Barking Dog: July 13, 2023
Jessie Clarence Gorman - Goin’ Up to the Country #1
Gorman was born in Georgia in 1928 and began playing guitar at the age of nine with the help of his older brother
Recorded in Georgia in 1967 by music historian George Mitchell
Bessie Jones - Sometime
Known for spreading folk songs, stories, and games to a wider audience in the 20th century, and especially for helping to preserve Black American song and dance traditions
She travelled to New York City to record her music and her biography with the ethnomusicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax
She also sang at Carnegie Hall, Newport Folk Festival, the Smithsonian Institution’s folklife festivals, and Central Park
Recorded by Alan Lomax on St. Simons Island, Georgia, in 1959
It’s a children’s play song from the Georgia Sea Islands
Sam Hinton - The Green Grass Growing All Around
Was an American folksinger, marine biologist, and visual artist
This is off his 1964 album of children’s songs called Whoever Shall Have Some Peanuts
It’s a cumulative song, where each verse grows longer than the last, and it started out as a popular music song from 1912
The next six songs are different members of the “Unfortunate Rake” song family, which includes “St. James Hospital,” “Streets of Laredo,” and “One Morning in May,” among others. The earliest version of the song likely dates to the 18th century, and the original story is about a young man in a job like soldier or sailor who has contracted some form of illness—often a sexually transmitted infection—and is giving directions for his funeral. In the first version, we’ll hear references to being “disordered” and obtaining “salts or pills of white mercury”; both of these are explicit references to syphilis, which mercury was used to treat at the time the song was first transmitted. We’ll hear later versions of the song that change the cause of death, but in each version, the function of the song is to provide practical advice to the target audience.
Brendan Gleeson - The Unfortunate Rake
Perhaps better known as an actor in films like Braveheart and Gangs of New York
This is from the Coen Brothers’ 2018 film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Though it’s the most recently recorded version of the song that we’ll hear today, it’s the closest in text to the earlier versions of the song
Wade Hemsworth - The Bad Girl’s Lament
A Canadian folksinger from Brantford, Ontario
Hemsworth learned this version of the song in the Canadian North Woods, and it is closely related to early versions found in the Maritime provinces and in Maine
This is the only version that changes the story to that of a young girl “gone wrong”, rather than a ballad about a misguided boy, or “rake”, though the general story is still very similar to earlier versions
Johnny Cash - Streets of Laredo
This is from the 2002 album American IV: The Man Comes Around
Western settlers brought the ballad with them, and it was quickly adapted to their immediate surroundings
Here, the young man dies of lead poisoning from a bullet, rather than syphilis
John Greenway - The Ballad of Bloody Thursday
American folklorist who specialised in social protest songs
This one comes from a 1960 Folkways album which specifically focuses on the “Unfortunate Rake”
It’s a modern industrial adaptation of the ballad that commemorates a longshoreman’s strike in San Francisco in 1934, during which many workers were injured or killed
The ballad largely strays from the parent ballad, though some lines remain the same
Rosalie Sorrels - The Lineman’s Hymn
She started out as a folksinger and collector of folk songs, and left her husband in the 1960s to travel across America with her five children, establishing herself as a performer and making connections with other folk musicians, writers, and artists
The text closely resembles the earlier “Streets of Laredo,” but is loaded with telephone lineman slang, and placed in a local setting
This version contains the ironic twist that the young man meets his doom by falling from a low pole, though his job frequently requires ascents of much greater heights
A. Paul Ortega - Chicago
Ortega was an influential Apache musician who began as a tribal singer at the age of five
He moved to Chicago in the early 1960s and began to adapt blues guitar to Apache social songs
This is from his 1974 album Three Worlds
Of all the versions of the ballad that we’ve heard today, this one differs most from earlier versions, and to great effect
David Francey - Highway
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
Off his 2001 album Far End of Summer
Lisa Null - Will You Love Me in the Morning
Null was a folk musician who performed around the Washington, DC area for more than 40 years
This is from her 2015 album Legacies, released by Folk Legacy Records
Her partner, Charlie Baum, wrote the song, and he sings the melody on it
He woke up with the song in his head one morning, saying that it came to him in a dream
Uncle Sinner - Rocky Island
From Winnipeg
Off his 2020 album Trouble of This World
A popular old Kentucky square dance tune, probably best known through Ralph Stanley’s version
Othar Turner - Father, I Stretch My Hands to Thee
One of the last well-known fife players in the American fife and drums blues tradition
Born in Mississippi in 1907 and lived his life in the Mississippi hill country as a farmer
Scholars from nearby colleges recorded him and his friends in the 60s and 70s, and his band played at many local farm parties
Performed as the “Mississippi Fife and Drum Corps” with his bandmates Jessie Mae Hemphill and Abe Young on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood in 1982, and the group began to receive wider attention in the 1990s
A hymn written by Charles Wesley and first published in the mid-1700s
From the 7th album in a series called Living Country Blues USA, which comprise field recordings made of American blues artists in 1980 by two German blues enthusiasts named Axel Küstner and Siegfried Christmann
Laura Baird - Pretty Polly
She’s a multi-instrumentalist from New Jersey known for her work with her sister Meg as the Baird Sisters, and with guitarist Glenn Jones
