s&p soiree

Some photos from our last evening. Thank you all!

Room 170 last call..

Just needed to share these..

icecream kisses

If I only

could recieve a kiss

so tender!

Lips warm, but still

feels like icecream on a very warm day.

July.

In the couch of the berries

sun made me blush

wind rubbed my newly, mistaken cut hair.

I was embarrassed.

The berries played last years summer record,

I loved it too!

Red and purple reflected the warmth of

summer.

Its breezy waves played

with the kisses

jiggeld and danced over

the warm lips

of blueberries' summer kisses

wanted to be icecream.

T'ang Yin

T'ang Yin
Secluded Fishermen on an Autumn River
Inscription by a friend dated 1523
Section of a handscroll
Ink and colors on silk (h. 11-1/2 inches)
Palace Museum Collection, Taichung

"His beginnings were brilliant; he took first place twice in provincial examinations, the first time when he was only fifteen years old. Su-chou scholarly society befriended and supported him, and at the age of twenty-eight he set off for the capital with high hopes, to take the state examination that was the entrance to a career as a government official. Again he passed in first place; but it was later disclosed that a playboy friend had bribed the servant of the examiner to get advance information of the essay subjects; T'ang Yin was involved in the ensuing scandal, and degraded. Finding himself thus barred from the standard vocation of the literatus, and, unlike Wen Cheng-ming and others, too poor to live in elegant retirement on private means, he settled into an in-between existence, selling paintings when he needed money, forgetting the bitterness of his disgrace in the taverns and pleasure quarters of Su-chou one day, transcending it through Ch'an Buddhism meditation the next. Throughout all this he kept the friendship of that paragon of virtue Wen Cheng-ming, who admonished him in vain for his profligacy."

James Cahill, Chinese Painting (Geneva: Albert Skira, 1960)

Wild Geese Descending on the Sandbank

(from a Sung Dynasty painting)

In parallel with a guqin recording by

Mei Ri-qiang (b. 1929)
Guangling Qin Music (Volume 6)
(Hugo cd 7144-2)
Wild Geese Descending on the Sandbank

These recordings are available in the US through Hugo Productions. Here are selections from the album notes, "A Descriptive Prose on Listening to Mei Ri-qiang's Qin Playing, by Dong Xin-bin (transcribed as translated and printed):

"Mei Ri-qiang, alternative name Nan Yi, is a hermit who withdrew from society and also a great Qin master of the refined style.

Mei never scrambled for power, but worked throughout his life. Although he faces a lot of narrow views and villains, he is wise and healthy in mind. He is a great man who lives among the common people. He is an unusual person--generous and open-minded--of the time.

Mei has a close friend--the Qin. For 60 years, he played it and reached the highest level of Qin study. His style of study is 'tolerant and gentle, and never discusses an insignificant problem. He could never be compared with those who want to please the people in power or those who ingratiate themselves.'

If sound is correct, music would be deep. If the music is deep, the notes would inevitably be harmonious. So good and harmonious music is originated by involving heaven and earth, it shows good sense and it conforms to the mystery of the universe."

Room 170 ch.2 - listening

"Any fish bite if you've got good bait..."

The film The Old, Weird America: Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (2006) is structured around a mix of live performances (by contemporary musicians), past and recent interviews, and footage of Harry Smith (1923-1991) and his world. More than a biography of Harry Smith, the concert footage of the contemporary performances provides a fresh “funktitude,” as David Johansen might say, toward the selections in the original 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music. Greil Marcus, who gives us a lovely description of all six volumes as a kind of journey through the American psyche, also says “Harry was looking for idiosyncratic performances of standard songs.” Indeed, the better performers, I thought, really made the songs their own.

A few standouts include Lou Reed’s black leather jacket distorted electric guitar version of “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean.” He seems to have returned from the grave just to make this request. After Kate and Anna McGarrigle sing “Ommie Wise” Elvis Costello performs an original second part. This is his musing on the fate of murderous John Lewis. Along with raising a moral issue, it includes fine lines like “Her name was Ommie / She was plane, she was homely / And destined for grief.” Also, Bob Neuwirth, in a rhinestone cowboy type jacket, banjo picking, sings Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground” accompanied by none other than violinist-singer Eliza Carthy (Martin Carthy’s talented daughter).

