In today's climate of a blues band seemingly on every corner with "the next Stevie Ray Vaughan" being touted every other minute, it's hard to imagine a time when being a White blues singer was considered kind of a novelty. But in those heady times of the early '60s and the folk and blues revival, that's exactly how it was. But into this milieu came three young men who knew it, understood it, and could play and sing it; their names were Koerner, Ray and Glover. They were folkies, to be sure, but the three of them did a lot -- both together and separately -- to bring the blues to a White audience and in many ways, set certain things in place that have become standards of the Caucasian presentation of the music over the years.

The three of them were college students attending the University of Minnesota, immediately drawn together by their common interests in the music and by the close-knit folk community that existed back then. As was their wont, they all decided to append their names with colorful nicknames; there was “Spider” John Koerner, the Jesse Fuller and Big Joe Williams of the group, Dave “Snaker” Ray, a 12-string playing Leadbelly aficionado, and Tony “Little Sun” Glover on harmonica, holding up the Sonny Terry end of things. This simple little act of reinvention resonates up to the present day.

They worked in various configurations within the trio unit, often doing solo turns and duets, but seldom all three of them together. Their breakthrough album, “Blues, Rags & Hollers”, released in 1963, sent out a clarion call that this music was just as accessible to White listeners -- and especially players -- as singing and strumming several choruses of "Aunt Rhody." While recording two excellent follow-ups for Elektra, both Koerner and Ray released equally fine solo albums. Tony Glover, for his part, put together one of the very first instructional books on how to play blues harmonica (Blues Harp) around this time, and its excellence and conciseness still make it the how-to book of choice for all aspiring harmonica players.

Who knew that three guys this cool were hanging around Minneapolis in the early 1960s? Back when Bob Dylan was but a skinny (and short-tenured) frosh at the U of M, Koerner, Ray and Glover were already lighting up the West Bank and Dinkytown with their eclectic blues, rags and hollers.

The threesome were a blast of fresh air in a musical milieu that mostly resembled the inner-sleeve album photo (crew-cutted, horn-rimmed guy wearing headphones), helping the Twin Cities turn the page into what has been a tumultuous and productive scene ever since.

"Blues, Rags and Hollers" is far from a perfect album. Live observers have noted that the threesome appeared each to be tapping their feet to their own tempos at times, and much of the music is enthusiastically sloppy in this way.

However, such enthusiasm is their strong suit: the opening straight-vocal cut, "Linin' Track," begins the festivities with a bang and sets the tone throughout. Other standout tracks include "Bugger Burns," the Robert Johnson classic "Dust My Broom," and "Good Time Charlie.

http://lix.in/34d7ad26

Love

Posted by Joski at 7:51 PM | 5 comments  
Labels: Koerner Ray Glover

A communal-like musical ensemble, the Kweskin Jug Band was formed by Jim Kweskin, who had been inspired by a folk group, the Hoppers, featuring washtub bass player John “Fritz” Richmond. As a student at Boston University, Jim Kweskin would often attend the Hoppers’ performances at Cafe Yana in Harvard Square, learning much about guitar fingerpicking by watching the band's fingers. After Richmand was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving time in Korea and Europe, Kweskin began to frequent other folk clubs in Cambridge and Boston. Before long, he was playing guitar well enough to perform English and Appalachian ballads in folk coffeehouses.

Although Kweskin temporarily left for California, he returned to Cambridge, along with his wife Marilyn and dog Agatha, and resumed his musical career. A split-bill booking with blues enthusiast Geoff Muldaur at the Community Church in Boston on February 3, 1963, proved a turning point. In addition to performing their own sets, Kweskin and Muldaur played several songs together. When Kweskin was invited by Maynard Solomon of Vanguard Records to record with a band, he immediately remembered Geof Muldaur. Together with Fritz Richmond, and banjo and harmonica player Mel Lymon, he assembled the original Kweskin Jug Band. The group was a smash from the onset and were quickly signed to a record contract by Vanguard.

During a two-week stint at the Bottom Line in New York, Maria D'Amato, fiddler and vocalist for the New York-based Even Dozen Jug Band, attended a show, fell in love with Geoff Muldaur and accepted an invitation to move to Cambridge and join the Kweskin Jug Band. D'Amato and Muldaur were soon married.

Most folks probably remember Borneo as a tune sung by the jug band on The Muppet Show. The song itself dates back to the late 20s, from the prolific pen of Walter Donaldson, who also wrote standards like My Blue Heaven, Makin' Whoopee and Yes Sir, That's My Baby. It's up to you whether you listen to this song while your clothes are all torn-e-o.

I'm A Woman was one of the few contemporary songs they recorded. Written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller (too many R&B and early rock classics to list), it had been a smouldering hit for Peggy Lee in early '63. The Kweskin version is much earthier, thanks to Maria D'Amato's vocals (who soon married fellow band member Geoff Muldaur).

Shortly after the Kweskin Jug Band performed on the nationally aired Steve Allen Show, on March 4, 1964, Lymon left the band and was replaced by banjo wiz Bill Keith, who had just left a gig with Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys.

The Kweskin Jug Band continued to bring their unique style of folk music to a national audience, appearing on The Roger Miller Show and The Al Hirt Show. Although Kweskin planned to move to California, the group left Vanguard and signed with Reprise, and virtuosic fiddler Richard Greene was added to the band. Just when it looked as though the Kweskin Jug Band was going to become commercially successful, Kweskin, who had moved into Lymon's commune in Fort Hill, a rundown section of Boston, shaved off his trademark mustache and announced that he was breaking up the group.

In the aftermath of the Kweskin Jug Band's demise, Kweskin continued to work as a soloist, and he formed the U & I Band in the mid-1980s. Richmond went on to become a well-respected recording engineer and producer. Geoff and Maria Muldaur recorded several memorable duo albums before their marriage dissolved in the 1970s. Keith resumed his partnership with guitarist and vocalist Jim Rooney. In addition to working on each others' albums, Keith and Rooney were instrumental in the forming of a folk super group, the Woodstock Mountain Revue. Lymon, who ran his commune as a cult, disappeared under still-mysterious circumstances.

http://lix.in/a4ef8644

http://lix.in/81159fa5

Peace and Love

Posted by Joski at 6:55 PM | 12 comments  
Labels: Jim Kweskin, Jug band

Characterized as the most famous Irish folk singers in the world, the Clancy's and Tommy Makem came together as a singing group in the 1950's. They were ultimately resposible not only for the successful interest in Irish music in the United States, but similarly started a revival of interest in Irish folk songs in Ireland.

Their popularity is the result of several factors. There was already an American folk revival beginning in the United States, and men such as Ewan MacColl popularizing old songs on the other side of the Atlantic. But it was the Clancys' boisterous performances that set them apart, taking placid classics and giving them a boost of energy and spirit (not that they took this approach with all their songs; they would still sing the true mournful ballads with due reverence).

But by the late 1960s, rock music had taken full swing, and the ballad and folk boom was waning. To keep the Clancys at the top, Teo Macero began producing their records for Columbia. Macero introduced many new instrumentations to the Clancys music, the among them Louis Killen coming in to play concertina on backup, especially on their 1968 album of sea songs, Sing of the Sea.


Sadly, Bobby Clancy passed away on September 6, 2002. Predeceased by Tom (1990), and Paddy (1998), all members of this internationally famous group, there now remains just the youngest brother, Liam. Tommy Makem of County Armagh, is now living in America. But their rich Irish ballads, robustly sung in unison, will live on forever in the hearts of their fans.

Here is the famous “Songs of the sea” with the powerfull “Santy Anno”

http://lix.in/fd4d9b05

Peace

Posted by Joski at 6:51 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: Clancy Brothers

Originally released in 1969 SOMEBODY ELSE, NOT ME is one of Dave Van Ronk's most satisfying and artistically fruitful albums.

