Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Jesse Fuller live...!



Credit for this one is to Stephanie--excellent sleuth work! A YouTube video of Jesse Fuller, in action, doing San Francisco Bay Blues--with many good closeups of how the fotdella at work--not to mention that giant 12-string... Here's the link (until I get savvy enough to post YouTube screen itself...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmVVxhYlp2Y

Monday, January 29, 2007

Song Trailer: Lesley Riddle

Lesley Riddle (1905-1980), shown here holding guitar next to Brownie McGhee, accompanied A.P. Carter on his song collecting trips and acted as a "human tape recorder" memorizing the melody while Carter gathered lyrics.

Song Trailer: A.P. Carter

A.P. (Alvin Pleasant Delaney) Carter (1891-1960) founded the country music group the Carter Family in 1927, consisting of his wife Sara and sister-in-law Maybelle (she was married to A.P.’s brother, Ezra Carter). After the group sold over 300,000 records at the end of 1930, A.P. travelled around the southwestern Virginia area in search of new songs, with the help of guitarist Leslie Riddle, to collect and copywrite.


Wildwood Flower

The Original Carter Family. Clinch Mountain Virginia, 1930...



Jesse Fuller's Fotdella, too...



Along the same lines, but much more uptown is Jesse Fuller and his home-made Fotdella. Self-explanatory, no? As you can see it combines elements of a bass viol with piano keys to strike the strings--activated by Jesse's foot. There's also a cymbal, for his other foot, not to mention the (electronic?) harmonica rack. Saw him once at Reed College in Portland, 1964 or so--a treat. We never dreamed he'd someday be gone...

His best-known song (and long one of my favorites) is San Francisco Bay Blues. "Ocean liner gone so far away..."

Homemade...





These are from Alan Lomax's collection--his own photographs--made on the recording expeditions in the American South in the 1930s. Source is the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs--see under Alan Lomax. I like the shot of the two horns, in particular...you can see we're lookin at a rusty funnel, some pipe and heavy tape--lots of tape. Or maybe it's wrapped cloth, bound with glue? That's more likely, given the economy of means. On the left is a kazoo--also homemade. The shapes here--and the complete absence of refinement (not that anyone would want to return to horns like these once a better instrument could be had)... It's the need for music --that's what shines through...

I see Angie and Nathaniel...and several of the rest of you here...

Delighted...


I'm delighted to see all this activity--visual, archival, nutty and otherwise. Good energy! And now, for the show you've all been waiting for--here is John Lomax, Jr. and the Tex-I-An Boys--from the liner notes on an old Folkways record, Red River Valley (available through Smithsonian Global Sound--the liner notes can be downloaded as pdf files (thanks, Anthony!)). We'll be gettin' down that way in a few weeks...

In the mean time, what about the zither player who recorded the soundtrack for The Third Man? But that would take us far afield...

Some On-line Resources

Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library (UCB) Streaming Audio Databases
(n.b. follow the link for Proxy Server Service in order to access these resources from off-campus)
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MUSI/audio.html

The Music Library streaming audio databases include the following (i.e. you may access them free, with student ID, on-line through the Music Library site):

Smithsonian Global Sound
http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/

African American Song
http://www.alexanderstreetpress.com/products/aamu.htm

Other sites of interest:

Max Hunter Folk Song Collection
http://maxhunter.missouristate.edu/

Digital Tradition Folk Song Database
http://www.mudcat.org/threads.cfm

Song Trailer: Max Hunter

Max Hunter (1922-1999) recorded some 1600 Ozark Mountain folk songs between 1956 and 1976.

Song Trailer: Harry Smith

Harry Smith (1923-1991) compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music, recordings from the 1920s and 1930s, released in 1952.

Song Trailer: Moses Asch

Moses Asch (1905-1986) was founder of Folkways Records.

Song Trailer: Alan Lomax

Alan Lomax (1915-2002) accompanied his father, John Lomax, on field recordings of the American South, and later expanded internationally to record in Ireland and Italy, among other places.



Song Trailer: John Lomax

John Lomax (1867-1948) conducted "field recordings" in 1933, first at Texas prison farms, then Louisiana, and Mississippi. Recordings during this time included Lead Belly in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.




