Many of the interviews are insightful, sentimental, and eloquent. Bob Neuwirth says that Harry Smith was one of the few people he had ever met whom he would truly describe as an eccentric. And, concerning the songs on the Anthology, Elvis Costello reminds us that many of the songwriters and singers were just describing what was going around them in their lives at the time. Also, an anonymous elderly woman, in some black and white footage, comments that “these songs, two or three hundred years ago, were considered pop songs.”

Allen Ginsberg, from past interviews, has some entertaining anecdotes and strong sentiments. He bursts into tears at one point after mentioning Harry Smith's death. Ever peripatetic and impecunious, apparently Smith came to live with Ginsburg in his New York City apartment in the mid-eighties. With a smile, Ginsburg relates that he later sent him to The Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where he remained for four years as "resident philosopher."

Amidst all this the film provides other information about Harry Smith’s life. For instance, he lived on 5 ½ Panoramic Way back in his Berkeley days (right in my current neighborhood). I also found the following in the Harry Smith Archives on-line:

“Smith studied anthropology at the University of Washington for five semesters between 1943 and 1944. After a weekend visit to Berkeley, during which he attended a Woody Guthrie concert, met members of San Francisco's bohemian community of artists and intellectuals, and experimented with marijuana for the first time, Smith decided that the type of intellectual stimulation he was seeking was unavailable in his student life.”

He was a filmmaker, musician, painter, mystic, and string collector. Harry Smith explains that as a record collector, leading to the Anthology, he would travel to cities and get his records on the cheap by finding stores going out of business (as an aside, many old vinyl records were lost in the 1930s because they were melted down for WWII efforts). Early on as a filmmaker he would paint directly on each piece of film to create his abstract animation.

There is also footage from 1991 when, after receiving a Chairman's Merit Award at the Grammy Awards ceremony for his contribution to American Folk Music, he proclaimed, "I'm glad to say my dreams came true. I saw America changed by music." Though not mentioned in the film, I read that in the same year “Smith died, singing in Paola Igliori’s arms, in Room 328 at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City."

SONG SYLLABUS / WEEK 15

Week 15: Thursday, April 26
Love Songs: Tenderness



"Shenandoah" (J&A Lomax 128/138, Alan Lomax 34/53)
SGS Andrew Rowan Summers ***** (iTunes store)

"Red River Valley" (J&A Lomax 199/220, with additional verses)
SGS John Lomax ****
SGS Kilby Snow ****

Supplements--Hank Williams:

I’m So Lonesome
I Hear That Lonesome Whistle
Tennessee Waltz

Painting by Albert York

Song Trailer: Carl Sandburg

The following excerpt is from page 11 of Norm Cohen’s Folk Song America: A 20th Century Revival (1991). I think his comment that Carl Sandburg’s “singing and guitar playing were highly idiosyncratic" is evident in Sandburg's version of “I Ride an Old Paint,” which is included on our primary listening samples. Plus, glad Norm Cohen used the word collectanea.

“About 1920 Lloyd Lewis, a Chicago newspaper reporter and the author of Myths after Lincoln, introduced Lomax to the great populist poet Carl Sandburg, and for several years the three men and others met periodically to sing and exchange folk songs. Sandburg (1878-1967) collected songs himself during his wanderings about the country, and in the 20s he began the practice of closing each of his poetry recitations with a few folk songs sung to his own guitar accompaniment. In 1927 he brought out The American Songbag, one of the first general folk song collections intended primarily for singing rather than scholarly consumption. His sources included his own collectanea as well as the collections of his friends Robert Winslow Gordon (the first head of the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song and one of America’s pre-eminent folk song collectors in the 1920s) and John Lomax.

In the preceding year, Sandburg had recorded a half-dozen folk songs for the Victor Talking Machine Company, only two of which were issued (a sample of one is included in this set). While Lomax, in the early days at least, had intimate knowledge of the society that produced cowboy songs, Sandburg was a presenter who did not grow up in the folk society with whose materials he worked. Lomax’s slow, deliberate, declamatory style fitted his material comfortably, whereas Sandburg's singing and guitar playing were highly idiosyncratic, as listeners can judge for themselves.

Of Sandburg’s six 1926 recordings, which included cowboy and hobo songs, the only two issued selections were Negro material. Although knowledgeable listeners would have discerned that his style was not very traditional, in the 1920s the mere fact that he used a guitar instead of a piano and sang in an undecorated, untrained voice sufficed to label him a folk singer.”