The overall theme, as implied in the haunting, part-spoken title track, is history and its influences. Van Ronk has always been best known as an interpreter of other people's songs. In this collection, he covers songs by two of his contemporaries, Tom Paxton and Bob Dylan, that are tributes to artists who were influential on Paxton, Dylan, and Van Ronk. Paxton's "Did You Hear John Hurt" and Dylan's "Song For Woody" sound more universal and somehow even more personal in Van Ronk's exquisite interpretations.

Elsewhere, Van Ronk covers Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer," Brownie McGhee's "Sportin' Life," and offers an astonishing, angry rendition of Woody Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty" that's among his finest performances ever.

http://lix.in/5b8dbd48

Peace

Posted by Joski at 6:45 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: Dave Van Ronk

As 19th-century America expanded, so too did the "ribbons of iron" that crisscrossed the vast landscape and sparked the imagination of music-makers. Work songs, ballads recounting riveting exploits, and instrumental echoes of the once familiar sounds of the steam locomotive have enshrined the railroad in our musical memory.

There's probably not a folksinger alive who doesn't have some sort of strange fascination with the railroads. At the beginning of the 20th century, thousands of workers hit the iron road in search of jobs and a better life for themselves and the folks back home.

From that period came some of the most timeless songs in American folk music, and Smithsonian Folkways managed to gather an incredible catalog of songs and artists for this compilation, Classic Railroad Songs

Over the course of the 29 tunes on Classic Railroad Songs, Smithsonian Folkways catalogs one of the most remarkable journeys and periods in American history. What started in the late 1800s and continued through the Depression was a mass exodus of, particularly, immigrant workers.

Most of them headed west to the boomtowns and empty promises of jobs in California and Oregon. When they got there, many were cheated out of pay, or just turned away from the job altogether. So they'd set out again, riding the rails in search of a new town and another promising prospect.

The songs on this record capture the spirit of the railroad years with a tenacity and spirit that is lacking in so many compilations of traditional songs. In this case, though, it's no wonder. After all, some of the best folk artists ever to have lived are featured on this record.

Twenty-one of these remarkable folk songs, field recordings, tall tales, and work songs appear on CD for the first time, from the crisp a cappella "F.F.V.," performed by Annie Watson (mother of Doc Watson), to Cisco Houston’s rousing "Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill" from his 1968 “Sings American FolkSongs” anthology.

1. Rail Dynamics (excerpt) - Crook, Emory
2. Train 45 - New Lost City Ramblers
3. Kassie Jones - 'Furry' Lewis
4. Jay Gould's Daughter - Seeger, Pete
5. Railroad Bill - Robertson, Walter
6. Linin' Track - Leadbelly
7. Freight Train - Cotten, Elizabeth
8. Drill Ye Tarriers Drill - Houston, Cisco
9. Zack The Mormon Engineer - Hilton, L.M.
10. Lost Train Blues - Virginia Mountain Boys
11. FFV - Watson, Anne
12. He's Coming To Us Dead - New Lost City Ramblers
13. Train That Carried My Girl From Town - Watson, Doc
14. Rock Island Line - Leadbelly
15. Lonesome Train - Terry, Sonny & Woody Guthrie/Cisco Houston
16. John Henry - Guthrie, Woody & Cisco Houston
17. Wreck Of The Number Nine - Sorrels, Rosalie
18. Freight Train Blues - McGhee, Brownie
19. New Market Wreck - Seeger, Mike
20. Jerry Go Oil That Car - Haywire Mac
21. Way Out In Idaho - Sorrels, Rosalie
22. Old John Henry Died On The Mountain - Terrell, Henry Grady
23. Casey Jones - Mounce, John D.
24. Wreck Of The Old 97 - Stoneman, Pop
25. Midnight Special - Leadbelly
26. Wabash Cannonball - Watson, Doc
27. Lost Train Blues - Sutphin, Vernon
28. New River Train - Iron Mountain Band
29. Three Little Engines And 33 Cars (excerpt) - Wright, Vinton

Posted by Joski at 10:39 AM | 4 comments  
Labels: Folkways, Railroad Songs

This album first came out in the late l950's, not long before Cisco died and after Woody was incapacitated by Huntington's Chorea.

Woody's songs were reaching a mass audience for the first time, thanks to Kingston Trio records and Pete Seeger concerts. This is just wonderful.

Cisco is somewhat forgotten now, and one can argue as to who does Guthrie songs best...another forgotten non-commercial performer, Logan English, put out a great Woody album on 20th-Century Fox records around the same time Cisco did this one for Vanguard.

Sadly, Mr. English's work has not been transferred to CD.

Houston met Guthrie in California in 1938, and the two former hoboes crossed paths time and time again, frequently recording and performing together, up until Guthrie's diagnosis with Huntington's Chorea.

Of the singers who brought folk into the modern era around World War II, Cisco Houston seems to have less name recognition than either Woody Guthrie or Leadbelly.

Not a songwriter himself, Houston did a great deal to promote the songs and legacy of Guthrie during the mid- to late-'50s, and a number of songs on this recording come from “Cisco sings the songs of Woody Guthrie”.

Houston also brings his smooth baritone to bear on a number of traditional songs, many of them with a political bent harking back to the Depression years. "Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a hobo song, a fantasy about a place where a bum can have everything that he or she desires. "Talking Dust Bowl" is a fun, apocalyptic little song about leaving one's home in a broken-down car, driving down a crooked mountain, and having an accident that "scatters wives and children all over the side [of] that mountain."

Any serious fan of Woody's material needs BOTH his own versions, and Cisco's. A more pleasing singer and more skilled guitarist than Woody, Cisco's performances wear well, while Woody singing Woody makes the lyrics come to life with incredible emotional power. The more one knows about both men, the more one can appreciate their differences and enjoy each for his unique strengths.

http://lix.in/be846ba7

Peace

Posted by Joski at 10:35 AM | 2 comments  
Labels: Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie

This was an impromptu recording made in London on January 14 and 15, 1963. Joining Farina and von Schmidt were Ethan Signer (of the Charles River Valley Boys) on fiddle, mandolin, and guitar, and occasionally Blind Boy Grunt. Blind Boy Grunt was of course the pseudonym of Bob Dylan, whose Columbia contract prevented his real name from appearing on the album.

This is a crude, one-track, one-microphone recording, and although it is an enjoyable collection of American folk songs, it's quite a stretch from the unique style that Farina later developed with Mimi.

1. Johnny Cuckoo (Adapted from a children's game song learned from Bessie Jones,
a Negro woman from St. Simon's Island, Georgia)

2. Jumping Judy (An Ox song, sometimes called DRIVE IT ON, from the unaccompanied
singing of convicts, Cummins State Farm, Arkansas, 1934. Played
in open G-tuning)

3. Glory, Glory (Traditional Negro hymn, the tune relating closely to the
Southern white hymn, WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN?)

4. Old Joe's Dulcimer (A medley of dance tunes including OLD JOE CLARK,
SWING AND TURN, DARLIN' COREY, etc.)

5. Wobble Bird (A variation of THE CUCKOO, in 3/4 time)

6. Wildwood Flower (Instrumental on the well known Carter Family song)

7. Overseas Stomp (In the spirit of the 1927 Memphis Jug Band)

8. Lonzo N'Howard (Learned from Tom Shoemaker of Harlan, Kentucky, who heard it there from a mountain Fiddler called Blind Jim. This is probably its first recording)

9. You Can Always Tell (A tune based on Furry Lewis' DRY LAND BLUES with extra verses)

10. Xmas Island (A twelve-bar written by Fariña)

11. Stick With Me Baby (Played in open G-tuning. Adapted from the 1928 Furry Lewis'I WILL TURN YOUR MONEY GREEN)

12. Riddle Song (Traditional, with new answers to fit the old questions)

13. Cocaine (Learned from Rev. Gary Davis at Indian Neck, 1960)

14. London Waltz (A blues in 3/4 time, music by Fariña, words spontaneous)

http://lix.in/b3a51fa6

Peace

Posted by Joski at 10:27 AM | 1 comments  
Labels: Dick Farina, Eric Von Schmidt

Speaking of the folk boom in the Village….

