Gary Davis was born blind, black, and broke in South Carolina in 1896 on April 30th.

Big obstacles, but he also was blessed with talent and got paid for his guitar-picking by the time he was a teen. Ordained as a minister at age 36, he changed his song inventory to Gospel and hymns exclusively.

He finally ended up in NYC, performing at mostly Black churches and on the streets. In the late '50's, the "Folk Revival" of blessed memory provided him a brief celebrity beyond those venues.

I'm not a religious person, but Davis' music is almost enough to make me believe that if heaven really exists, Reverend Gary Davis will be playing at the gates to welcome us all in.

Here are some of his tunes by the Master and a few I collected by his pupils.

Enjoy

1) Reverend Blind Gary Davis - I Belong to the Band, Hallelujah

2) Dave Van Ronk - Samson And Delilah

3) Janis Joplin with Jorma Kaukonen - Hesitation Blues

4) Dave Van Ronk - Baby, Let Me Lay It On You

5) Reverend Gary Davis - If I Had My Way

6) Reverend Gary Davis - I Won't Be Back No More

7) Hot Tuna - Death Don't Have No Mercy

8) Ralph McTell - Hesitation Blues

9) John Martyn - Death Don't Have No Mercy

10) Reverend Gary Davis - Let Us Get Together

11) Larry Johnson - Banks Of The River

12) Hot Tuna - Candy Man

13) Larry Johnson - The Reverend And Me

14) Marie Knight - Death don't have no mercy

15) Jorma Kaukonen - Preacher picked the Guitar

16) Reverend Gary Davis - Hesitation Blues

http://lix.in/ad19e3bc

http://lix.in/5cb84248

Happy Birthday to the man in the sky !

Posted by Joski at 4:26 PM | 1 comments  
Labels: Reverend Gary Davis

When Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? came out in 2000, there was a noticeable surge of interest in what is frequently called "Old Time Music." Call it a little bit folk, a little bit bluegrass, call it hillbilly or whatever: audiences whose tastes were piqued by the Oh Brother soundtrack have been able to find plenty more where those tunes came from. With Come to the Mountain: Old Time Music for Modern Times, Rounder Records goes back to the well and offers a twenty-two track musical sampler of musical artists like Putnam String Country Band, Corey Harris, Mac Benford & the Woodshed All-Stars, Alison Krauss, Dry Branch Fire Squad, Norman Blake, and many others.

From solo numbers featuring nothing more than a the plaintive wail of a banjo and a singer's lonesome vocal accompaniment (in Dirk Powell's "Hop High My Lulu Gal") to more robust musical arrangements, Come to the Mountain tries to present listeners with the full flavor of old-time music. Putnam String Country Band, a quartet from upstate New York, has three songs represented: the title track, along with "Perilous Journey" and the ballad "Black Jack Davey." Dirk Powell, who has performed with a diverse array of pop stars (such as Sting and Jewel), also played banjo on the soundtrack of such films as Cold Mountain and Bamboozled. Corey Harris was featured in Martin Scorsese's documentary Feels Like Coming Home; he is an archivist of black traditional artists and is at the forefront of the revival of the blues. Harris's two songs, "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" and "Station Blues," are moody, atmospheric pieces that reflect how blues, folk, and bluegrass often overlap and intersect.

Mac Benford and the Woodshed All-Stars offer two songs: "Willow" and "River of Sorrow." Marie Burns' haunting vocals drift along with the easy melody on these songs. Alison Krauss, who is frequently described as the greatest crossover artist in bluegrass history, and has won more Grammy awards than any other female artist, joins with Ron Black on the romantic duet "Your Heart has Found a Home." Together with Union Station, she also performs "There is a Reason," which is the final track on the album and a worthy "encore" number. "Amazing Grace" is performed here as a harmonica duet, while the ever-entertaining Dry Branch Fire Squad perform a lively piece, "Walking back to Richmond."

Twenty-two tracks of contemporary old-time music for the new generation sample a large variety of primarily Rounder Records artists from Putnam String County Band to Corey Harris, Mac Benford & the Woodshed All-Stars to Alison Krauss, Dirk Powell to Norman Blake, and many others. Cuts vary from the raw simplicity of a singer and banjo (Dirk Powell's "Hop High My Lulu Gal") to more intricate arrangements of full ensembles (Dry Branch Fire Squad's "Walking Back to Richmond"). Scott Alarik provides 4 pages of liner notes about old-time music, and he closes with a quote from Dirk Powell, "I think of traditional music as a bottomless well; the more you take from it, the more you give to it. It's a sustainable resource; that what's so powerful about it, and why more people are listening to it and playing it today...." Three additional pages provide paragraph descriptions about each of the featured artists who works range from recordings released between 1973-2004.

http://lix.in/8a50c0c0

http://lix.in/11b7fe87

I love it

Posted by Joski at 4:17 PM | 1 comments  
Labels: Come to the Mountain, Old Time

White folk blues from the early and mid-'60s, originally recorded for Prestige.