…

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be
Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

from “Chicago,” in Chicago Poems (1916), Carl Sandburg

ROOM 170

She's Got You

As requested...
[Click here for song, will open in new window]


"She's Got you"
Patsy Cline
Sentimentally Yours, 1962

I've got your picture that you gave to me
And it's signed "with love," just like it used to be
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got your picture, she's got you

I've got the records that we used to share
And they still sound the same as when you were here
The only thing different, the only thing new,
I've got the records, she's got you

I've got your memory, or has it got me?
I really don't know, but I know it won't let me be

I've got your class ring; that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's got you

SONG SYLLABUS / WEEK 14

Week 14: Thursday, April 19
Sea Shanties: SALT



"Greenland Fisheries" (Alan Lomax 40/61, with original lyrics)
Watersons

"Blow Ye Winds of Morning" (J&A Lomax 130/144)
Almanac Singers (iTunes music store)

Supplements: see SSG for many recordings of the sea shanties. Here are some of my favorites:

A Yankee Ship Came Down the River
Lowlands
Santy Anno
The Blackball Line
Blow the Man Down Boys

Singers associated with the shanties:
Louis Killen
Jeff Warner
Ewan MacColl
The watersons
Sam Larner
Harry H. Corbett
A.L. Lloyd

And some key albums (cds):
Ewan MacColl & A.L.Lloyd Blow Boys Blow
Blow the Man Down (Collection)
Louis Killen: Steady As She Goes / Songs and Chanties from the Days of Commercial Sail
Lou Killen: A Seaman’s Garland (includes “Leave Her Johnny, Leave Her”)
Op de Wilde Vaart. From the Nederlands. Interesting that many are in English

The names themselves are evocative:
Wild Goose Shanty
Jack Tar
Whisky Johnny
Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her
Away Rio
South Australia

The Watersons. A group “…out of the English folk revival, The Watersons employed stark melodic scales along with stunning polyphonic harmonies, and outstanding song selection. Mike, Lal and Norma Waterson hailed from Yorkshire, and were originally joined by their cousin John Harrison, performing as an a capella quartet. The group's career spans from the early 1960s to the present day, where they are joined by fellow traditionalist, Martin Carthy, who married Norma Waterson in 1972.”

Red Headed Stranger

This evening I read a SF Chronicle review of a Willie Nelson concert . He is playing 5 shows at the Fillmore Auditorium, Sunday through Thursday night (perhaps I will venture there tomorrow night, though maybe it is sold-out).

I was impressed that the 73 year-old Willie Nelson, according to the article, has been performing 250 shows per year (that’s more than Bob Dylan) the last few years. He sleeps and hangs-out in his tour bus, not in hotels. He walks out of his bus, in a black Texas barbecue T-shirt, and goes onstage. He does not use set lists. His act is called “Willie Nelson and Family” because his sister plays piano with him. “Nelson has had four wives, but only one drummer…” (As an aside, his new album apparently contains a version of Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927,” an S&P-esque work par excellence, in my opinion.)


















I have really enjoyed the fraction of Willie’s recordings I have heard, the songwriting, singing, and guitar playing. I enjoyed his album with Waylon Jennings, and their version of Jennings’ “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”

According to a Wikipedia article, the song “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other” (of which we saw part of a video clip on YouTube) was written and recorded over 20 years ago by Ned Sublette, a musicologist/songwriter. This song includes the lines “What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?" and "Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out.” Willie Nelson released it in 2006 shortly after the film Brokeback Mountain.

During the filmcredits for Brokeback Mountain, as I recall, Willie Nelson sings Bob Dylan’s “He Was A Friend of Mine.” This song certainly has aspects of a cowboy song, “A thousand miles from home / And he never harmed no one.” I found the appropriation of this song for the film somewhat strange, but then thought “why not?”














From what I have read (e.g. an excellent New Yorker profile by Adam Gopnik, October, 2002), Willie Nelson really seems to live the migratory life of a musical cowboy. His guitar is named “Trigger” after Roy Rogers' horse. I love that old beat nylon string guitar of his. There is something completely casual about Willie Nelson, an ultimate cool, perhaps a hard-won, road-worn wisdom, lots of cannabis, and an ear for great songs to cover and compose, and grace to perform. He says, in the SF Chronicle article, "Not many things that work for me work for everybody. There's a whole lot of people out there who shouldn't go by what I do."

streets of laredo

"This is Johnny Cash. He's a folk singer because he was born one, and because he loved the music of the stories of his country."

Johnny Cash sings Streets of Laredo and Lumberjack and tells his story.