Lots and lots of really great songs were recorded at the “Freewheelin’” sessions. For the very first time Dylan's true songwriting genius was becoming clearly evident. Up to this point he could only be thought of as an interesting performer who also wrote a few of his own songs, which were mostly reworkings of traditional folk songs. Even though his songs were still basically transformed folk songs, it was obvious that he had an incredible talent for lyrics unlike anyone else on the music scene at the time.

It may seem incredible nowadays, when every singer/songwriter is perceived to be a sensitive "poet", that Dylan was unique in this regard, but he was. While the idea of protest songs was hardly new at the time, the way in which Dylan went about writing them certainly was. Most protest songs at the time, usually referred to as "topical songs", were union songs or civil rights anthems with a narrow viewpoint (us against them) told in black and white terms.

True, some of Dylan's protest songs from this period do not stray too far from that rigid mold (he wouldn't reach the apex of his protest period until the next album The Times They Are A-Changin' where he turned protest music into an artform), but some of the ones that appear here are very unusual and show great potential.

You may have noticed that relatively few of the songs on the list above are of the protest variety. That's because originally the Freewheelin' album wasn't intended to be a "protest" album at all. Initial sessions were done with session musicians and the sound being strived for in those early sessions was a sort of rockabilly style popularized by the early Elvis Presley with a touch of Hank Williams thrown in for good measure.

Furthermore, the songs performed at the early sessions were more traditional than original. The intention seems to have been to take the concept of the first album one step further and turn Dylan full-blown into a great country/folk/blues/rock performer and not the serious folk purist he was later perceived to be.

Somewhere along the line this approach was scrapped and the folk/protest angle was played up. Only one of the full band songs appeared on the final album (Corrina Corrina, although Rocks and Gravel ,which appeared the rare first edition of this album, was also from the electric sessions) and one single, Mixed Up Confusion/Corrina Corrina (different take from the album version) was also released from the sessions as well.

By the time the final album appeared, with new tracks produced by Tom Wilson despite the credit given to John Hammond, there was hardly any trace at all of Dylan the country/folk/blues interpreter and more of Dylan the protest songwriter.

Had Columbia stuck to their original concept things would be much different.

Here are these outtakes.

http://lix.in/53d4dccf

Love

Posted by Joski at 10:21 AM | 2 comments  
Labels: Bob Dylan

Eric Andersen has maintained a career as a folk-based singer/songwriter since the 1960s. In contrast to such peers as Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs, Andersen's writing has had a romantic/philosophical/poetic bent for the most part, rather than a socially conscious one, though one of his best-known songs, "Thirsty Boots," has as its background the Freedom Rides of the early '60s. (The song has been recorded by Judy Collins and others.)

Tom Paxton discovered him that late fall of 1963, performing at the Coffee Gallery in North Beach. He heard his songs and invited him to New York City. In 1964, Eric was soon introduced to the Greenwich Village song writing circle of Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan. He played his first gig as an opening act at Gerde's Folk City.

Robert Shelton of the-New York Times wrote a review where he called him "a writer and performer of the first rank…possessing that magical element called star quality."

He was signed to Vanguard Records and began recording his first album, “Today is the Highway”.

Over the next three years he wrote and recorded four albums of his earliest songs, including his early classics "Come To My Bedside", "Thirsty Boots", and "Violets of Dawn", for Vanguard. The Brothers Four recorded a single of "Bedside" for Columbia Records and it was immediately banned from AM radio, on the grounds of obscenity. All were sung in Andersen's flexible tenor (he shaded toward a baritone later), backed by rapid, intricate fingerpicking.

In 1966, he made his Newport Folk Festival debut, and that same summer, he starred in the Andy Warhol film, Space. His second album 'Bout Changes and Things was released. The following year, 1967, he was about to be signed by manager Brian Epstein before he died. He met the Beatles in London and attended some recording sessions. Then Tin Can Alley, his third album, was released and he went on to record two albums, in 1968 and 1969, for Warner Brothers (Avalanche and Eric Andersen) and one more for Vanguard (A Country Dream).

In the late '60s and early '70s, Andersen experimented with country, pop, and rock music, settling on an amalgamation by the time of his masterpiece “Blue River” in 1972. This was also his most commercially successful album, but Andersen, like friends Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt, was always too serious-minded for the mainstream. In the '70s and '80s, he recorded sporadically while playing folk clubs around the U.S. and especially in Europe, where he took up residence.

His later material, including 1989's “Ghosts upon the Road”, recalls his work in the '60s as it ruefully reflects on that decade. The '90s saw Andersen collaborate with friends like Rick Danko and Jonas Fjeld, as well as release a solo album, 1998's “Memory of the Future” ;

His 2004 album “The Street was always there” was a nostalgic look back at the music of the New York Greenwich Village scene of the early to mid-'60s.

Here are his first and second album

http://lix.in/b1c58eef

Fill your ears

Posted by Joski at 10:15 AM | 1 comments  
Labels: Eric Andersen

In a private archive lay home recordings of works never recorded on LP or CD by this master bluesman, ragtime guitarist and gospel artist, second to none as a musician, who influenced Blind Boy Fuller, Brownie McGee, Bob Dylan, Bob Weir & the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal and so many more.

These unique documents, in excellent sound, capture a full cross-section of a remarkable musician who brought to culmination so many traditions.

Included is a fiery sermon by the Rev.

1. Fast Blues in A: A solo never heard before from Davis, based on 'Mountain Jack', imitating yells and calls in the high register. An example of his musical community, lower bass runs comment as the main character (the soprano) carries most of the conversation with occasional asides from a middle voice.

2. Slow Blues in E: Davis rarely played blues in the key of E. Here are long sustained phrases starting at times in the high voice, descending into the bass, which receives a lively bass solo. Some of his bent high notes recall Lonnie Johnson. Based on traditional blues harmonies, the interplay between registers touching on early Jazz.

3. West Coast Blues: Blind Blake's classic composition: whereas Blake picked with three fingers, Davis used two, resulting in a simplification and slower tempo. He actively rolls the bass syncopations with his thumb to capture Blake's piano-style. Davis strikes the final A flat chord without Blake's open A string as its bass, yet uses similar dissonance in his own compositions in the key of F.

4. Rag in A minor: A unique work, based on some forgotten air or an improvisation in A minor, reminiscent of his Italian Rag.

5. Quick Step: A simple dance or march-like gospel hymn becomes a rhythmic tour de force, its tension created by the highest register pitted against a shuffling bass. There are no other known versions of Davis playing a work sounding like a relic from Mark Twain's world.

6. Horse Thief Blues: Davis leisurely offers a bucolic portrait of a petty country criminal; another piece with an odd bent in F was his Devil's Dream. Davis spices it with dissonant bass notes, a brief bass solo and expanded lyrical passages on the dominant chord. Note how he unpredictably alters the bar lengths of the F chord sections, singing out the melody in a soft, understated way. Again this is the only known version of the work.

7. Candy Man: A brisk Candy Man (in C), sung in mocking falsetto with Tiny Robinson. (A similar example exists of Davis sqeaking out Cocaine). The text is enlivened with "run get the pitcher, get the baby some beer." Far from a blues piece, its purling flow is redolent of white country music which Davis ornaments with counter-rhythms, embellishments and melodic flourishes. Two right-hand fingers shape three parts: the thumb being responsible for the bass and middle voices, the index articulating the middle voice and high melodic notes. Davis also played it as a duet, having a student apply a capo, transposing it to F as Davis would interweave bass and soprano lines above a steady accompaniment, similar to his barely audible flourishes on several of Blind Boy Fuller's 1935 recordings (Rag Mama Rag, etc.)

8. cigarette break . . . (Born and raised in Carolina tobacco country, Davis was a cigar aficionado. Most of his solo playing had a silent partner, an everpresent dangling cigar. Davis and his guitar exhort Tiny Robinson, his muse who organzied these informal sessions, for a smoke.)