Some of the top artists are represented here, including Dave Van Ronk, Tom Rush, Geoff Muldaur, Tracy Nelson, Eric Von Schmidt, and Danny Kalb. The performances are respectful and occasionally stirring.

1. Fixin' to Die - Dave Van Ronk

2. Come Back Baby - Dave Van Ronk

3. Jesus Me the Woman at the Well - Dave Van Ronk

4. Statesboro Blues - Dave Van Ronk

5. Baby Please Don't Go - Tom Rush

6. Alabama Bound - Tom Rush

7. Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out - Danny Kalb

8. Jelly Roll Baker - Geoff Muldaur

9. Trouble Soon Be Over - Geoff Muldaur

10. Motherless Chile Blues - Geoff Muldaur

11. Everybody Ought to Make a Change - Geoff Muldaur

12. Grieving Hearted Blues - Tracy Nelson

13. Ramblin' Man - Tracy Nelson

14. House of the Rising Sun - Tracy Nelson

15. Long Old Road - Tracy Nelson

16. Champagne Don't Hurt Me, Baby - Eric Von Schmidt

17. Gulf Coast Blues - Eric Von Schmidt

18. Light Rain - Eric Von Schmidt

19. Just to See You Stand That Way - Eric Von Schmidt

20. Ramblin' on My Mind - New Strangers

21. Keys to the Highway - New Strangers

http://lix.in/0d2f9f94

Peace

Posted by Joski at 11:35 AM | 2 comments  
Labels: blues, Bluesville Years, folk

Known best for her offbeat 1974 pop hit "Midnight at the Oasis," Maria Muldaur finally puts that camel to bed with a crisply produced, impudent album of stripped-down acoustic blues songs from the 1920s and 1930s.

Her twenty-fifth recording in four decades of an eclectic music career is authoritative yet uncomplicated - sometimes sassy (Bessie Smith's "My Man Blues," with Dave Matthews skating the ivories like they were deep-blue ice) and often stirring (Mississippi Fred McDowell's "It's a Blessing," featuring Bonnie Raitt and her torrid slide guitar). She revisits the ribald "Me and My Chauffeur Blues," a song she performed in the Sixties with Jim Kweskin's Jug Band and a favorite of Memphis Minnie, whose swaggering style inspired this authentic, impressive project - one of Muldaur's best.

Her journey, which began under the Rev. Gary Davis' tutelage and peaked in the arid pop desert, has landed back in the fertile blues delta - where she's a natural. (RS 870 - June 7, 2001)

1. Richland Women Blues - (with John Sebastian)
2. Grasshoppers In My Pillow - (with Amos Garrett/David Wilkie)
3. It's A Blessing - (with Bonnie Raitt)
4. Me & My Chauffeur Blues - (with Roy Rogers)
5. Put It Right Here - (with Dave Matthews)
6. I'm Goin' Back Home - (with Alvin Youngblood Hart)
7. My Man Blues - (with Angela Strehli)
8. In My Girlish Days - (with Roy Rogers)
9. Far Away Blues - (with Tracy Nelson)
10. I Got To Move - (with Alvin Youngblood Hart)
11. Lonesome Desert Blues - (with Dave Matthews)
12. Soul Of A Man - (with Taj Mahal)
13. I Belong To That Band - (with Ernie Hawkins)
14. It's A Blessing (Reprise) - (with Bonnie Raitt)

http://lix.in/86fc3efb

Posted by Joski at 11:25 AM | 0 comments  
Labels: Maria Muldaur

Sule Greg Wilson, Rhiannon Giddens and Dom Flemons makeup this trio of artists in love with self-made music.

Armed with fiddles, and banjos, bones and drums, Sankofa Strings finds that “Old Time” sound, rejuvenates it, and makes it live again.

Their repertoire explores the full breadth of the string and vocal traditions of the Americas, Africa and Europe: string band standards, classic and country blues, hokum and anonymous folk songs, Celtic ballads, West African melodies and more.

“Sankofa” is an Akan (West African) concept of knowledge, spirit and history. Literally, it means to “Look back, and Retrieve.” It is a reminder that true progress does not abandon the past, but constantly draws upon the works and wisdom of those who came before.

The term “Colored Aristocracy” goes back to at least the 1850s, in the title of a book on the Black elite of St. Louis, MO. In 1899 that phrase became the title of a cakewalk number. In 1936, the Rich family recorded their now-famous string band tune of the same name. The tune harkens back to days of hardship, pride in ourselves and hope for better times to come.

Sankofa Strings draws upon the string and vocal traditions of the Americas, Africa and Europe: string band standards, blues, hokum tunes and anonymous folk songs slide next to new interpretations of Afro-Pop, sea shanties and Celtic ballads.

Posted by Joski at 11:27 AM | 2 comments  
Labels: Sankofa Strings

A progressive blues – jug band whose first album was produced by John Peel.

They'd earlier had two cuts on the Matchbox sampler, “Blues Like Showers Of Rain”. One of the finest moments on their first album, “Round And Round”, later appeared on Harvest's “Picnic – a breath of fresh air” 2LP sampler.