SONG SYLLABUS / WEEK 13

Week 13: Thursday, April 12
Cowboy Songs: FRONTIER


"Streets of Laredo" (J&A Lomax 195/206)
Tom Glazier (is this in S&P archive?)

"I Ride an Old Paint" (J&A Lomax 198/214
Carl Sandburg (iTunes store)
SGS Harry Jackson Very slow & compelling version!!!

These songs are classics as well:
The Old Chisolm Trail
Get Along Little Dogies
Home on the Range (hear the Rosalie Sorrells version on SGS)
Buffalo Gals

And the following (along with much other material) are available on the SGS Smithsonian Global Sound Archive:

LISTEN TO THIS ENTIRE ALBUM:
Cowboy Songs on Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Catalogue Number: SFW40043
Released: 1991

"Fifteen performers sing, boast, tell stories, holler, and recite poetry on 26 tracks that portray the life and times of honest, hard-working cowboys. Features performers from many backgrounds with a wide variety of musical styles. Includes Pete Seeger's Home on the Range, Cisco Houston's Little Joe and the Wrangler, Woody Guthrie's Get Along Little Dogies, several old tales from the range, including Chisholm Tale and Jesse James, and Rosalie Sorrells's version of Gene Autry's 1943 hit There's an Empty Cot in the Bunkhouse." (from the liner notes)

This collection was assembled from Folkways Archives and issued in 1991. Among the songs included—and recommended:
Little Joe the Wrangler / Cisco Houston
Little Joe, the Wrangler's Sister Nell / Harry Jackson
Get Along Little Dogie / Woodie Guthrie & Cisco Houston
The Dyin' Cowboy / Cisco Houston
The Devil Made Texas / Hermes Nye
Put Your Little Foot / John Lomax and the Tex-I-An Boys
Chisolm Trail / John Lomax and the Tex-I-An Boys
Phildelphia Lawyer / Woodie Guthrie
Utah Carl / Harry McClintock
Buffalo Skinners / Woodie Guthrie
Empty Cot In The Bunkhouse Tonight / Rosalie Sorrells



You can also look back to an earlier version of cowboy songs, from Folkways, with John Lomax, Jr. himself-and the Tex-I-An Boys. Recall that it was John Lomax’s book, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, published in 1910 to critical and popular acclaim that started much of the recorded folksong revival. That’s the volume that Moe Asch found in a Paris bookstall in the early 1920’s. Everything, it seems, is related…

Songs of Texas
John Lomax, Jr. and the Tex-i-an Boys, released in 1961.
Folkways Records
Catalogue Number: FW05328
(you can hear this in SGS--Again, listen to the whole album)

There are numerous entries under the keyword “cowboy” in SGS. Lots more by Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Harry Jackson and many others (Omer Simeon Trio, for example).

* * *

AND various YouTubes (none of these are really about cowboys; some ARE about cows, however—the rottweiler clip is particularly dramatic):

Roy Acuff / Great Speckled Bird
Merle Travis & Johnny Cash / Sing Me Back Home

Harry Carey Sr. The Bronx Cowboy (clips)
The Searchers (trailer) / John Wayne
Ghetto Cowboy (bonethugs-n-harmony)
Willie Nelson / Gay Cowboy Song
Blazing Glory
Longhorn Cattle Drive (parade)
Fort Worth Cattle Drive (parade)
Rottweiler Herding
Nebraska Cow Drive

Here Come My Train

I wanted to send you all some passages from Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Davis (a text I recommend as required reading) which are key to the travel/train theme:

When slavery was finally abolished, mobility was no longer proscribed by law and the black community was offered the historically new experience of embarking upon personal journeys, journeys whose territorial and economic relocations occasioned and were occasioned by psychological repositionings. "As important as spacial mobility has been throughout American history for all segments of the popultation," Lawrence Levine has observed,

"it was a particularly crucial symbol for Afro-Americans to whom it had been denied throughout the long years of slavery. Freedom of movement, as Howard Thurman has argued, was for Negroes the "most psycologically dramatic of all manifestations of freedom." The need to move, the existence of places to go, and the ability to get there, constituted central motifs in the black song after emancipation."