Album Art: "You Are My Sunshine"

These ones are pretty self-explanatory. I thought I should note that the bearded bespectacled gentleman below Mississippi John Hurt is Norman Blake who sings "You Are My Sunshine" on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. I didn't very much care for that album cover so I found a picture of him in Google Images. Ah yes, Governor Davis...







































Album Art: "Down in the Valley"

"Down in the Valley" appears on these selected albums. The artist on the first one, American Folksay Ballads and Dances Volumes 5 & 6, is listed as "Unknown." Have a look on the website of Smithsonian Global Sounds, and the rest of the web, for more information about track listings, recording/publishing dates, and liner notes. One might enjoy exploring possible connections between the album art and the songs, or simply enjoy seeing what's out there...




































































Saturday, January 27, 2007

Maestro Morricone

...His approach, he said, reflects his education and his era. “I have studied the expressive methods of the entire history of musical composition,” he said. “At times I turn more toward light music, at times I turn more toward serious music. I mingle things, and sometimes I turn into a chameleon. We are living in a modern world, and in contemporary music the central fact is contamination, not the contamination of disease but the contamination of musical styles. If you find this in me, that is good..."
"[regarding the film score for Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (1966)] I wanted to differentiate three timbres — the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said. “A silver flute, sounding sweet, is the good. The ocarina is the ugly. And the bad is the voices of two men singing together, off key.
“I should not be revealing this,” he continued. “These are family secrets.”

from the NYT article, "The Maestro of Spaghetti Westerns Takes a Bow," John Pareles, Jan. 28, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/arts/music/28pare.html

The Art of Building (and creating a lot of noise)


















Here are two links to sites with instrument building inspiration.

http://www.geocities.com/tpe123/folkurban/
Mostly traditional instruments made out of very cheap materials, including classics like The Toilet Occarina and The Home De(s)pot Flute.

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/music/
All sorts of DIY instruments and music gadgets.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Futureman's Synthaxe Drumitar













The Synthaxe Drumitar was invented by Futureman, stage name of Royel Wooten, brother of bassist Victor Wooten, both members of the quartet Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.
http://www.flecktones.com/site.php?em1679=73701_0__0_~0_-1_8_2006_0_0&content=gear

The Statue of Saint Francis


They were putting up the statue
of Saint Francis
in front of the church
of Saint Francis
in the city of San Francisco
in a little side street
just off the Avenue
where no birds sang
and the sun was coming up on time
in its usual fashion
and just beginning to shine
on the statue of Saint Francis
where no birds sang
And a lot of old Italians
were standing all around...

Over Columbus Avenue, in the store, I show Steph a book, up in the poetry room, and the brimmed-hat white-bearded poet himself, shiny eyes, grin, and earring, emerges from the office door to the left. “Oh, hi, I was just showing her…and we were just in one of the…” nervous talk of icon shops and Saint Francis statues.
“You know, that statue is no longer there?”
And soon Steph and I are gone, down the street, with the cool wind blowing across our faces.

Saturday Night in North Beach

































Thursday, January 25, 2007

Walls of Red Wing

Oh, the age of the inmates
I remember quite freely:
No younger than twelve,
No older 'n seventeen.
Thrown in like bandits
And cast off like criminals,
Inside the walls,
The walls of Red Wing.
...

Bob Dylan, recorded in 1963, at the last Freewheelin' session, released on The Bootleg Series 1-3 (1991)

From a NYT article by Steve Dougherty, Sept. 11, 2005, (also the birthday of Jimmie Davis, 1899! ) This is Highway 61 up North. The author visits Minnesota and tries to find connections between Bob Dylan's songs and the places of his youth (Dylan was born in Duluth, MN). He does find some connections. For example, it turns out there is a place called Red Wing in which there is a reform school for boys. There's even a place called Rollingstone! Have a look:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/travel/11highway.html?ex=1169874000&en=af072f989dc26989&ei=5070

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

...roots




Hey everyone; let's hit the road!

...Florencia was kind.


...
And if you want to know
Where a local boy like me is comin’ from:
3rd base, Dodger Stadium.
3rd base, Dodger Stadium.