Performing a mixed repertoire of original and classic jugband songs (Memphis Jug Band, Cannon's Jug Stompers) the Panama Limited Jugband landed engagements at universities that brought the band in contact with other elements of the English folksong revival

They shortened their name to Panama Ltd. for a second album by which time Liz Hann, their vocalist, had left and been replaced by Anne Matthews. On this better second album their early jugband sound was replaced by a brand of Captain Beefheart - influenced rock.

None of the band's members seem to have resurfaced in the music business since but Hozzell had been in Screw.

The line up for this first album :

Posted by Joski at 11:22 AM | 2 comments  
Labels: Jug band, Panama Limited Jug Band

The Blues of Robert Johnson

This CD is so good, so raw and real, and so much in the spirit of Robert Johnson that Eric Clapton should be ashamed for thinking he could do better. You can practically taste the dust being kicked up while Johnson (er. .. Hammond) stands at the Crossroads waiting for an appointment to sell his soul to the Big Red Guy. It's not derivative. It's a heartfelt and down to the bone interpretation.

The leader, however, is at his best on the acoustic pieces. He takes 32-20 blues at a languid, strutting half-time, adding drama and dread. On "Stones in my Passway" Hammond effects a Skip James falsetto that will make you start the piece over just to make sure who is singing. His voice is no mere caricature of a Caucasian performing in an African-American idiom. Hammond comes off as the authentic article, displaying the true ubiquity of the blues.

If Robert Johnson could look down from heaven or up from hell, he'd likely find it very interesting that John Hammond Jr. had covered his songs. Here is a white guy, after all, who sounds like a black blues singer and chooses -- of his own free will -- to frequently return to the repertoire of an obscure black guitarist/singer from the 1930s.

At the Crossroads collects this musical meeting of the minds -- or souls -- by gathering 14 of Hammond's Johnson covers, recorded between 1965 and 1978. Like Johnson, Hammond relies mostly on solo acoustic guitar. In this way, it's easy to certify his versions of "Come on in My Kitchen" and "32-20 Blues" as the real deal, or, as a folk enthusiast would say, "authentic." At the same time, renditions of "Milkcow's Calf Blues" and "Stones in My Passway" are less raw and penetrating than Johnson's, and one could easily say that Hammond's real gift is that of a popularizer of rural acoustic blues. The last four cuts include full-band takes of "Sweet Home Chicago," "When You Got a Good Friend," "Judgment Day," and "Rambling Blues." While these cuts surely won't pass the purity test, they're nonetheless lots of fun. At the Crossroads is a cross-cultural, racial, and generational document, and offers a good one-stop look at one artist's nod toward another.

John Hammond (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Billy Butler, James Spruill (electric guitar); Robbie Robertson (guitar); Charlie Musselwhite (harmonica); Mike Bloomfield (piano); Garth Hudson (Hammond B-3 organ); Jimmy Lewis (electric bass); Bobby Donaldson, Levon Helm (drums); The Nighthawks.

http://lix.in/71217b2d

Fill your ears

Posted by Joski at 11:17 AM | 1 comments  
Labels: John Hammond

“I learned this tune from ‘Rick Von Schmidt”

Over the guitar introduction to “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down,” Bob Dylan told of meeting Mr. von Schmidt “in the green pastures of Harvard University.”

Eric Von Schmidt had taught the song to Mr. Dylan, and it became one of his standards after being included on his first album (“Bob Dylan,” 1962). He did not write it; he had learned it from Geno Foreman, who in turn learned it from an old 78 record by Blind Boy Fuller.

On the blurred cover of Dylan’s fifth album, “Bringing It All Back Home” (1965), is a picture of a von Schmidt album. Dylan wrote liner notes for one, saying his friend “could sing the bird off the wire and the rubber off the tire.”

Eric von Schmidt was an influential folk-blues guitarist on the Cambridge, Massachusetts folk music scene in the late fifties and the sixties. Eric was born May 28, 1931, the son of Harold von Schmidt, who illustrated western stories for the Saturday Evening Post. Eric grew up in Westport, Connecticut and planned to follow in his father's footsteps as an artist at an early age. While he was in high school he first heard Leadbelly on the radio and was transformed by the experience. He bought a guitar, learned Leadbelly's songs, and also absorbed the influence of Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, Josh White, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Richard Dyer-Bennet, and John Jacob Niles. Eric's travels in New York city, Mississippi, the Caribbean, and the Library of Congress in Washington contributed to his musical education.

He spent time in the army from 1952 to 1954, and in 1955 he won a Fulbright scholarship to spend a year painting in Italy. He taught at Sarasota School of Art in Florida for a while, then in the summer of 1957 he moved to Cambridge and discovered the bubbling folk music scene.

His first solo album was The Folk Blues of Eric von Schmidt in 1963. He painted dozens of album covers for Joan Baez, Odetta, John Renbourn, and many other folk musicians. In June, 2000, he was presented with the the ASCAP Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

He died February 2, 2007, at the age of 75.