...men often had no alternative to travelling in search of work. This was the genesis of a historical pattern of male travel within the African-Amberican community. This economic catalyst for male travel also set the stage for the evolution of the country blues, an inprovised musical form forged by southern black men wandering from town to town and from state to state. They moved- on foot or by freight train- carrying their banjos and guitars in search of work, or simply succumbing to the contagious wanderlust that was a by-product of emancipation. "Following emancipation," jazz writer Ben Sidran has observed,

"freedom was equated with mobility, and thousands of Negroes took to the roads (establishing a pattern which was to become part of the black self-image in America). The travelling musician, who had taken on the role of truth-teller from the black Preacher, the role of trickster, or "bad nigger," from the Devil, became the ultimate symbol for freedom. Escape from the monotony and static hopelessness of black employment, combined with the potential for earning a living without having to rely on the white man- beating the white man at his own game, in other words- kept the musician's status high."

Jazz musician and writer Julio Finn emphasizes the psychological meaning of travel within the lives of male blues musicians:

"For the bluesman the road is a living being, a redoubtable character capable of heavenly sweetness and incredible cruelty. He tells it his problems, admonishes it for its caprices, cajoles it to treat him right, and complains to it when things go wrong. It is both a seductress who lures him back away from his loved ones and the fairy godmother who leads him back home."

Like themes of sexualilty, themes of travel in the blues reflected and gave expression to new social realities. However, unlike sexuality, which was so conspicuously absent in the music of slavery, travel could claim a solid place within black musical history. In a sense, it can be said that travel themes in the blues rearticulated the collective desire to escape bondage that pervaded the musical culture of slavery. Travel was one of the central organizing themes of the spirituals. Travelling liberators (as in "Go down Moses/ Way down in Egypt land/ Tell old Pharoah/ To let my people go") and signposts for travel (as in "Follow the drinking gourd/ And the old man is a-waiting/ For to carry you to freedom/ Follow the drinking gourd") are common subjects of the spirituals. Images of trains (as in "The gospel train is coming/ Get on board, little children, get on board") and other traveling vehicles (as in "Swing low, sweet chariot/ Coming for to carry me home") are also abundant in the spirituals. In his discussion of the agencies and models in transformation in the spirituals, black music scholar John Lovell, Jr., observes:

"Songs about trains are a minor miracle. The railroad train did not come into America until the late 1820s;it did not reach the slave country to any great extent until the 1830s and 1840s. Even then, the opportunities of the slave to examine trains closely were limited. Yet, before 1860, many spiritual poems exploited the train, its seductive sounds, speed and power, its recurring schedules, its ability to carry large numbers of passengers at cheap rates, its implicit democracy."

... Commenting on the blues, cultural critic Houstobn Baker has written:

"Even as they speak of paralyzing absence and ineradicable desire, their instrumental rhythms suggest change, movement, action, continuance, unlimited and unending possibility. Like signification itself, blues are always nomadically wandering. Like the freight-hopping hobo, they are ever on the move, ceaselessly summing novel experience.

... Ma Rainey herself was aware of the extent to which her music permitted her audience- especially the women who came out to see her- to partake vicariously of the experience of travel. During one phase of her career, she identified her favorite song as "Traveling Blues":

Train's at the station, I heard the whistle blow
The train's at the station, I heard the whistle blow
I done bought my ticket and I don't know where I'll go

I went to the depot, looked up and down the board
I went to the depot, looked up and down the board
I asked the ticket agent, "Is my town on this road?"

The ticket agent said, "Woman, don't sit and cry."
The ticket agent said, "Woman, don't sit and cry
The train blows and this station, but she keeps on passing by."

I hear my daddy calling some other woman's name
I hear my daddy calling some other woman's name
I know he don't need me, but I'm gonna answer just the same

I'm dangerous and blue, can't stay here no more
I'm dangerous and blue, can't stay here no more
Here come my train, folks, and I've got to go.

When Ma Rainey sang this song, she dramatized the activity of travel, consciously attempting to evoke feeling among members of her audience:

"Baby, I came out on that stage, dressed down! I had on a hat and a coat and was carrying a suitcase. I put the suitcase down, real easy like, then stand there like I was thinking- just to let them see what I was about. Then I sing. You could just see them jigs wanting to go some place else."

For women especially, the ability to travel implied a measure of autonomy, an ability to shun passivity and acquiescence in the face of mistreatment and injustice and to exercise some control over the circumstances of their lives, especially over their sexual lives. The railroad tracks were concrete evidence of something different, perhaps better, somewhere elso. The protagonist of "Travelling Blues" does not know, in fact, where she is headed. Yet she has purchased her ticket and is certain of the fact that she has got to go wherever her travels may lead her. This song provides a powerful refutation of the blues cliche that "when a man gets the blues, he hops a train and rides, [but] when a woman gets the blues, she lays down and cries."