9. Hills and Valleys: Davis would improvise at home and during lessons, favoring the key of C. There are touches of the early Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Blake, Lonnie Johnson and possibly others who never recorded. A slow tempo supports runs which ignore bar lines while landing on the downbeat just in time, similar to an Indian tabla solo.

10. Seven Sisters: An enigmatic work in the key of A, wavering from major and minor through its characteristic bent notes. Seven Sisters vanished from his repertoire in the early 1960s and by 1971 he no longer recalled it. Irregular phrases and a bass which interjects bent-note melodies make it demanding, as an inner logic guides its melodic shape, possibly referring to a source lost to us or obscured by time.

11. Crucifixion: Here is one of Davis' musical triumphs: a vocal line and guitar part dovetailing to unite as a two-part-melody which cannot be reduced to a single part, creating a musical perspective, an innovation akin to Giotto's frescoes, the volume and colors of the early Siennese masters (Simone Martini and the Lorenzettis), whose religious imagery is coupled with elements from daily life and the emotions. In recounting the Passion, Davis couples a historic narrative with the personal (Pontius Pilate requesting a wash basin), similar to the facial expressions and physical gestures in Giotto's Padua frescoes revealing grief and angst.
A narrative ballad in the key of G, Davis weaves his complex accompaniment beneath a 'talking blues' style. Using both first person and narrator, the text relates the events preceeding the Last Supper yet ends before the Entombment and Resurrection. Why did he abridge it? Davis' duality as creator and preserver heightens the aura surrounding his epic: Did he adapt someone else's work or was it his own inspiration? One regrets not approaching him as a composer to pose such questions: now it's too late to ever know.

12. I Decided to Go Down: The music Davis played in F often became spicy, modal. The left thumb was active on the low E string to fret up to G while four fingers employed wide stretches and bending to form arabesques which differed from his sung melody. An occasional major/minor ambiguity unfolds amidst harsh dissonances (melodic A flat supported by A natural on the open string!). Unlike many blues and gospel guitarists who formed patterns for the two or three keys they played in, Davis achieved a notable variety of melody and ornaments within A minor and major, C major, D major, E major and minor, F, and G: his pieces in F (Blow Gabriel, The Angel's Message to Me, Devil's Dream, etc.) dwell in a craggy harmonic landscape.

13. Sun Is Going Down (You Better Get Right): A work in E major. Davis layers asymmetries between the guitar's and song's phrasing, its accompaniment veering downwards from the highest register towards dancing bass rhythms. Two recordings exist: a live performance (on Shanachie) in which Davis simplifies the rhythms as he tended to while playing in public. The version on his final session (Biograph, 1971, on a Bozo 12 string guitar) is played in a slow tempo with inaccuracies due to age, yet allows close-ups of details. An unpublished take (for Prestige) in the early 1960s remains in Fantasy's vaults, hopefully to be released. The version heard here, recorded at home by Tiny Robinson, finds Davis at his best, fully employing his rhythmic prowess and projecting it as a heralding call by an Old Testament prophet to place one's life and priorities in order. He once explained the title as "the sun of our life, not the meridian sun that shines by day."

14. My Heart is Fixed: An extended performance of a song recorded only once, c. 1957. Its outward simplicity masks a most difficult and subtle playing, as the sacred pieces in C have soft tones clinging to the melody, without which a skeletal approximation would result.

15. Hold to God's Unchanging Hand: A rare document of a church service at which Rev. Davis was guest minister. The program began with a member of the congregation singing from the piano, exhorting the others to follow.

16. Davis speaks: Davis offers a greeting and prayer to sanctify the proceedings.

17. My Home is on High: Davis announces a song which came to him (usually in his dreams), beginning in the key as the previous song, demonstrating his perfect pitch and practicality by remaining in the same key the pianist had played in.

18. Sermon: As the full sermon spanned an hour, we offer a segment in which Davis dwelled on the tale of Jonah and themes stated earlier and repeated later. One congregant audibly reacts to all (the pianist?) while a nearby Sister ups the spiritual voltage by singing softly, spurring Davis to a plateau of ecstatic song-like preaching (often in the same key as her humming).
Were his sermons prepared? A hazy shard of memory recalls his wife Annie mentioning after one Friday lesson: "B. [Brother] Davis has to get his Sunday sermon ready." Luckily, Tiny Robinson confirms: "Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't."

19. Coco Blues: After Davis' impassioned sermon, we conclude this cross-section of his art with his sublime transformation of a trite popular song into an instrumental masterpiece, as profoundly stated as any of his Gospel songs. In Cocaine (or Coco), Davis anchored his thumb on the low E string's third fret (G) as a pedal point. It is worthwhile to try his fingering and shape the melody with four fingers.

http://lix.in/1e76c052

Hallelujah

Posted by Joski at 5:43 PM | 3 comments  
Labels: Reverend Gary Davis

John Pearse is one of the last players of what Alan Lomax called the Piedmont guitar style - a style made famous by such players as Libba Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt.

He learned the basics fom Big Bill Broonzy during Broonzy's European tour in 1957 and has refined it over the years, adding elements from Jazz, West African High Life music and the Caipira music of Brazil.

The Piedmont style is typified by a finger-picked, syncopated melody line played against a rocking bass line provided by the thumb. John plays many traditional tunes in this style, but, in addition, he has refined and developed it to include dazzling single-string runs played solely by the thumb and complex Ragtime melodies in which the bass line weaves a sinuous counterpoint against the finger-played melody. His style is totally unique and totally captivating.

Throughout the sixties and the early seventies he was much in demand in London as both a studio musician and a record producer for both Capitol and Warner Brothers. He also wrote and presented the first ever series of televised guitar lessons, for the BBC, and traveled through Africa filming a series of wildlife programmes in the Sudan, Mali, Togo, Burkino Faso, and Botswana.

It was around this time that he began to develop and market the eponymous brand of music strings that have made his name known internationally and to design instruments and accessories for such companies as Rose Morris, Rosetti, Hopf, and Aria.In 1978 he left England to design an new accessory programme for Martin Guitars in the United States .

In 1983 he suffered a cataclysmic medical accident that paralysed him completely and which put an end to his performing career. Unwilling to accept the doctors' gloomy prognosis he determined that he would both walk - and play guitar - again. Years of painful rehabilitation then followed, during which time he expanded his company to include both a publishing and video production facility - but he never lost sight of his goal. In 2002 he felt that he was ready, handed over much of the running of Breezy Ridge to his partner - and began to gig again.

Here is the lp I have (XTRA 1056)

11 Guitar Train

12 Cold Winds

13 Harasho

14 Shtil, Die Nacht is Oysgeshternt

15 Plaisir d'Amour - Scarlet Town

16 Yes my love is true

21 Walking

22 Slow Drag

23 It's great to be independent

24 Hazard Rag

25 A Minx from Pinsk

26 McGee's Rag.

Take a real close listen to

1. Slow Drag, a Rev. Davis tune

2. McGee’s Rag : Or as John puts it “ McGee’s, John Hurt’s, Etta Baker’s, Gary Davis’sn Libba Cotton’s and Estil Ball’s (with an introduction by Broonzy and a conclusion by Watson) Rag”

3. Shtil, Die Nacht is Oysgeschternt, a beautiful ballad from the ghetto of Vilna, Poland 1942)

Silence and the night is full of stars

The frost is hard and crisp on the Land

Remember now all that I have taught you

As you hold a Machine gun in your hand

A girl, in her winter furs and beret

Clutches tightly to a hand grenade

A girl with a sof and youthful face

Is leaving for her very first raid

With great care she aims and fires

Her little pistol

A vehicle filled with weapons

Now lies destroyed

Daybreak and she steals from the woods

With snow making garlands in her hair

Humming softly a song of hope

For the struggle everyone must share

http://lix.in/94bc879a

Thanks Mr. Pearse

Posted by Joski at 5:38 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: John Pearse

It could only have happened in real life, this mixing of two Appalachian family musical traditions on the stage of a hip Greenwich Village nightclub before an audience of fad-following New Yorkers. Nothing that improbable is allowed in fiction. The idea could only have come from folklorist Ralph Rinzler.