Posted by Joski at 11:06 AM | 2 comments  
Labels: Eric Von Schmidt

Back in the early '60s, the Chad Mitchell Trio was one of the top singing attractions on the campus and club folk circuit, rivalling for a time their somewhat more well established competitors the Kingston Trio and 1960s newcomers Peter, Paul and Mary.

The group became known for their willingness to perform both serious and satirical songs that criticized current events and news-makers, compared to the typical 'folk music' groups of their time.

The original group was formed by university students William Chad Mitchell (from Spokane , Washington); Mike Kobluk (from British Columbia, Canada ); and Mike Pugh (from Pasco, Washington). They were encouraged by Roman Catholic priest Reinard W. Beaver, who invited the three to travel with him to New York City in the summer of 1959 and to try performing in the burgeoning folk-music scene. Unlike many fellow folk-music groups, none of the Trio's members played instruments.

The key people that helped the Trio get going were musical arranger Milton Okun and star performer/singer Harry Belafonte. Okun provided a professional polish to their performing skills, which helped them gain both a key booking at New York City's Blue Angel club and television appearances with Pat Boone.

Belafonte had them appear as back-up singers, with a small featured spotlight, in his May 1960 Carnegie Hall concert, and signed them to his Belafonte Enterprises management firm.

In the summer of 1960, Pugh left the group to return to college. After auditioning over 150 singers, Joe Frazier was chosen to replace Pugh.

The trio was signed to Kapp Records, a division of MCA, in 1961. By that time, the folk music revival was in full swing, and the group found a very receptive and accommodating audience at the Brooklyn College concert that was recorded as “Mighty Day on Campus”. This live recording worked so well that Kapp Records and the trio decided that this was the best way in which to record the group, and their next album, “At the Bitter End”, was done the same way the following year from the legendary Greenwich Village club.

It was around this same time that the group also added to its instrumental muscle in the person of Jim McGuinn, a guitarist who had begun to make a splash locally and from a stay as a support player with the Limeliters. McGuinn remained with the group until 1963 (he can be seen in the background of the cover photo of the “At the Bitter End” album), when he lit out for Los Angeles and eventual rock stardom as cofounder of the Byrds.

The Trio by this time were one of the most popular folk groups in a field that was rapidly filling up with male and mixed male/female vocal groups. Part of the secret of their success, both on stage and on their albums, was that they presented a careful mix of topical songs and humor, and some of the latter, although also at times topical (their recording of "The John Birch Society" remains a very funny song, as well as the probable inspiration for Bob Dylan’s formerly banned "Talking John Birch Society Blues"), was also sometimes just goofy. They were perceived properly as funny and irreverent, but not "dangerous," and sensible rather than radical, attributes that may have helped get them picked as part of a cultural exchange program sponsored by the Kennedy White House and sent on a tour of South America, where more politically oriented folk groups were passed over. Of course, this same "irreverence" made the trio anathema to the more radical political elements that soon overtook folk music and later folk-rock as well. But in 1962, it worked very well, and no one questioned their relevance or that of their records.

Their departure from Belafonte Enterprises in 1962, followed by their move to Mercury Records in 1963, gave them more freedom to add aggressively political songs to their body of folk, love, and world-music songs.

As folk singers the Chad Mitchell Trio was a notch below the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul & Mary, which is still pretty good. Besides, these guys covered "Blowin' in the Wind" first; the problem was their label delayed releasing it and PP&M beat them to the punch, which is why they jumped to Mercury.

The first real problems for the Trio came up over Dylan’s "Blowin' In the Wind." Dylan was still virtually unknown when the trio had discovered the song in 1962, courtesy of a demo passed to them by Milt Okun, who, in turn, had gotten it from Dylan’s Manager Albert Grossman. They were eager to record it, but their producer at Kapp didn't want them to do the song, either as a single, as they proposed, or even as a track on their forthcoming new album, “The Chad Mitchell Trio in Action”. The dispute blew up in the faces of all concerned when "Blowin' In the Wind," as recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary (also protégés of Okun), became a number two single and suddenly established them as the best-known folk trio of the early 1960s -- their accompanying album, and most of their subsequent records, routinely sold in the hundreds of thousands and millions, while the Chad Mitchell Trio was left in the shadows, part of a commercial backwater. To make matters worse, Kapp Records, seeking to rectify its mistake, hastily re-pressed and re-released the “In Action” album in 1963 with the title “Blowin’ in the Wind”. The damage had been done, however; not only to the group's commercial fortunes, but also to their relationship with their producer and their label.

Mitchell left the Trio in 1965 to embark on a solo singing career. Another audition process replaced him with young singer/songwriter named John Denver. The group retained the well-known "Mitchell Trio" name, with Denver writing some of the group's songs, as Mitchell had done.