And beyond...

This week's special... Saw a man at the 7-eleven counter this morning, middle-years, portly, maybe from somewhere in South Asia. He looked like someone's unce, with a good haircut and woolen trousers...until I noticed the small revolver tucked into a holster--well-oiled--on the right side of his belt. A jeweler, perhaps?

Story from Shelley Winters, in Los Angeles during the war years. Close with Bertolt Brecht, she once invited him to her mother's home for dinner. Long afterward, her mother asked about "...that fellow in the jewelry business you once invited here." "Jeweler? I don't remember anyone like that..." "Oh yes, when I asked him about his work, he told me he made jewels for poor people..."

Your hair has turned to silver...

Jimmie Rodgers (left) and The Carter Family, 1931

Sleep, baby, sleepy,
Close your bright eyes.
…

"Sleep, Baby, Sleep" is a public domain song of the 19th century stage, and sung by Jimmie Rodgers (1897-1933). He is sometimes known as “The Singing Brakeman,” “The Blue Yodeler,” “The Yodeling Cowboy,” and “The Father of Country Music.” In addition to his train songs he sings some sweet lullabies such as the following, the recording of which I played in class:

Daddy and Home

I am dreaming tonight of an old southern town
And the best friend that I ever had.
For I've grown so weary of roaming around.
I'm going back home to my dad.

Your hair has turned to silver.
I know you're fading too.
Daddy dear, oh daddy-ee,
I'm coming back to you.

You made my boyhood happy, but still I long to roam.
I've had my way, but now I'll stay.
I long for you and for home.

Oh-duh-lay-ee-ay, de-oh-lay-ee,
Ah-de-oh-lay-ee, ay-deo-lay-ee.
Oh-lay-ee-oh, lee-oh-lay-ee.

Dear old daddy, you shared my sorrows and joy.
You tried to bring me up right.
I know you'll still be just one of the boys,
So I'm starting back home tonight.

Your hair has turned to silver
…

Transcribed from Rounder CD 1057 Jimmie Rodgers: The Early Years, 1928-1929. Lyrics in this version, recorded in Camden, NJ, June 12, 1928, featuring Jimmie on solo vocal and guitar.

Trains & More Trains

"It's nighttime in the Big City..."

These song lists, from the ever recherché Theme Time Radio Hour with Your Host Bob Dylan, coincidentally:

Episode 45: Trains
Aired March 14, 2007

"Blue Train" - John Coltrane (1957)
"Honky Tonk Train Blues" - Meade Lux Lewis (1927)
"Lonesome Train (On A Lonesome Track)" - The Johnny Burnett Rock and Roll Trio (1957)
"Mystery Train" - Little Junior Parker (1953)
"I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" - Pat Hare (1954)
"Waitin' For A Train" - Jimmie Rodgers (1929)
"Draw Your Brakes" - Scotty (David Scott) (1971)
"Train In Vain (Stand By Me)" - The Clash (1979)
"Night Train" - Jimmy Forrest (1951)
"Freight Train Boogie" - The Delmore Brothers (1946)
"Lonesome Whistle Blues" - Freddie King (1961)
"Mule Train" - Frankie Laine (1949)
"The Train" - Lord Buckley (1970)
"The Train Kept A-Rollin'" - Tiny Bradshaw (1951)
"Last Train To Clarksville" - The Monkees (1966)
"Midnight Special" - Leadbelly (1940)
"Yonder Comes A Freight Train" - Laura Cantrell (2002)
"Casey Jones" - The Jubilaires (1944)
"Casey Jones" - Grateful Dead (1970)
"Still A Fool (Two Trains Running)" - Muddy Waters (1951)

Episode 46: More Trains
Aired March 21, 2007

"Railroading" - Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West (1951)
"People Get Ready" - Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions (1965)
"Mean Old Train" - Papa George Lightfoot (1954)
"Click Clack" - Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band (1972)
"Blues In The Night" - Jimmy Lunceford (1941)
"The Underground Train" - Lord Kitchener (1950)
"This Train" - Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1947)
"Train Of Love" - Johnny Cash (1957)
"All Aboard" - Muddy Waters (1956)
"That Train Don't Stop Here" - Los Lobos (1992)
"The Loco-Motion" - Little Eva (1962)
"2:19 Blues" - Louis Armstrong (1940)
"Mr. Engineer" - Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys (1976)
"Gone Dead Train" - Randy Newman (1970)
"Kassie Jones" - Furry Lewis (1928)
"Love Train" - The O'Jays (1973)

Moskow Diskow

For me, this is the ultimate Train-song... a classic!
The song is Moskow Diskow with the Belgian eloctro euro-disco band Telex.
This song was an international hit in 1979, and they became very popular through the 80's.
and the video is awesome...