Doc Watson and Jean Ritchie had never heard of each other until Rinzler introduced them.

Doc was age 38, and Jean was 40, and they had been reared 200 miles apart, Jean in coal-mining area and Doc in the tobacco and truck-farming Blue Ridge. Both were heirs to rich family and community traditions that were remarkably similar. But they had learned to use these traditions in very different ways and from differed aesthetic viewpoints. Jean was well launched as a professional in the incipient folksong revival, what has been called "the great folk scare of the sixties." It was a world Doc Watson was about to enter.

“It could only have happened in real life, this mixing of two Appalachian family musical traditions on the stage of a hip Greenwich Village nightclub before an audience of fad-following New Yorkers. Nothing that improbable is allowed in fiction.”

http://lix.in/d1aa5551

Love

Posted by Joski at 5:33 PM | 1 comments  
Labels: Doc Watson, Jean Ritchie

(born on February 8, 1941 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire)

Tom Rush is a gifted musician and performer, whose shows offer a musical celebration...a journey into the tradition and spectrum of what music has been, can be, and will become. His distinctive guitar style, wry humor and warm, expressive voice have made him both a legend and a lure to audiences around the world. His shows are filled with the rib-aching laughter of terrific story-telling, the sweet melancholy of ballads and the passion of gritty blues.

Rush's impact on the American music scene has been profound. He helped shape the folk revival in the '60s and the renaissance of the '80s and '90s, his music having left its stamp on generations of artists. James Taylor told Rolling Stone, "Tom was not only one of my early heroes, but also one of my main influences." Country music star Garth Brooks has credited Rush with being one of his top five musical influences. Rush has long championed emerging artists. His early recordings introduced the world to the work of Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and James Taylor, and in more recent years his Club 47 concerts have brought artists such as Nanci Griffith and Shawn Colvin to wider audiences when they were just beginning to build their own reputations.

Tom Rush began his musical career in the early '60s playing the Boston-area clubs while a Harvard student. The Club 47 was the flagship of the coffee house fleet, and he was soon holding down a weekly spot there, learning from the legendary artists who came to play, honing his skills and growing into his talent. He had released two albums by the time he graduated.

Rush displayed then, as he does today, an uncanny knack for finding wonderful songs, and writing his own - many of which have become classics re-interpreted by new generations. (It is testimony to the universality of his appeal that his songs have been folk hits, country hits, heavy metal and rap hits.) Signed by Elektra in 1965, Rush made three albums for them, culminating in The Circle Game, which, according to Rolling Stone, ushered in the singer/songwriter era.

In the early '70s, folk turned to folk-rock, and Rush, ever adaptable, saw more room to stretch out. Recording now for Columbia, he toured tirelessly with a five man band, playing concerts across the country. Endless promotional tours, interviews, television appearances, and recording sessions added up to five very successful but exhausting years, after which Tom decided to take a break and "recharge" his creative side at his New Hampshire farm.

Rush returned with a splash in 1981, selling out Boston's prestigious Symphony Hall in advance. Time off had not only rekindled Rush's love of music, it had re-ignited music audiences' love of Rush.

He instinctively knew that his listeners were interested in both the old and the new, and set out to create a musical forum - like the Club 47 of the early '60s - to allow established artists and newcomers to share the same stage. In 1982, he tried it out at Symphony Hall. The show was such a hit it became an annual event, growing to fill two, then three nights, and the Club 47 series was born. Crafting concerts that combined well known artists such as Bonnie Raitt or Emmylou Harris with (then) unknowns like Alison Krauss or Mark O' Connor, Rush took the show on the road. From the '80s to the present day, Club 47 events have filled the nation's finest halls to rave reviews, and have been broadcast as national specials on PBS and NPR.

Today, Tom Rush lives in Wyoming when he's not touring. His voice has grown even richer and more melodic with training, and his music, like a fine wine, has matured and ripened in the blending of traditional and modern influences. He's doing what he loves, and what audiences love him for: writing and playing ...passionately, tenderly...knitting together the musical traditions and talents of our times.

Here are his Prestige Recordings

http://lix.in/67e24823

http://lix.in/5ce08b14

Peace

Posted by Joski at 5:21 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: Tom Rush

Clarence "Tom" Ashley (September 29, 1895 (or 1885?) – June 2 1967) played the Clawhammer Banjo.

Born in Bristol, Tennessee and nicknamed "Tommy Tiddy Waddy" by his grandfather, Ashley became best known to friends and acquaintances as 'Tom'. He began to play banjo and guitar at a young age, and at 16 joined a traveling medecine show as a banjo-picker and singer.

Ashley made his first recordings with Garley Foster and Doc Walsh in 1928.

Throughout the late '20s and early '30s, Ashley recorded with Gwen Foster, The Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers and Byrd Moore & His Hot Shots. He also made solo banjo recordings. He would become well known for his recordings of "The Coo Coo Bird," "The House Carpenter " and "Peg and Awl" (Carolina Tar Heels) which were featured on Harry Smith's “Anthology of American Folk Music”. For several of his solo songs Ashley used a G-modal banjo tuning that he called the 'sawmill' tuning (GDGCD).

In the Folk revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, urban ethnomusicologists rediscovered Ashley's music. In 1960 Ralph Rinzler met Ashley at the Old Time Fiddler's Convention in Union Grove, North Caroline. He eventually persuaded him to start playing banjo again and to record his repertoire of songs. Over the next few years he and his friends, including Doc Watson, played at many urban folk festivals. They also made two records for Folkways Records (you can find them here http://grapewrath.blogspot.com/2008/03/doc-watson.html ).

While Ashley was an accomplished guitar player as well as banjo player, after being rediscovered, he only played banjo.

On June 2^nd 1967, Clarence "Tom" Ashley died of cancer.

http://lix.in/98781492

Here is his legacy

Posted by Joski at 4:04 PM | 4 comments  
Labels: Clarence "Tom" Ashley

British Sarah Jane Morris was born and raised in Southampton, England, attending London's Central School of Speech and Drama while concurrently mounting a music career singing jazz and soul classics in local clubs.

Morris was launched to fame after appearing with Jimmy Sommerville on the Communards’ ' chart-topping 1986 cover of the disco classic "Don't Leave Me This Way.”

Her debut solo album followed in 1989, featuring a controversial cover of Billy Paul’s "Me and Mrs. Jones"; after touring in support of Simply Red, she returned to acting, appearing in 1991's The Beggars Opera. Morris's second album “Heaven”, appeared year later, and in 1995 she released the live “Blue Valentine”. After spending the remainder of the decade away from the limelight, she issued “Fallen Angel “in 2000

On stage with Marc Ribot

This is her album from 2001.

"... can this lady sing. Smoky, haunting, soulful, sultry, uplifting, pretty darn breathtaking and terrific all the way around. The album's songs, ranging from Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye to Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave, have been reinvented acoustically with American master guitarist Marc Ribot, and her voice and phrasing are powerful matches to his strings. I've loved her voice and music for a long time, and this album, while very different from her earlier ones, packs the same punch."

http://lix.in/740e51f8

I love it

Posted by Joski at 3:59 PM | 1 comments  
Labels: Sarah Jane Morris

Songs of the American labour movement over the 20th century for just wages, dignity, and a fair shake. They voiced grievances, affirmed the value of the worker to society, and painted a picture of just world that could, one day, exist.

Classic Labour Songs from Smithsonian Folkways is a collage of these voices—champions of the movement, singing songs with a passion and love for their fellow workers that rings just as true today as it did then. Utah Phillips, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joe Glazer, the Almanac Singers, and more chronicle the history of the American labour movement in stirring song!