Back around the 76 ball,
Johnny Greeneyes had his shoeshine stall.
In the middle of the 1st base line
Got my first kiss, Florencia was kind.
Now, if the dozer hadn’t taken my yard,
You’d see the tree with our initials carved.
So many moments in my memory.
Sure was fun, ‘cause the game was free.
It was free.
...

from "3rd Base Dodger Stadium," Ry Cooder, Chavez Ravine (2005)

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

I don't know if this really fits...

...because Ry Cooder isn't from over 50 years ago, but he is kind of a rootsy guy i guess. My boyfriend sent this to me, and if any of you are recording geeks, you might find it interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/technology/22cooder.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

You'll have to cut and paste. Sorry I don't know how to link things. I'm not a very expirienced blogger.

I thought it might be relevent simply because the first class was such a mish mash of roots music and new technology.

^___^

'cos sharing is caring

there is a treasure chest that exists in the virtual world for music junkies!

http://hype.non-standard.net

it's called the hype machine, it searches music blogs and you can find some great stuff. search 'johnny cash bob dylan' to listen to their version of 'you are my sunshine.' it also finds youtube videos of your search, too.

if you're into music in general, check in on these music blogs regularly to introduce/remind yourself of some aural bliss:

stereogum//
moteldemoka//

_____

-c.


Monday, January 22, 2007

A Singing Animal

“Man, of course, is a singing animal…[and] used the voice for cooing and grunting before he used words. If the primary function of this instrument [the voice] is singing, then speech is a secondary function. In training the speaking voice, therefore, you should observe the rules governing the singing voice (Quoting Richard Dyer-Bennet, from Bonnie Dyer-Bennet’s “A Biographical Essay on Richard Dyer-Bennet,” Smithsonian Folkways (1997).”

The images below are from http://richard.dyer-bennet.net/, and consist of program notes from a NYC concert on April 4, 1944.











A ship in port is safe...(?)


We’d be better-off in a nice clean jail.
Leave her, Johnny, leave her.
With all night in and plenty of ale,
And it’s time for us to leave her.
Leave her, Johnny, leave her,
Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her.
For the voyage is done,
And the winds don’t blow,
And it’s time for us to leave her.*
...
Would we be “better-off in a nice clean jail…With all night in and plenty of ale”? Would we be better-off if we had stayed in our hometowns and worked at the family store? Was my Swedish friend correct who said “nobody can be a prophet in his own town”? How come Alexander Pope who, due to tuberculosis of the spine, never traveled outside of England and yet managed, in his poetry, to explore some of the most enduring questions regarding the predicament of humankind? Here is another way of looking at this: maybe some hometowns, including all the people and things of which they consist, or hometown states of mind, inspire one to leave them more than others. Maybe some inspire one more to remain.



*from “Leave Her, Johnny,” traditional, as sung by Louis Killen, on A Seaman’s Garland: Sailors, Ships & Chanties, Vol. 2 (1997). Louis Killen, famous for his chanty renditions, also sang for a while with the Clancey Brothers in the 1970s during Tommy Makem’s hiatus.

Leave her, Johnny, leave her?

Some thoughts triggered by the short clip we saw in class of Mississippi John Hurt performing on TV (here in a picture with Skip James, who holds the guitar):

A man who's never left the place where he was born -- 61 years in or near Avalon, Mississippi. An identity, a root. Attached to a place. Formed by a place. One with that place.

What, if anything, do we gain from travelling the world? From changing environments, friends, partners, even parents? Are we not losing something when leaving a place, a person, a thing...when "re-placing." Zero-sum game? Can everything about life be learned in one single place, without constantly chasing experiences, adventures, novelties? How about letting these things come to you rather than running behind them, running to find them?

Another man who never left his place of birth...Immanuel Kant from Koenigsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia).

A sense of place, a sense of belonging, a sense of identity. A sense of a life actually lived. But then again, Kant's idea of cosmopolitanism -- where the entire world becomes one's place, where humanity as a whole becomes one's family. How can a man who's never left his town propose such a concept? Is belonging to everywhere possible, or tantamount to belonging to nowhere? Is it an intellectual exercise rather than a physical one? Should I stay or should I go now? (Not quite 50 years old, but very to the point, this song by "The Clash.") Well, I guess it's time to leave her, Johnny... (Now, this one is over 50 years old!)