This is from her 2017 debut solo album I Wish I Were a Sparrow
It’s a mid-eighteenth century American murder ballad that comes from the older “Gosport Tragedy” ballad
Robert “Nighthawk” Johnson - Can’t No Grave Hold My Body Down
From an album of field recordings George Mitchell made of Johnson in Skene, Mississippi, in 1969
Attributed to songwriter and preacher Claude Ely of Virginia
He claimed to have written it when he was twelve while he was sick with tuberculosis
David Nzomo - Itumbi ya Nyaa (Divorce Song)
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
This is from his 1975 album Work and Dance Songs from Kenya
It’s a song about a wife leaving her husband over an argument between her and another of his wives
The refrain of the song translates to:
That woman called me an egg
An egg of ostrich and antelope
An egg that can’t do two things
I am going to perform miracles
Till I get to the shores
Where our kin dwell
The Weather Station - Yarrow and Mint
From Toronto
Off the 2011 album All Of It Was Mine
Ferron - Light of My Light
She’s a musician and poet from BC
This one’s off her 1992 live album Not a Still Life, recorded at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco
It was originally included on her 1978 album Backed Up
Judy Collins - Carry It On
American artist who has recorded music in a number of different genres
Is also known for bringing attention to lesser-known artists, including Leonard Cohen, Ian Tyson, and Joni Mitchell, who weren’t very well-known when she recorded songs by them
This one’s from her 1965 album simply called Fifth Album
Written by the folksinger Gil Turner
Bob Dylan - Only a Hobo
From the 2013 compilation album Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait
He first recorded it in 1963
It’s similar to traditional songs like “Only a Miner Killed” and “Poor Miner’s Farewell”
Old Man Luedecke - Song for Ian Tyson
From Chester, NS
Off his album Tender is the Night from 2012
Kacy & Clayton - Brunswick Stew
From Wood Mountain, SK
It’s from their 2016 album Strange Country
Gillian Welch - One Morning
She’s one of the best-known contemporary American roots musicians, and has collaborated with artists like Allison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, and The Decemberists, though she’s known particularly for her musical partnership with Dave Rawlings
From her 1998 album Hell Among the Yearlings
It’s her own song
Pharis & Jason Romero - Cannot Change It All
From Horsefly, BC
Off their 2022 album Tell 'Em You Were Gold, which was recorded over six days in a 60-year-old barn beside the Little Horsefly River
Sarah Wood - Red Rocking Chair
She’s an old-time banjo player and traditional ballad singer from Kentucky
This song is off her 2017 album 25 Tunes for Old Time Banjo and Singing, Vol. 1
It’s known by a bunch of other names, including “Honey Babe Blues”, “Sugar Babe”, and “Red Apple Juice”
The different versions vary greatly both in lyrics and melody, but the song is recognized as one song or one song family
The Tarriers - Red Apple Juice
They were a folk group from New York City who formed in the 1950s
Members included Erik Darling, Bob Karey, Karl Karlton, and Alan Arkin, who later became a well-known actor
This song is from their 1960 album Tell the World About This
Art Thieme - Hobo’s Last Ride
He was a folk musician, photographer, and radio host from Chicago who specialised in music and stories from the upper midwest United States, but he also had an interest in cowboy songs
This is from his 1983 album That’s the Ticket, released by Folk-Legacy Records
He learned this song from a recording by Canadian musician Hank Snow that he heard on a country radio show as a child during the 1950s
It uses the same tune as “Tying Knots in the Devil’s Tail”
Harrison Kennedy - Hard Time Blues
A Hamilton, Ontario artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
From his 2011 album Shame the Devil
Willie Dunn - Bear and Fish
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
From the 2021 compilation album Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies
David Rovics - Behind the Barricades
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
This song is from his 2001 album Living In These Times
He wrote it after police riots in Genoa, Italy during the G8 meetings in the summer of 2001
OJ Abbott - The Silver Herrings
Abbott was 84 when this song was recorded by the folklorist Edith Fowke for her 1957 album Irish and British Songs from the Ottawa Valley
He learned this fish peddlars’ song at his school in England as a child, the only song he recited for Fowke that he actually learned in England
Harry Belafonte - Shenandoah
He was an influential American singer, activist, and actor
Off the 1957 album An Evening with Belafonte
Traditional American folk song and sea shanty, traced back to the early 19th century
Likely came from American and Canadian voyageurs who travelled down the Missouri River
Mississippi John Hurt - Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight
American country blues singer and guitarist from Avalon, Mississippi
He made a couple of recordings for OkEh Records in the late 1920s but they were commercial failures, and when OkEh Records closed shop during the Great Depression, Hurt returned to his work as a sharecropper, continuing to play music at local events
His OkEh recordings were included on the incredibly influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, and in 1963 a copy of “Avalon Blues” was discovered, which led the musicologist Dick Spottswood to find Hurt in Avalon
Hurt performed at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, which brought further attention to his music, and he toured extensively throughout the US and recorded 3 albums
This is his own song
Paul Clayton - Little Pig
An American folksinger and folklorist who specialised in traditional music and collaborated with artists like Jean Ritchie and Dave Van Ronk
The song comes from an old English nursery rhyme called “Betty Pringle’s Pig,” and it was collected throughout the midwest United States and New England
Clayton’s version was collected in Culpeper County, Virginia
Jake Xerxes Fussell - Jubilee
Grit Laskin - The Long Note / Old Hag You Have Killed Me