I dreamed I heard Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I, “but Joe, you’re ten years dead.”
“I never died,” says he
“I never died,” says he…

So begins the new release from Smithsonian Folkways. If there ever was an anthem that exemplified the pride and tenacity of the labour movement, it must be “Joe Hill.” In telling of the felled movement martyr Hill—a musician of picket lines, union halls, and taverns as well as an organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World—songwriters Earl Robinson and Alfred Hayes birthed a legend. This opening recording is by Paul Robeson, perhaps the most loved version. Robeson, who suffered a fate built of the same oppression Hill died for, is surely the proper ambassador to this collection.

Joe Glazer, a labour singer who has carried the torch of this music since at least 1950, compiled this CD in early 2006. Joe not only performed the songs of the workers for many unions, he nurtured younger labour singers and created the Labour Heritage Foundation. The sting of Joe’s death is heard all over this collection, as he passed away almost immediately after its release in September. Still, the music carries the history forward.

Many of the workers’ greatest anthems are included. “Bread and Roses” tells the story of the 1912 strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts led by the IWW with a virtual revolution embodied in the throngs of women mill workers. “Hold the Fort” began life as an 18th century British railway workers’ anthem that was quickly adapted by our own nation’s Knights of Labour, an early workers federation. Final revisions would come via the internationalist, militant IWW. Other examples of the movement’s heart include:

• “We Shall Not Be Moved,” adapted from a spiritual
• “De Colores,” Baldemar Velasquez’s song of farm workers
• “Roll the Union On,” composed by John Handcox, an African-American organizer of the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union
• Joe Hill’s “The Preacher and the Slave”
• Elaine Purkey’s “One Day More,” composed for the recent Ravenswood strike
• Eddie Starr’s melodic “I’m Union and I’m Proud”
• “Solidarity Forever,” Ralph Chaplin’s 1911 reclamation of the abolitionist song “John Brown’s Body,” which had been commandeered by the U.S. military to become “Battle Hymn for the Republic.” (Even today, radicals refuse to acknowledge the familiar melody as the government’s “Battle Hymn.” Old habits die hard.)

In his liner notes, Joe Glazer indicates the difficulty in choosing such a collection—trying to select but 27 cuts out of the thousands that are worthy. He wrote that a second volume may be forthcoming. One can also hope that the parameters of style can be stretched a bit further on a second volume and also include genres that will more easily reach the ears of the next generation. While taking pride in the historic, it is imperative that the movement welcomes the contemporary. On the musical horizon I can hear Joe Hill as punk-folk, Guthrie via R&B, and Florence Reese with a hip-hop edge.

http://lix.in/578bce65

“I never died” says he…

Posted by Joski at 11:49 AM | 3 comments  
Labels: Labour Songs

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and stars were the gifts you gave
To the dark and the empty skies, my love,
To the dark and the empty skies.

The first time ever I kissed your mouth
And felt your heart beat close to mine
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command, my love
That was there at my command.

And the first time ever I lay with you
I felt your heart so close to mine
And I knew our joy would fill the earth
And last till the end of time my love
It would last till the end of time my love

"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" is a 1957 folk song written by Ewan MacColl for his wife Peggy Seeger. Roberta Flack popularized it and it became a breakout hit for the singer after it appeared in the film “Play Misty for me”. Though the song first appeared on Flack's 1969 album First Take, it topped the Billboard 100 and won the Grammy Award for Song Of The Year three years later.

MacColl wrote the song for Peggy Seeger, a folk singer, after she asked him to pen a song for a play she was in. The song, as performed by Seeger, featured a faster tempo than the Flack version.

Flack's slower, more sensual version was used by Clint Eastwood in his 1971 directorial debut Play Misty for Me during a lovemaking scene..

As a folk song, First Time has been covered by artists such as Marrianne Faithful, the Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio -Mike Kobluk solo, Gordon Lightfoot, Bert Jansch, Maria Taylor, and Peter Paul & Mary.

Since Flack's version, it has been covered by numerous artists, including Johnny Cash, the Chi-Lites, Marcia Griffiths, Isaac Hayes, Bradley Josefh, Joanna Law, Alison Moyet, George Michael, Elvis Presley, the Stereophonics, Mel Tormé, , Christy Moore, Leona lewis, and Lauryn Hill.

Even Céline Dion had a minor hit in the United Kingdom with her 2000 rendition.

Here are a few I gathered

1. Peggy Seeger

2. Bonnie Dobson

3. Gordon Lightfoot

4. Peter, Paul and Mary

5. Roberta Flack

6. Shirley Bassey

7. Bert Jansch

8. Nana Mouskouri

9. Aaron Neville & Linda Ronstadt

10. Christy Moore

11. Céline Dion

12. Elvis Presley

13. Mathilde Santing

14. George Michael

15. Marianne Faithfull

16. Journey South

17. Johnny Cash

18. Stereophonics

http://lix.in/3a5effc3

Fill your Ears with Love

Posted by Joski at 11:44 AM | 0 comments  

“Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Leadbelly too,
An' to all the good people that travelled with you.
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.”

Gilbert Vandine Houston was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on August 18, 1918, the second of four children. His father, Adrian Moncure Houston, was a sheet-metal worker. The family moved to California while Houston was still young, and he attended school in Eagle Rock, California, a suburb of LA.

During his school years, Cisco began to play the guitar, having picked up an assortment of folk songs from family. It is reported that Houston was regarded as highly intelligent during his time at school, despite the nystagmus that afflicted his eyesight, leaving him to rely heavily on peripheral vision. He learned primarily by memorizing what he heard in the classroom. Despite his difficulties, Cisco came to be regarded as a well-read individual.

When the Great Depression struck, Houston began working to help support his family. In 1932, his unemployed father left home and a few years later Cisco went on the road, accompanied initially by his brother Slim. The years were spent travelling and working odd jobs throughout the western United States, always with a guitar at his side. Gil Houston passed through many places, included the town of Cisco, California, the place from which he took his name.

During his travels, Cisco expanded his repertoire of traditional songs, particularly in his time employed as a cowboy. He performed music informally wherever he went, and eventually began occasionally playing at clubs and on Western radio stations.

Cisco returned to Los Angeles in 1938 and pursued a career as an actor. During this time Cisco, along with friend and fellow actor Will Geer, visited folk singer Woody Guthrie at a radio studio in Hollywood. This marks the beginning of the close friendship between Guthrie and Houston. The taciturn Cisco proved an ideal counterpart for the frenzied Woody, and the two men began travelling together, touring migrant worker camps, singing, and promoting unionism and worker’s rights, eventually making their way to New York city.

Despite Houston's poor eyesight (which rendered him nearly blind by the end of his life), he managed to enlist in the Merchant Marine in 1940 and served in World War II. Houston survived three separate torpedoing of ships he served on.

When he wasn’t shipping out, Cisco remained in New York and performed with the Almanac Singers, a leftwing folk group that often included Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell, and Woody Guthrie, among others.

After the United States entered World War II, Woody Guthrie joined Cisco in the Merchant Marines along with Jim Longhi, who documented this period in a memoir. Throughout three wartime trips, the two folksingers gave performances regularly, boosting the morale of the crew and, on the third trip, three thousand troops.

During the years following the war, Cisco engaged in acting, music, and traveling, sometimes recording. In 1944 Cisco, along with Woody Guthrie and Sonny Terry, had taken part in recording sessions at the studio of Moses Asch. Four years later, Asch founded the label Folkways, with Cisco performing on two of the first LPs issued by the new company.

Houston appeared in the Broadway Theatre Play “The cradle will Rock” in 1948 and in 1954 began hosting the Gil Houston radio show. The show was quickly cancelled, which led to some suspicion of blacklisting.

Throughout the fifties, Cisco performed regularly at clubs, churches, and colleges. He recorded for various labels, including Folkways, Disc, Coral,Decca and Vanguard, and was a guest on a numerous radio and television programs.

Houston toured India in 1959 under the sponsorship of the State Department with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and Marilyn Childs. In 1960 he hosted the television special, “Folk Sound U.S.A.” on CBS, and appeared later that year at the Newport Folk Festival. His recordings for Vanguard began with the album “The Cisco Special”, followed by a collection of Woody Guthrie songs.