Frazier's departure from the Trio in 1966 brought on replacement David Boise. After a final live release, Kobluk left; Denver and Boise replaced Kobluk with Michael Johnson (who would later go on as a solo artist to record "Bluer Than Blue" among other popular songs) and, because of contractual requirements that prohibited using the "Mitchell" name after the last original member left, became "Denver, Boise and Johnson". Soon, however, the group disbanded.

This 17-song compilation includes selections from the albums “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “At the Bitter End” and “Mighty Day on Campus”, among them "Leave Me if You Want To," "Blowin' in the Wind," "The Ballad of the Greenland Whalers," "The John Birch Society," "Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream," and "You Can Tell The World."

http://lix.in/35a79460

Love

Posted by Joski at 6:59 PM | 0 comments  
Labels: Chad Mitchell Trio

The group was composed of Eric Darling and Bill Svanoe with former jazz singer Lynne Taylor (vocals). Darling put the group together in 1962 specifically to record an updated and uptempo version of a Gus Cannon’s "Walk Right In".

Even though the Rooftop Singers were a trio, the real star here, at least in the sense that she sets them apart from scores of other guitar picking folkies, is Lynne Taylor.

And, even though they had only one hit, their music was relatively distinct even without Taylor's voice. They were musically more complex than most folk groups, favoring understated melodies sometimes and emphasizing their blues roots at others, as in the sly and lyrically suggestive "Tom Cat". Indeed, it was their musical eclecticism and willingness to be suggestive that got "Tom Cat", their second single, banned from conservative radio stations and prevented them from capitalizing on their breakthrough hit.

It's thus that Taylor's cool voice (she'd previously sung with big bands in nightclubs) complements the complexities of the songs' arrangements, with both her voice and those arrangements mitigating the folk tendency to be vapidly enthusiastic. I don't know if she'd be able to sustain an entire album (even a compilation) on the strength of her vocal gifts alone ("Wild Mountain Thyme" works because the lyric supports the airy voice but who wants airiness for an entire album?), but, here, it certainly adds contrast to the usual fare. If Taylor's jazzy cool lacks, say, the smoldering sensuality beneath Peggy Lee's jazzy cool, it balances the Everyman enthusiasm of fellow voices Erik Darling and Bill Svanoe.

The buried gem here, though, is a version of "Ha Ha Thisaway" where Taylor is the only singer and where her cool is paired with deep feeling. The original public domain work was a play song for children, one that Leadbelly helped introduce to the New York folk scene that later produced the Rooftop Singers. It was a jolly, rollicking number about school, church, and parents and, depending on the singer, could be taken as either cheerfully moral or cheerfully mocking.

Here, it becomes Taylor's take on female life, marriage, and love. It is Taylor's take on her own childhood, one where she was raised in an isolated community that married her off at 14, a life that she ran away from to live in the big city. Whereas the original repeated "ha ha this a-way" as the refrain for all the verses, Taylor sings with measured, half-amused cool -- against just a slow, persistent bass -- about being a "young girl" who'd "primp primp this-away, primp primp that a-way". Only after she is grown and married does she (just slightly) raise her voice and sing the title: "Then we married, man, o then: / Ha ha this a-way, ha ha that a-way".

http://lix.in/0e0a69f5

I love it

Posted by Joski at 6:52 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: Rooftop Singers

In 1940, American folk music changed forever when a handful of schooled musicians and political activists got together to perform at union halls and for political organizations. It started with Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, and Millard Lampell, who were later joined by a radio host, editorialist and prolific songwriter named Woody Guthrie.

Though their career lasted little more than one year, the Almanacs managed to feature a "who's who" rotating roster of members, including folklorist Alan Lomax and his sister Bess, Sis Cunningham, bluesmen Josh White and Leadbelly, and several others.

The Almanacs were the first well-organized group in American folk music (thanks in large part to Pete Seeger), and they popularized the plight of the topical protest song, which in turn spun off and later inspired groups like the Weavers, the Kingston Trio, and ultimately Bob Dylan and so many more.

As Woody Guthrie remarked, the Almanac Singers were "the only group that rehearsed on stage." Beyond the protean topicality of their repertoire, the class and ethnic traditions embodied in its members, the real meaning of the Almanacs lay in the social and musical space they opened for themselves in American popular music, the very space that the postwar revival would appropriate and enlarge.

The Almanacs were incomparable. They were not pop singers, not ethnic singers, not quite hillbilly singers, though they would perhaps have been pleased to persuade some in their audience that they were. They did not perform in costume, either of the concert stage or of the radio barndance; and yet their street clothes, in which they ordinarily appeared, ranged from pieces of business suits in various permutations and combinations to dungarees, workshirts, and construction boots....

The Almanacs were good. Through them young urban audiences were for the first time being exposed to the music with which the singers were familiar and which they could bring to the group -- blues, hillbilly, mountain music, Southern Methodist hymns.

