Barking Dog: July 20, 2023
Nora Brown, Sarah Kate Morgan - Waynesboro
Brown is a 17 year-old banjoist and singer who carries on the old-time tradition
Morgan is a Tennessee musician who began learning mountain dulcimer when she was 7 on a dulcimer her grandfather had built
This is a recent single recorded in Bristol, Tennessee
David Rovics - Resign (Ballad of Tear Gas Ted)
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
This is from his 2020 album Say Their Names, which covers some of the events that took place in Oregon and beyond between June and September of that year
He says of the song: While the Trump administration and rightwing media portray Portland as an anarchist jurisdiction with a radical left city government, the mayor of the city, Ted Wheeler, is deeply and increasingly reviled by the ever-growing numbers of Portlanders getting brutalized by his out-of-control police forces.
Old Man Luedecke - Kingdom Come
From Chester, NS
Off his 2012 album Tender is the Night
Gerry Axelrod - Turtles and Snakes
He was a naturalist who worked at the West Rock Nature Center in New Haven, Connecticut, and used his music to discuss the importance of saving the environment
This is off his 1980 children’s album Turtles and Snakes and Snowstorm
It’s his own song
Joseph Spence - The Glory of Love
Joseph Spence was a Bahamian musician known for vocalising and humming while playing guitar
This track was included on the 2021 Smithsonian Folkways album Encore: Unheard Recordings of Bahamian Guitar and Singing
That’s a widely recorded song composed by pop songwriter Billy Hill
Sons of the Pioneers - Big Rock Candy Mountain
One of the earliest western bands in the US
They formed in 1933, and originally consisted of Roy Rogers (then known as Leonard Slye), Canadian-born Bob Nolan, and Tim Spencer
They are still together as a band but there have been countless changes in membership since their beginning
They were originally called the Pioneers Trio, but a radio announcer remarked that they were too young to be pioneers, but they could be sons of pioneers
This is a song about a hobo’s paradise, written by “Haywire Mac” McClintock and first recorded in 1928
This recording is from 1935
Colter Wall - Plain to See Plainsman
From Swift Current, SK
This is his own song, from the 2018 album Songs of the Plains
Larry Penn, Darryl Holter - So Long It’s Been Good to Know Ya
Penn was Wisconsin’s Labour Poet Laureate, a songwriter, toymaker, activist, and union man
Holter is a musician and historian from Minneapolis
This is from their 1989 album Stickin’ with the Union: Songs from Wisconsin Labor History
It’s a version of Woody Guthrie’s song of the same name
While Guthrie originally wrote it about the towns that were uprooted and destroyed during the Dust Bowl era, this version is about the industrial towns of Wisconsin, which experienced a similar upheaval in the 1980s as workers lost their jobs
Woody Guthrie - Two Good Men (Sacco and Vanzetti)
Guthrie an important figure in folk history who’s known for his songs about the Okie migrants who travelled west during the Great Depression in search of work
This is from the 1960 Folkways album Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti, commissioned by Folkways’ founder Moses Asch in 1945 and composed and recorded by Guthrie between 1946 and 47
Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrant anarchists accused of murdering two men during an armed robbery in Massachusetts in 1920, and later executed
Though they were sentenced to death, they appealed several times on several factors that seriously brought into question the guilt of the two men and raised questions about the biases of the jury that sentenced them
They were nonetheless executed in 1927, and 60 years later, the governor of Massachusetts finally issued a proclamation that the two men had been unfairly tried and convicted
This is the best-known of Guthrie’s Sacco & Vanzetti songs
Earl Smith - The Mermaid
From the 2003 album Songs of the Sea, produced by the Helen Creighton Folklore Society
Creighton was a prolific folklorist from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, who collected, compiled, and wrote about folklore mainly from the east coast of Canada between 1928 and 1989
Recorded in Lower Clark’s Harbour, Nova Scotia, on July 19, 1949, 74 years ago yesterday
It’s a traditional sea ballad from around the 18th century that likely originated in England but is well-known across North America
Smith told Creighton that the song was based on the old superstition that it was unlucky to see a mermaid combing her hair
Reverend Pearly Brown - Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burnin’
He was a blues musician from Georgia who was known mainly as a street performer
He was blind from birth, and received an education at a school for blind people, completing eight grades in six years
He was later ordained a minister and began singing on the streets in 1939
That one is off his 1975 album It's A Mean Old World To Try To Live In
It’s a traditional gospel blues song which refers to passages in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
Wade Hemsworth - The Blackfly Song
A respected Canadian folksinger from Brantford, Ontario
Wade Hemsworth’s best-known song, written in 1949 and made popular through the 1991 National Film Board short that’s based on the song
Charley Patton - Revenue Man Blues
Patton a Mississippi blues musician known as the Father of the Delta Blues
Recorded in New York City in 1934 for Vocalion Records
Clyde “Kindy” Sproat - Latitu
This is from a 1989 album of Hawaiian music by artists who performed at the 23rd annual Smithsonian Institution Festival of American Folklife
Sproat was a musician and storyteller from North Kohala, Hawaii
Children of NYPS 63 - Gosh, What a Wonderful World!
From the 1959 album Gosh, What a Wonderful World!