Diagnosed with terminal stomach Cancer, Cisco continued performing until no longer able. Two months before his death, he recorded a final album, “Ain’t Got No Home.” He returned to California, and died April 29^th, 1961 in San Bernardino.

In the months preceding his death, with the knowledge of his imminent demise, Cisco talked at length with his old friend Lee Hays, who recorded their sessions for a project he dubbed “The Cisco Tapes”. Hays held onto the tapes for two more decades, until his own death in 1981, but never completed his dream of creating something from the material.

Cisco’s death was mourned by a growing folk music community which included young songwriters including Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs, a new generation of musicians who revered such performers as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Sonny Terry and Cisco too.

Song tributes to and mentions of Cisco Houston include:

• "Fare Thee Well, Cisco" by Tom Paxton
• "Cisco Houston Passed This Way" by Peter La Farge
• "Blues for Cisco Houston" by Tom McGrath
• "Song To Woody" by Bob Dylan
• "Christmas Time in Washington by Steve Earle

Cisco Houston was distinguished by his voice, a smooth baritone sometimes considered too polished for folk music. His voice was criticized as being too good, too professional, and lacking in authenticity. Cisco responded to this accusation:

"There's always a form of theater that things take; even back in the Ozarks, as far as you want to go. People gravitate to the best singer...We have people today who go just the other way, and I don't agree with them. Some of our folksong exponents seem to think you have to go way back in the hills and drag out the worst singer in the world before it's authentic. Now, this is nonsense...Just because he's old and got three arthritic fingers and two strings left on the banjo doesn't prove anything."

His repertoire included folk songs and traditional songs from different arenas of American life - cowboy songs, union songs, railroad songs, murder ballads, and more. He is also known for his renditions of Woody Guthrie originals.

Though not known as a songwriter, Houston did contribute some original tunes. These include "Great July Jones", written with Lewis Allen; "Crazy Heart"; "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man"; "Bad Man's Blunder", written with Lee Hays, and "Dollar Down". Some of his compositions were included in the songbook 900 Miles, the Ballads, Blues and Folksongs of Cisco Houston, issued by Oak Publications in 1965.

Cisco often sang "I Ain't Got No Home" but now that has been remedied.

Here’s his website : http://www.ciscohouston.com/

http://lix.in/b27560a5

Enjoy the master

Posted by Joski at 4:40 PM | 1 comments  
Labels: Cisco Houston

Back in the late '50s and early '60s, acoustic guitarists began adding folk tunes, bluegrass, and country blues to their repertoire. A few guitar players began adapting smatterings of classical ragtime - a musical style that had its birth in the Gay '90s with the sprightly compositions of Scott Joplin, James Scott, and other pianists and began its decline with the outbreak of the First World War.

In the early '70s, the Popular movie The Sting was responsible for introducing ragtime to a whole new generation of listeners. But it is ragtime guitarist Dave Laibman's and Eric Schoenberg's 1969 release, The New Ragtime Guitar, that is generally credited with having generated the first widespread interest among pickers in the adaptation of classic ragtime. Included in the LP is their arrangement of the often-copied "Dill Pickle Rag," with Eric flat-picking the melody while Dave fingerpicks the harmony and bass.

David Laibman is a professor of Economics at the City University of New York and has been editor of the Marxist journal Science and Society. since 1990

David Laibman is also known as one the most influential arrangers and players of fingerpicked ragtime acoustic guitar. His innovative guitar arrangements of piano rags by such composers as Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb are generally viewed to be among the best available.

Many players of acoustic ragtime guitar feel that Mr. Laibman founded this genre of music in the late 60's to early 70's and was greatly responsible for the subsequent revival in string ragtime. David Laibman still performs this material in concert although these are rare events.

Dave Laibman released many influential recordings. One of the most influential was The New Ragtime Guitar, an LP of ragtime duets recorded with his cousin Eric Schoenberg and released on Folkways Records in 1970. Still available as a CD from Smithsonian-Folkways, it is widely credited with sparking the 1970's stringed ragtime revival. Another popular solo LP of Laibman's has been rereleased on CD as Ten Classic Rags. It is comprised entirely of Mr. Laibman playing 10 of his guitar arrangements of Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb ragtime piano compositions.

Eric Schoenberg is a guitar player known for his fingerstyle guitar playing, as well as a recording artist and designer of acoustic guitars.

He owns Eric Schoenberg Guitars, a guitar store in Tiburon, California USA, which sells vintage and luthier-made acoustic guitars.

Eric and his cousin Dave Laibman were among the first transposers of classical piano ragtime to the guitar. This resulted in their album, Contemporary Ragtime Guitar, on Folkways Records.

He has performed, toured, recorded and written extensively.

Here is one of my first guitar records

1. Maple Leaf Rag
2. Castle house rag
3. Stop time rag
4. Red carpet rag
5. Ragtime oriole
6. Wedding of the painted dolls
7. Kitten on the keys
8. At a georgia camp meeting
9. Temptation rag
10. Eccentricity rag
11. Dill pickles rag

Posted by Joski at 4:28 PM | 1 comments  
Labels: Dave Laibman, Eric Schoenberg

In 1964, Elektra Records produced a compilation album of various artists entitled The Blues Project which featured several white musicians from the Greenwich Village area who played acoustic blues music in the style of black musicians.

One of the featured artists on the album was a young guitarist named Danny Kalb, who was paid $75 for his two songs. Not long after the album's release, however, Kalb gave up his acoustic guitar for an electric one. The Beatles' arrival in America earlier in the year signified the end of the folk and acoustic blues movement that had swept young America in the early 1960s.

This one-shot recording date in 1964, The Blues Project, an Elektra folk blues compilation, featured Kalb on two tracks ("I'm Troubled," "Hello Baby Blues") as well as Van Ronk, Spider John Koerner, Eric Von Schmidt, Geoff Muldaur and others.

The LP sold over 300,000 copies, introduced a new generation of would-be bluesmen to the music, and gave Kalb the name for what would become his band a year later.

1. Fixin' to Die (Bukka White) 3:47
Dave Ray (vocals & 12-string guitar)
Released on CD as a bonus track of the album "Lots More Blues, Rags & Hollers" (Red House, 1999) by Koerner, Ray & Glover

2. Blow Whistle Blow (traditional, arr: Eric von Schmidt) 2:44
Eric von Schmidt (vocals & guitar), Fritz Richmond (washtub bass), John Sebastian (harmonica)

3. My Little Woman (John Koerner) 2:10
John Koerner (vocals & 7-string guitar)
Released on CD as a bonus track of the album "Lots More Blues, Rags & Hollers" (Red House, 1999) by Koerner, Ray & Glover

4. Ginger Man (Geoff Muldaur) 2:05
Geoff Muldaur (vocals & guitar)

5. Bad Dream Blues (Dave van Ronk) 3:52
Dave van Ronk (vocals & guitar)

6. Winding Boy (traditional) 3:26
Ian Buchanan (vocals & guitar), Fritz Richmond (washtub bass)

7. I'm Troubled (traditional) 2:27
Danny Kalb (vocals & guitar), Fritz Richmond (washtub bass), John Sebastian (harmonica)

8. France Blues (Mobile Line) (traditional) 2:31
Mark Spoelstra (vocals & 12-string guitar), Fritz Richmond (washtub bass), Doug Pomeroy (washboard & kazoo)

9. Don't You Leave Me Here (Jelly Roll Morton) 2:46
Dave van Ronk (vocals & guitar), Fritz Richmond (washtub bass)

10. Devil Got My Woman (Skip James) 4:06
Geoff Muldaur (vocals & guitar), Eric von Schmidt (mandolin)

11. Southbound Train (John Koerner) 4:04
John Koerner (vocals & 7-string guitar), Tony Glover (harmonica)
Released on CD as a bonus track of the album "Lots More Blues, Rags & Hollers" (Red House, 1999) by Koerner, Ray & Glover