Guthrie's later participation only heightened this effect, while the accompaniment of Josh White's blues guitar on their Keynote recordings, alongside Seeger's eclectic banjo style that, with a combination of strumming and picking, evoked both jazz and frontier idioms, produced an ensemble sound not substantially different from, say, that of the Memphis Jug Band. One wonders what his audiences thought he was doing when in "C for Conscription," taking off on Jimmie Rodgers' "T for Texas," Seeger yodeled as forlornly as the Singing Brakeman himself....

The Almanacs brought to their performances what Michael Rogin calls the "alternative, polyglot world" of New York's entertainment culture, "in which the children of Jewish immigrants found new cosmopolitan identities among Jews, other immigrants, children of old-stock Americans... and African-Americans as well."

Posted by Joski at 6:44 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: Almanac Singers

Early jug bands were typically made up of African American Vaudeville and Medecine Show musicians. Beginning in the urban south, they played a mixture of Memphis Blues (even before it was formally called the blues), Ragtime, and Appalachian music. The history of jug bands is related to the development of the blues. WC Handy said that he learned blues style from street musicians, playing improvised instruments. The informal and energetic music of the jug bands also contributed to the development of Rock and Roll.

The first jug bands to record were the Louisville and Birmingham jug bands. These bands played popular dance band jazz, using the jug as a novelty element. Vaudeville-blues singer Sara Martin and America's blue yodeller Jimmie Rodgers both employed these groups on their recordings.

The Memphis area jug bands were more firmly rooted in country blues and earlier African-American traditions. Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers and Will Shade’s Memphis Jug Band recorded the great songs that became the basis for the later jug band revival: "Stealin'", "Jug Band Music", "Whoa, Mule", "Minglewood Blues", "Walk Right In" and many others.

Other Memphis area bands were Jack Kelly and His South Memphis Jug Band, Jed Davenport's Beale Street Jug Band, and Noah Lewis's Jug Band. Mar Rainey’s tub-jug band featured the first recordings of slide guitar performer Tampa Red, who later formed his own Hokum Jug Band. Big Bill Broonzy and Memphis Minnie cut a few sides each backed up by their own jug bands; Memphis Minnie also sang and played with the Memphis Jug Band.

The 1930's depression and the devastating effect of radio on record sales reduced the output of jug band music to a trickle. The last sides by Cannon and the Memphis Jug Band were from 1930 and 1934 respectively. Cannon and Will Shade were recorded again in 1956 by Sam Charters on a field trip for Folkways.

The sound of the washboard and tub bass, however, lasted well into the 1940s as an integral part of the "Bluebird Beat " in Chicago. Bukka White’s 's "Fixin' to Die", recorded in Chicago in 1940, is driven by a syncopated washboard backup.

One of the first recordings of the 'folk era' jug band revival was by The Orange Blossom Jug Five, made in 1958 for the poorly-distributed Lyrichord label,"Skiffle in Stereo".

It was also the first recording by New York folksinger Dave Van Ronk, and featured Sam Charters, author of 'The Country Blues', and his wife Ann as well as Len Kunstadt, co-owner of the Spivey Records label. Another early recording group was Jolly Joe's Jug Band, led by record collector Joe Bussard, and released on his own Fonotone label-as 78 rpm records. Eventually these were collected on LP by the Piedmont label.

The Jim Kweskin Jug Band of Boston, who recorded for the Vanguard label featured the washtub bass and jug player, Fritz Richmond, who later played jug on Warren Zevon's "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead".

The New York based Even Dozen Jug Band was the Elektra label's answer to the Kweskin band and featured (among others) Maria d’Amato (Muldaur), Joshua Rifkin, David Grissman, Stefan Grossman, and John Sebastian. D'Amato then moved to the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, and married guitarist Geoff Muldaur.

The Austin, Texas band The 13^th Floor Elevators formed as an electric jug band, featuring Tommy Hall as electric jug player. A similar revival began in the UK in the 1960s possibly as an offshoot of the USA revival. A number of jug bands appeared there in the late 60s in addition to the {{skiffle]] bands.

The musicians playing in jug music revival groups went on to form other bands. John Sebastian founded the pop music group The Lovin’ Spoonful. Country Joe and the Fish came from The Instant Action Jug Band. Mungo Jerry, who had evolved from an earlier blues group Good Earth, were in effect a jug band on their first live performances and recordings, thanks to their use of jug (played by the group's banjo player Paul King, who left in 1972), and washboard, contributed by regular 'extra member' Joe Rush.

Another group with jug band roots was the Grateful Dead: key personnel were together in Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions before forming the Warlocks, which evolved into the Dead.

Pop-rock tributes to jug band music include "Willie and the Poor Boys" by Creedence Clearwater Revival and "Jug Band Music" by The Lovin’ Spoonful. The 'Spoonful also mined the old songs: for instance, "Younger Girl" uses the melody of Gus Cannon's "Prison Wall Blues". Cannon's "Walk Right In" was a hit for the Rooftop Singers in the 1960s.

The success of "Walk Right In" brought Cannon himself back into the Stax studios in Memphis for his last recording, in 1963 at age 79. The album, called Walk Right In, features Cannon on banjo and old sidemen Will Shade on jug and Milton Roby on washboard

Recently we have the marvellous documentary by Todd Kwait about the history and influence of jug band music, Chasin’ Gus’ Ghost.

