Ruckus Juice and Chittlins – The great jugbands
The jug maybe the most versatile kitchen staple outside of the crafty spoon when it comes to making music. The sauté pan was abandoned as a percussion tool during the Great Depression and the food processor was a failure from the start.
The only man to lift the jug to new heights was Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators who utilized an electric jug on their earliest forays into Texas psychedelia. Therefore, we are left with dusty 78s of the 20s and 30s to satisfy a craving for old-fashioned jug band music.
The Yazoo label is an excellent resource for the forgotten history of American folk, blues and country and its catalogue rivals anything found on the Smithsonian-Folkways series of albums. I’ve never heard of a single soul on this compilation and chances are you haven’t stumbled upon King David’s Jug Band or Cannon’s Jug Stompers (How’s that for a image!) either. There isn’t a mournful moment on the whole album.
This is music of celebration as these musicians draw upon or predate blues, folk, bluegrass, western swing and jazz to create a joyous clatter. It’s also interesting to hear how each artist utilizes the lowly jug in so many different ways. Some use it to imitate the human voice; others use it as a percussion instrument of sorts while some use it for comic relief. It provides such a distinctive sound that it makes you wonder why more bands haven’t adopted it today. Ruckus Juice and Chittlins documents a thoroughly American form of music and stands as one of the better comps on the Yazoo label.
That said, when these recordings were made in the Twenties and Thirties they themselves were a novelty and if some of the glorious music that they contain was deemed to require a jug to be blown to make it commercially viable, then who am I to complain? For indeed, amongst all the grunts, rasps and burps here, on these two albums is as fine a collection of down home blues, rural jazz and country dance music available today.
Yazoo have been championing this music for many years now but their leading card has always been Country Blues, so it is no surprise that three quarters of the selections favour this idiom.
However, in this field there can only ever be one winner. I think that Cannon's Jug Stompers must be included in the roll of the all time Delta Greats. For surely with Cannon's dextrous banjo, Ashley Thompson's shimmering vocal and snapped basses, and the unsurpassed harmonica playing of Noah Lewis, this is Mississippi Blues at its peak.
In complete constrast but I guess for completeness' sake four tracks by white groups are included. The Five Harmaniacs (of whom there were naturally four) are spirited, while Ezra Buzzington's Rustic Revellers are clever.
Clever yes, but any group that features not only the jug but the dreaded Swanee whistle and 'novelty laughing', has a mountain to climb as far as I'm concerned, and it comes as no surprise to me that they were an early incarnation of the equally annoying Hoosier Hot Shots. On the other hand, no amount of unnecessary kitchenware can detract from the work of The Prairie Ramblers, surely the greatest country swing band ever to record. The ultimate sore thumb in this company, though, is The Walter Family from Kentucky, here performing their classic That's my rabbit, my dog caught it. A simple but memorable fiddle tune is augmented, first by piano, then banjo, then jug. They stop and then repeat the process.
Wonderful.
So here they are :
http://lix.in/-390882
http://lix.in/-390882
Enjoy the Masters
Thank you.
Have you got the one man jug band Stovepipe No. 1?
barak said...
February 11, 2009 3:38 PM
Thanks Josse!!! I have never heard of
this. I am very familiar with "chittlins" and have fond memories of
"ruckus juice" so this should serve me well.
JT said...
February 24, 2009 3:37 PM
I've had the Cannon's Jug Stompers disc on Yazoo for 20 years. Great stuff. But the others are new to me.
Volume 2 didn't have any ID tags for song and artist and album, alas.
Thanks for the good tunes.
MuddyDesert said...
February 24, 2009 7:25 PM
I've had the Cannon's Jug Stompers disc on Yazoo for 20 years. Great stuff. But the others are new to me.
Volume 2 didn't have any ID tags for song and artist and album, alas.
Thanks for the good tunes.
MuddyDesert said...
February 24, 2009 7:25 PM
Thank you for these.
Could you please put up a tracklist for Volume 2, or a legible, higher resolution scan of the back of the CD, or both?
Gregory Peccary, N.G.W.S. said...
March 9, 2009 8:29 PM
hi,
thanks for uploading ruckus juice and chittlins-vol.2
is there a password?
cant get it to uncompress, ask for pw
thanks brother Mike
brother Mike said...
May 2, 2009 10:03 PM