A course in the Visual Studies program at U.C. Berkeley--the old songs, and the feel of the places they come from--taken in all possible senses...
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.
I guess A.P. Carter didn't have the luxury of field recording equipment like John Lomax did (too expensive, or simply unavailable at the time?) It might be interesting to compare the motives/uses of the songs collected in the cases of A.P. Carter versus John Lomax.
There are particular Carter Family songs that most definitely come from Lesley Riddle--who also taught Maybelle a lot about guitar playing. Among other things, slide style (in which she was quite proficient). These cross-overs are what it's all about...! Lomax (father and son) had a folklorist's overview. My sense is that A.P. simply loved the songs, wanted to collect them for the singing... I don't know if anyone made the attempt to organize/codify/preserve his work in this... The Lomax material, of course, is in the Library of Congress.
3 comments:
I guess A.P. Carter didn't have the luxury of field recording equipment like John Lomax did (too expensive, or simply unavailable at the time?) It might be interesting to compare the motives/uses of the songs collected in the cases of A.P. Carter versus John Lomax.
There are particular Carter Family songs that most definitely come from Lesley Riddle--who also taught Maybelle a lot about guitar playing. Among other things, slide style (in which she was quite proficient). These cross-overs are what it's all about...! Lomax (father and son) had a folklorist's overview. My sense is that A.P. simply loved the songs, wanted to collect them for the singing... I don't know if anyone made the attempt to organize/codify/preserve his work in this... The Lomax material, of course, is in the Library of Congress.
I read that Rounder Records has a Lesley Riddle cd...would be worth checking out, someone...?
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