She’s a musician and poet from BC
This is from her 2009 album Boulder
Uncle Sinner - If I Needed You
Winnipeg
The song is by Townes Van Zandt, who released it in 1972
Uncle Sinner recorded it in 2013
Cara Luft - Sunset Pendulum
From Winnipeg
This is a cover of Willie P Bennett’s song, off her 2011 album Black Water Side and Other Favourites
Jesse Fuller - New Corrine
He was an American one-man band born in Georgia in 1896
He could play multiple instruments simultaneously, using a harmonica holder to hold a harmonica, a kazoo, or a microphone, playing guitar, and tap-dancing or soft-shoeing as he played
Though he had already learned two styles of guitar by the age of 10, he only decided to try making a living from music in the early 1950s
Started by working locally in clubs and bars in San Francisco and other nearby cities, but became better known by performing on TV, and in 1958, when he was 62, Fuller recorded his first album
This is from his 1961 album The Lone Cat
Hobart Smith - Hawkins County Jail
An old-time musician who was rediscovered in the 60s after performing throughout the first half of the 20th century, often with his sister Texas Gladden
Alan Lomax made this recording in August of 1959 at the home of Smith’s brother
Sarah Ogan Gunning - I’m Going to Organize
She was a folksinger from Kentucky, as were her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson and brother Jim Garland
She was briefly involved in the New York folk scene in the 1930s and was later rediscovered in Detroit in the 1960s, and played at Newport Folk Festival in 1964
She wrote this song, and Woody Guthrie became the first person to cover any of her songs when he recorded it in 1941
The song is based on the traditional song “Baby Mine,” a love song from at least the 1880s
Willie Clancy - Bruachna Carraige Báine (The Brink of the White Rock)
Clancy was an uilleann pipe, flute, and whistle player from County Clare, Ireland
From the 1967 album The Minstrel from Clare
This is a traditional Irish song with a murky history—some say it’s a “welcome home” song composed as a wedding gift in the year 1666
Crikwater - Bruach Na Carraige Báine
8 Bit Music Hen - The Brink of the White Rock