Gil Slote was a sixth grade teacher who recorded several albums for Folkways Records with his students
Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger - Kilroy Was Here
MacColl was a well-known British folksinger and labour activist known for his involvement in the 1960s folk revival
He and Peggy Seeger were married
She’s a member of the Seeger family—Mike and Pete Seeger were her brothers, her father was Charles Seeger, a folklorist and musicologist, and her mother was Ruth Crawford Seeger, a composer and the first woman to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship
She’s been living in the UK for over 60 years
From their 1980 album of the same name
“Kilroy was here” is a meme that first appeared as graffiti during the Second World War
MacColl wrote the song, and Seeger arranged it
Willie Dunn - O Canada!
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is his take on the national anthem, from his self-titled album from 1972
Eli Conley - We Keep Each Other Safe
He’s a folk musician from Virginia who states that his songs, “tell stories that aren’t often reflected in roots music,” and that he writes music for “queer and trans folks, justice seekers, and anyone who doesn’t easily fit in a box.”
This is from his recent album Searching For What’s True
Uncle Sinner - Jack O’ Diamonds #2
From Winnipeg
This is from his 2020 album, Trouble of This World
It’s his second recorded version of the traditional Texas gambling song made popular by Blind Lemon Jefferson
Abdullah Kershi - Wa Mahad Aleh (Wah Mahad Al-ay)
From a 1962 album called The Freedom Songs of the Somali Republic, a country that existed until 1969, after which the Supreme Revolutionary Council seized power and renamed the country the Somali Democratic Republic
The title means “Thank God”
It’s by Kershi, and it’s a patriotic song thanking God for the independence of his country
Mrs. Ed Gallagher - Young Riley
From an album of Maritime folk songs collected by the folklorist Helen Creighton and released in 1962
This is one of many songs about parents violently objecting to the marriage of their children
The song is found widely in the maritime provinces and in Newfoundland
Sis Cunningham - Fayette County
She was an important member of the folk community for many years
Cunningham was the founding editor of Broadside Magazine, an important publication for the Greenwich Village folk scene, and she was also one of the first people to be blacklisted as a communist sympathiser in post WWII America
This is from the 1976 album Sundown
The liner notes say: Fayette County in Tennessee in the winter of 1960-61 was where the Black people made their first modern militant stand for the right to register and vote. It was the beginning of a long and bitter struggle which now finds millions of Black people enrolled and voting in the once all-white Southern polls.
Precious Bryant - That’s the Way the Good Thing Go
She was an American musician described as one of Georgia’s great blueswomen
She was first recorded by George Mitchell in 1967, and by the mid 1980s her fanbase had grown enough for her to perform internationally
Recorded in Porlan, Georgia in 1977 by music historian George Mitchell
Rev. Gary Davis - Meet Me at the Station
Was from SC but he moved to Durham, NC, in the 20s, which was a centre of Black culture at the time, where he collaborated with a number of other Piedmont blues artists
Was ordained a Baptist minister in 1933, and began to play gospel music instead of the secular music he was previously known for
Was first recorded in 1935 for the American Record Company
Moved to New York in the 40s, career revived in the 1960s with the American folk revival
Played at the Newport Folk Festival and was an important figure in the Greenwich Village scene, teaching artists like Dave Van Ronk, Bob Weir, and Tom Winslow
Recorded January, 1949 in New York
Crowder Brothers - Depot Blues
They were two brothers from North Carolina who recorded country music in the 1930s
This one was recorded in 1936
The Weavers - Wasn’t That a Time
They were an American folk quartet from New York City, and originally consisted of Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Ronnie Gilbert
This is from their 1981 reunion album Together Again
Lee Hays and Walter Lowenfels wrote the song for Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party presidential campaign in 1949
Bernie Sanders - The Speech That Sent Debs to Jail
In 1979, he wrote and recorded a narrative album for Folkways Records about the legacy of trade unionist Eugene V. Debs, who was a major organiser of the American Railway Union and the Industrial Workers of the World
Debs received almost a million votes during his Presidential campaign in 1916 while incarcerated for his opposition to World War I
Sanders recorded this as part of his work for the American People’s Historical Society, and soon after, he began his own political career as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981
Ella Jenkins - Jambo
An American folk singer and actress dubbed the “First Lady of the Children’s Folk Song”
From her 1974 album Jambo and Other Call and Response Songs and Chants
She wrote the song
Steve Sahlein - Skating Song
This is from the 1970 children’s album More Music Time and Stories by the pioneering music educator Charity Bailey and Sahlen, who was her former student
This is Sahlein’s own song
Johnny Richardson - My Parakeet
He was a folksinger and mechanic from South Carolina who recorded four albums of children’s music for Folkways Records between the 50s and the 80s and performed around the world
He died in 2014 at the age of 105
This is from his 1971 album Lady Bug, Lady Bug and More Children’s Songs
Periwinkle - An Indian Prayer (Lament)
This is from a 1981 album called The Promised Land: American Indian Songs of Lament and Protest
There’s not much else to be found about Periwinkle, though the liner notes for the album are worth checking out because they contain a lot of background on Indigenous issues in the United States
John Lee - Down at the Depot
He was a country blues musician from Alabama
This recording is from July, 1951
Harrison Kennedy - Hound and Rabbit
Hamilton, ON artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
From his 2011 album Shame the Devil
Lawrence Keplin, Fred Allery - Fisher’s Hornpipe
This is a fiddle tune off the 1984 Folkways album Turtle Mountain Music: A Cross Section of Traditional Music Currently Played on the Turtle Mountain Reservation of North Dakota
Karrnnel Sawitsky, Daniel Koulack - Rubin
The McIntosh County Shouters - Wade the Water to My Knees