Here are some of the finest I collected

1) Jim Kweskin - Sweet Sue

2) Jim Kweskin - Linin' Track

3) Jim Kweskin - The Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to me

4) Eric Von Schmidt - Baby, Let Me Lay It On You

5) Panama Limited Jugband - Going to Germany

6) Panama Limited Jugband - Viola Lee

7) Basin Street Sheiks - Revulsion Mine

8) Basin Street Sheiks - Devil Got my Woman

9) Juggernaut Jug Band - Jug Band Music

10) Juggernaut Jug Band - You Really Got Me

11) Nashville Jug Band - Shortnin' Bread

12) New Roanoke Jug Band - I'm Going Away

13) Sadie Green Sales Ragtime Jugband - Mama Don't Allow

14) Sankofa Strings - Colored Aristocracy

15) Sankofa Strings - Walk Right In

16) South Austin Jug Band - Little Wing

17) South Austin Jug Band - Long Journey Home

18) Mother Vineyard's Jugband - Blues in the Bottle

19) Mother Vineyard's Jugband - Jug band music

20) Mother Vineyard's Jugband - Sittin'on top of the world

21) The Bluelights - Rub That Rhythm Down

22) The Bluelights - I Wanna Be Bad

23) The Bluelights - Talkin' 'Bout You

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Fill your ears with love

Posted by Joski at 1:47 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: Jug band

Jean Ritchie was born in 1922 in Viper, Kentucky, the youngest of the 14 children of Balis and Abigail Ritchie. Her family were poor farmers, but what they lacked in money they more than made up for in music. Their Scottish-Irish heritage was rich in songs sung by generations of mountain people, tucked away from the world in the remote hollows and valleys of Appalachia.

Jean’s father encouraged music making in all his children and the whole family sang and played together. Balis taught her to play the mountain (or plucked) dulcimer when she was five or six years old. The instrument fitted her small lap well. It’s narrow, fretted finger board did not intimidate tiny fingers and it’s three strings were easy to control. Two of the strings were tuned in unison and played the melody. The third was a drone, like a five-string banjo. She strummed it like her father taught her -- with a turkey quill. She also learned another trick early on. She strummed toward herself, not away like many other players. And she also learned to sing one melody while she strummed a counter melody on the dulcimer, creating a kind of duet with herself.

In her early days at home, little Jean learned all the sad old English ballads that her ancestors had brought with them when they came to the New World. She learned the made up songs they sang while at work or play. She learned the hymns that they sang in the little board church down the road. She learned the instrumentals -- the dances and reels and jigs that they danced to at weddings and ice cream socials.

She took all these things with her when she went to college -- a rare event for a woman in the mountains in the 30s. Four years later she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a social work degree from the University of Kentucky. Then she went to New York to work in the Henry Street Settlement, where she used her songs to entertain children. Of course, the kids were delighted but there was more ahead for Jean. The New York folk music scene soon discovered her and she became its darling. She had all the qualifications the intellectuals were looking for: she was a woman, had been born and raised in Appalachia, knew a lot of authentic folk songs, and played a little-known instrument.

Jean was asked to play formal recitals and concerts. New York ate it up. Her first formal concert was in 1948 at the Little Greenwich Mews Theatre. After that, Jean became a busy performer.

In 1950, Ritchie married photographer George Pickow and the union endures to this day. Two years later, she recorded her first solo album and received the Fulbright award to study folk music in the British Isles. In 1955 her first book, “Singing Family of the Cumberlands” was published.

When general interest in folk music became widespread in the early 60s, traditional Jean Ritchie fit in perfectly. She played concert dates at colleges throughout America and abroad, and appeared on television. Intellectuals still considered her the essence of the true folk artist. For this reason, she never approached the popularity of the slicker singers like The Kingston Trio, Judy Collins, or Peter, Paul and Mary.

Here is "Ballads from her Appalachian Family Tradition"

Posted by Joski at 1:43 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: Jean Ritchie

Despite playing music all her life, Elizabeth Cotten didn't begin recording and performing outside family circles until she was well past sixty. "Freight Train," her most noted tune, was written when she was just twelve years old and has long been considered an American folk song classic.

Born and raised in North Carolina, Cotten taught herself how to play guitar; she played it upside down and left-handed, and developed a two-finger picking style. Cotten worked most of her life as a domestic, first in North Carolina, and then in the Washington, D.C., area for the famous folk-singing Seeger family (ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger, his wife, Ruth, and their children, Pete, Mike, and Peggy)..

While working for a brief stint in a department store, Elizabeth helped a child wandering through the aisles find her mother. The child was Peggy Seeger and the mother was Ruth Crawford Seeger of the Charles Seeger Family. Soon after this Elizabeth again began working as a maid, caring for the Seeger's children Mike, Pete and Peggy. While working with the Seegers (a voraciously musical family) she remembered her own guitar playing from forty years prior, and picked up the instrument again to start from scratch.