Lay Low

She's a cute little girl from Iceland,
cool and tough as the winters are up there...
Check her out on myspace, she is quite good.
http://www.myspace.com/baralovisa

freight train

Found this interview with Elizabeth Cotton telling how she bought her first guitar. The video is a collection of "the mothers of blues," watch the last two mins. or so to hear Elizabeth's story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMVM1XpcqlA

SONG SYLLABUS / WEEK 12

Week 12: Thursday, April 5
Train Songs: RAIL



"Midnight Special" (J&A Lomax 292/319)
Lead Belly

"Freight Train" (Elizabeth Cotton; Silverman 152)
Elizabeth Cotton

"Wabash Cannonball" (Alan Lomax 410/420)
Doc Watson and Jean Ritchie, in SGS (also in S&P)


Supplements: TRAIN SONGS FROM S&P ARCHIVE:

Pan American Blues, De Ford Bailey (harmonica solo--don't miss!!)
Freight Train, Elizabeth Cotton
The Little Black Train, The Carter Family
Midnight Special Train, Big Joe Turner
Train To Skaville 1966, The Ethiopians
Train That Carried The Girl From Town, Frank Hutchinson
The Log Train, Hank Williams
When The Train Comes Along, Gary/Sonny Davis
Golden Gate Gospel Train, Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet
When The Train Comes Along, Henry Thomas
Au Bord De l'Ytrain, Cossack Voices
Night Train to Memphis, Sleepy LaBeef
Freight Train Bluesl, Merle Travis
Railroad Blues, Sam McGee
Lonesome Whistle (I Heard That), Hank Williams

FROM SGS:
Woody Guthrie, Railroad Blues
New Lost City Ramblers, Railroad Blues
Dock Boggs, Railroad Tramp
Railroad Sounds (just what the title says!)
Rich Amerson, Lining Track (work song)

FROM AAS:
Calling Trains (don't miss this one!)
I'm Going Home on the Morning Train
The Dying Hobo
Travelin' Railroad Man Blues
Freight Train Yodeling Blues, Part 2
Gospel Train



And a variety of YouTubes, some more special than others:

Elizabeth Cotton: Freight Train I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMSYzFdloqY

Elizabeth Cotton: Freight Train II (at 92!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F6sXL4Jb_s

Elizabeth Cotten—Wilson Rag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ukQaIF9_E4&mode=related&search=

Elizabeth Cotton: Mama, Your Papa Loves You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awK3p0S-tuQ


Odetta: Midnight Special
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jGSiaDj_fw

Johnny Cash & June Carter: Midnight Special
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sLsBGNZG68

Creedence Clearwater Revival: Midnight Special
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DksGi7B5BdM


Jerry Reed: Wabash Cannonball
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCE48O6U4Yw

Wabash Cannonball (the classical concert version)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnmex-AuCPA

Johnny Cash & the Carter Sisters: Wabash Cannonball
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGmOUbkLBZs

Wabash Cannonball in the Presseli Mountains
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs5FWs9EnPQ


Big Thunder Mountain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjSw-FrSan4

CB&Q Garden Railroad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0WXzt8xWs

You can't live with them and you can't live without them

Hi everyone!

I´ve been listening to Lonnie Johnson's: The Complete Folkways Recordings, it's a great one.
The lyrics are fantastic, All he sings about is love, broken hearts and evil women -which he has to get rid of...
Here is one, (I think the first line is absolutely mind blowing, -this lady is brutal!)


Juice Headed Baby

My baby ‘s so evil she can’t sleep straight in the bed.
My baby ‘s so evil she can’t sleep straight in a bed.
She gets full of wine at night and wish that everybody was dead.

I’ve got a juice headed baby, stays drunk all the time.
I’ve got a juice head baby, stays drunk all the time.
Funny thing ‘s I’m in love with this evil woman, she’s drivin’ me out my mind.

She starts to drinkin’ early in the mornin’, drink until she can’t hold no more.
Starts to drinkin’ early in the mornin’, drink until she can’t hold no more.
Then she gets evil with the world, comes back home and kick down the door.