12. Downtown Blues (Frank Stokes - Dan Sane) 2:28
Geoff Muldaur (vocals & guitar), Eric von Schmidt & Bob Dylan (piano), Fritz Richmond (washtub bass), John Sebastian (harmonica)
Released on CD on the compilation "Forever Changing: The Golden Age Of Elektra Records 1963-1973" (Rhino, 2006)

13. Leavin' Here Blues (Dave Ray) 4:48
Dave Ray (vocals & 12-string guitar)
Released on CD as a bonus track of the album "Lots More Blues, Rags & Hollers" (Red House, 1999) by Koerner, Ray & Glover

14. Hello Baby Blues (traditional) 1:59
Danny Kalb (guitar)

15. She's Gone (Hound Dog Taylor) 2:05
Mark Spoelstra (vocals & 12-string guitar), Fritz Richmond (washtub bass), Doug Pomeroy (washboard)

16. Slappin' on My Black Cat Bone (Dave Ray) 2:14
Dave Ray (vocals & 12-string guitar)
Released on CD as a bonus track of the album "Lots More Blues, Rags & Hollers" (Red House, 1999) by Koerner, Ray & Glover

Fill your ears with love

http://lix.in/0d93e0c0

PS : The beautiful cover was painted by Eric Von Schmidt

Posted by Joski at 4:23 PM | 9 comments  
Labels: Blues Project

In a career spanning more than 40 years, Van Ronk won the respect and affection of countless of his peers as well as fans in the US and around the world. His first album was recorded for Folkways Records in 1959, and was followed by more than two dozen others. He continued performing and teaching until the end of his life.

Van Ronk’s musical style is not easily categorized. He called jazz his biggest influence, tracing it back to the days in the early 1950s when he haunted jazz clubs in New York and met the likes of Coleman Hawkins and Jimmy Rushing.

The blues masters, recording his own version of classics by Blind Lemon Jefferson and other pioneers, also heavily influenced him. His work was always marked by a reverence and serious study of what has come to be called American roots music.

He knew and worked with legendary performers like Odetta and Pete Seeger, as well as his own contemporaries and younger musicians—most famously Bob Dylan, along with Jack Elliott, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Joni Mitchell, Janis Ian, Christine Lavin, Suzanne Vega and many others. Dylan often stayed with Van Ronk and his wife in the months after he arrived in New York’s Greenwich Village at the age of 20 in 1961. Van Ronk, then 25, influenced the younger musician both through his technique on the guitar and in other ways, including urging him to read Bertolt Brecht and the French symbolist poets.

Though he worked with and respected Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary and other folksingers, Van Ronk’s work was somewhat different, broader and more varied. His repertory spanned the work of Louis Armstrong, Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman and blues masters like the Rev. Gary Davis. He drew from jazz, blues, folk and country.

Though he didn’t usually perform “political” or protest songs, Van Ronk’s political and intellectual outlook, shaped in the mid-twentieth century, informed his entire life and career.

Jon Pareles, pop music critic of the New York Times, writes in his obituary of Van Ronk’s “sense of history, sense of humor and a gift for making fellow musicians feel at home.” This is undoubtedly true, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that Van Ronk was beloved by thousands of his colleagues, as demonstrated by the outpouring of support for him when his illness was disclosed last fall.

Born in Brooklyn in 1936, Van Ronk moved to Queens as a child and attended Richmond Hill High School. He dropped out of school at the age of 15, and was largely self-educated. A voracious reader, his broad knowledge and interests were communicated, though usually with typical self-deprecatory humor, both in conversation and performance.

Van Ronk joined the Merchant Marine as a teenager, and at the same time began hanging around Washington Square, in Greenwich Village, just as the folk revival movement that peaked in the early to mid-1960s was beginning to emerge. He performed at famous clubs like the Gaslight and Folk City, which have long since left the scene. With his early recordings and performances it became clear that he was a major talent. Many of his best known songs and interpretations date from the 1960s, including “Cocaine Blues,” “You’re a Good Old Wagon,” “He Was a Friend of Mine,” “Stackerlee” and “House of the Rising Sun.”

As acoustic music and the folk revival declined in the late 1960s and 1970s, Van Ronk persevered with his work. He had never been interested in fame for its own sake, or in wealth for any sake at all. He briefly gave up performing in the mid-1970s but came back to it within a year, unable to part with that important part of his life’s work. He continued, adding to and developing his craft, neither simply discarding his past work nor merely repeating it. He remained open to new avenues for his whole career, something that fit completely with his attitude towards teaching guitar to successive generations of students.

Dave Van Ronk’s musical legacy will live, not only in his many recordings, but in the thousands he taught and influenced in his course of his long career.

Here are a few of his major recordings

Dave Van Ronk - Folksinger (1963)

http://lix.in/99276fcb

Dave Van Ronk - Just Dave Van Ronk (1964)

http://lix.in/dca6c840

Dave Van Ronk and the Ragtime Jug Stompers (1964)

http://lix.in/262ea5eb

Peace

Posted by Joski at 1:38 PM | 3 comments  
Labels: Dave Van Ronk

The Even Dozen Jug Band was founded in 1963 by Stefan Grossman (solo country blues and ragtime guitarist) and Peter Siegel (old-timey guitarist and producer) in Greenwich Village New York. Other members were David Grissman (mandolin), Steve Katz (later with Blood Sweat and Tears and the Blues Project),Maria d’Amato (the later Maria Muldaur), Joshua Rifkin (arranger of Scott Joplin’s Ragtimes), and John Sebastian (later with the Lovin’ Spoonful, now a solo artist).

The Even Dozen Jug Band did exist only for a short time. In January 1964 their only recording The Even Dozen Jug Band has been issued on the Elektra label. They made a couple of television appearances and performed several times in concert, twice at New York's Carnegie Hall.

The Even Dozen Jug Band was an exuberant mix of blues, ragtime, bluegrass, and old-timey music, much of the repertoire gleaned from Grossman and Siegel's record collections. In these respects, and in the presence of singer Maria Muldaur (then Maria D'Amato), there were similarities with the most beloved young jug band of the day, Jim Kweskin's. But "whereas Kweskin's band was a much tighter musical organization, we just would blow and play," observes Grossman. "We were more like the Memphis Jug Band" -- as readily evidenced by the covers of songs that the Memphis Jug Band had cut, like "Take Your Fingers Off It" and "On the Road Again."

"Maria had charisma. Half the band had a crush on her." But her involvement with a jug band man from another ensemble would lead her to leave the Even Dozens for Jim Kweskin's band, where she would sing with and eventually marry Geoff Muldaur. The Even Dozen Jug Band, despite some television appearances, weren't destined to last long anyway, according to Grossman. "We had an audition with the William Morris agency, and they wanted us to go on the road as sort of like competition to the New Christy Minstrels. That came really down to the crunch, and I said, 'Well, I'm not leaving school,' and other people said they're not leaving school. So the group basically just broke up. It was really a schism there with who wanted to go and perform professionally, and who just wanted to do it as a laugh."

The impact of this legendary group was massive.

Here is their only recording

http://lix.in/1560e281

Love

Posted by Joski at 1:25 PM | 1 comments  
Labels: Even Dozen Jug Band, Jug band

Guitarist, educator and historian, Stefan Grossman is a name that had become synonymous with most aspects of the acoustic guitar experience. Stefan was a major student of acoustic blues and gospel singer/guitarist Rev. Gary Davis before moving on to study with many legendary country blues guitarists including Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Skip James and Fred McDowell.

In the early 1960s, Grossman formed the Even Dozen Jug Band and worked with the political rock band The Fugs. He remains one of the world's foremost authorities on acoustic blues guitar.

Covering the down-home styles and techniques, from Lonnie Johnson's to Charlie Patton's to Blind Boy Fuller's. No-talk instructor Grossman wisely involved the late British folk blues singer Jo Ann Kelly, guitar expert Mickey Baker, and Deltaman Son House in the project this is a major guitar record

Posted by Joski at 12:11 PM | 5 comments  
Labels: Stefan Grossman