In 1958 Mike Seeger recorded Cotten for Folkways Records. The album was called Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar. Cotten performed at various folk and blues festivals, including the prestigious Newport Folk Festival in 1964 and the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife from 1968 to 1971. In 1972 Cotten won the National Folk Association's Burl Ives Award for her contribution to American folk music.

Cotten continued to record and perform throughout the '70s and early '80s. Her last album, Elizabeth Cotten Live!, recorded in 1985, won a Grammy for best traditional folk music recording. Cotten's songs have been recorded by the Grateful Dead, Taj Mahal, and Peter, Paul and Mary, among others. She died in 1987.

Over the course of the early sixties Elizabeth went on to play more shows with big names in the burgeoning folk revival. Some of these included Mississippi John Hurt, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters at venues such as the Newport Folk Festival.

The newfound interest in her work inspired her to write more material to play and in 1967 she released a record created with her grandchildren entitled Shake Sugaree.

Using profits from her touring and record releases, as well as from the many awards given to her for contribution to the folk arts, Elizabeth moved with her daughter and grandchildren from Washington and bought a house in Syracuse NY. She continued touring and releasing records well into her 80s. In 1984 she won the Grammy Award for "Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording" for her album on Arhoolie Records "Elizabeth Cotten Live".

In 1989, Cotten was one of 75 influential African-American women chosen to be included in the photo documentary, "I dream a world”. When accepting the award in Los Angeles, her comment was "Thank you. I only wish I had my guitar so I could play a song for you all."

Elizabeth Cotten died in New York, Syracuse at the age of 92.

She was left handed so she played the banjo "backwards". Later, when she transferred her songs to the guitar, a unique style was formed, since on the Banjo the uppermost string is not a bass string, as on the guitar, but a short high pitched string, called a drone string. This required her to adopt a unique style for the guitar, which she first played with all finger down strokes like a banjo. Later this evolved into a unique style of finger picking, and her signature, alternating bass style is known as "Cotten Picking".

Regardless, her unmistakably original chord-construction, melodies and finger picking techniques would go on to influence many other musicians.

http://lix.in/c52e7a65

Love

Posted by Joski at 1:39 PM | 3 comments  
Labels: Elizabeth Cotten

Danny Kalb was part of the folk music boom of the 1960s. One of many white boys who learned some guitar and took to singing in the coffeehouses near Harvard: rich kids singing music about being broke and troubled. Stefan Grossman was doing the same thing in Greenwich Village.

In 1965, Elektra Records recorded some of these guys and put out a compilation titled, "The Blues Project". Shortly thereafter, Kalb formed a blues/folk-rock band, lifting that title for it's name. Like Paul Butterfield's band, they were pioneers blazing a trail for the blues as interpreted by (mostly) whites.

Although critically acclaimed, by 1967 the band was gone for all intents and purposes. The other members all went on to bigger and better things: money, recognition, and (in the case of Al Kooper), fame.

Kooper formed Blood, Sweat & Tears; Steve Katz went with him. Roy Blumenfeld and (the late) Danny Kulberg remained to see The Blues Project morph into Sea Train. Danny Kalb reformed The Blues Project and toured mostly as a trio for a few years.

Stefan Grossman had been part of The Even Dozen Jug Band. This might have been a Stefan Grossman solo record, actually, but Kalb's name could sell more records at that time. Still, the music works. I love the way they blend their guitars together so effectively; it's what makes this music exceptional.

Originally released in 1969, Crosscurrents is the meeting of two very different guitarists collaborating on the blues and other folk forms. This is deep American white music played with character, innocence, and instrumental acumen. Danny Kalb was one of the co-founders of the Blues Project and a brilliant if under acknowledged guitarist. Stefan Grossman is, of course, one of the best-known acoustic guitarists in the world. This fleeting collaboration is inspired, ego-less, and gritty.

Grossman wrote the lion's share of the set though Kalb, with his electric guitar and psychedelic effects, is an equal foil (though acoustically, Kalb is a monster as well). The evidence is everywhere, but oddly enough it is best expressed on Brownie McGhee's "Louise Louise," and the traditional blues "Death Letter Blues," most closely associated with Son House.

Kalb's singing is looser, less forced, and deeper in the groove. His willingness to let the solos glide and shimmer back forth with a solid rhythm section -- Art Koenig and Joe Hunt -- pushing them deeper. "Death Letter Blues," with killer harmonica by Don Brooks, juxtaposes the electric and acoustic guitars in stunning fashion. Kalb wails and wallers and his arrangement of the tune is original and reverent at the same time.

The music here sounds dated, but in the best possible way: we don't have music like this being made anymore. It's raw, yet full of integrity, ambition, curiosity, originality, and abandon, with a healthy regard for excellence in performance.

http://lix.in/5ad1b580

Peace

Posted by Joski at 1:34 PM | 1 comments  
Labels: Danny Kalb, Stefan Grossman