She ‘s got a blackjack under the pillow, sawed off shotgun layin’ ‘side the bed.
She ‘s got a blackjack under the pillow, sawed off shotgun layin’ ‘side the bed.
If you try to put your arms around her, she ‘s ready to go up side your head.

She ‘s about the evilest woman, I ever had in my life.
She ‘s ‘bout the evilest woman, I ever had in my life.
Sometimes I don’t think she ‘s really human, she must have been the devil’s wife.

But some day I’ll get rid of her, get rid of my baby somehow.
Some day I’ll get rid of her, get rid of my baby somehow.
‘Cause I found out she ‘s too evil, and I can’t cuddle no how.

The Tower of Song

"The gifts were many and many were the warnings that went with them. We are giving you a great heart but if you drink wine you will begin to hate the world. The moon is your sister but if you take sleeping pills you will find yourself in the company of unhappy women. Every time you grab at love, you will lose a snowflake of your memory."


















Leonard Cohen, my second all-time favorite songwriter, was born in Montreal in 1934. I quote him above from the documentary Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man (2005). I watched the film twice last summer at the Shattuck Cinema while “a suntanned woman yearned me through the summer,” as he might say.

I dream of performing all the songs on Field Commander Cohen (1979), a live album from his 1979 tour. I doubt we will have time to view the I'm Your Man documentary, but I recommend it mainly, if not only, for the parts in which Cohen himself is speaking (not the performances of his songs by other artists). Leonard Cohen is eloquent and impressive.













Sometimes called “music to slit your wrists by,” perhaps, similar to Bob Dylan, he is hard to like. For example, I just read that his Greatest Hits (1975) collection was voted the most depressing album ever by a British magazine.

He clearly owes much to old songs, pays his rent in “The Tower of Song,” but not in quite the same way Dylan does. Comparatively I find his sources more often biblical than blues and folk, and more sensual, with a focus on female beauty.

“A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.”

Oh, I miss you, Nettie Moore...

"I tend to base all my songs on the old songs, like the old folk songs, the old blues tunes; they are always good. They always make sense (Bob Dylan, 1977)."


















The following Bob Dylan quotes refer to the album Modern Times (2006):

"I'd make this record no matter what was going on in the world. I wrote these songs in not a meditative state at all, but more like in a trancelike, hypnotic state. This is how I feel? Why do I feel like that? And who's the me that feels this way? I couldn't tell you that, either. But I know that those songs are just in my genes and I couldn't stop them comin' out."

"There's no nostalgia on this record. Pining for the past doesn't interest me."

"[When the Deal Goes Down] demands all your attention. There's no song you're listening to that's influencing it. The song you wrote before is irrelevant. All you can do is hang on and hope you do it justice."

"[Nettie Moore] troubled me the most, because I wasn't sure I was getting it right. Finally, I could see what the song is about. This is coherent, not just a bunch of random verses. I knew I wanted to record this. I was pretty hyped up on the melodic line."

View comments for source

When the Roses Bloom Again

Laura Cantrell seems pretty wonderful. I have only heard one of her songs, "When the Roses Bloom Again," on the album of the same title. This song sounded too old not to be the real thing, and alas, in her words:

"I first heard this song sung by Sally Timms (of the Mekons) on her album Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments. She played it live on a visit to the Radio Thrift Shop and I sat rapt, forgetting that I was supposed to be running the show while she sang. Sally explained that Billy Bragg and Wilco discovered the lyric in the Woody Guthrie archives [emphases mine] and Jeff Tweedy had written a beautiful melody for it. They subsequently realized that the lyric was probably a traditional song copyrighted by A.P. Carter of the Carter Family, and couldn't include it in the Mermaid Avenue project for which it was recorded (the Wilco version finally surfaced on the Chelsea Walls soundtrack). I learned the song to sing on a tour of the U.K. and recorded a solo version for my first Peel Session. I love the idea that an old song passes through so many hands and becomes new again (from "When the Roses Bloom Again Song by Song" at lauracantrell.com).

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

A play by August Wilson (one of my alltime favorite playwrights)

I just read this play and I highly recommend it. It takes place in a recording studio in Chicago, 1927. The characters are blues musicians, legendary blues singer Ma Rainey, the white record company owner and Rainey's white manager. It is a "riveting" portrayal of racial and artistic exploitation. And a very quick read!

R. Crumb!

I saw a really interesting book while i was out shopping with my dad today. It's a collection of the three series of music based trading cards R. Crumb made in the 80s. It has the "Heroes of Blues," "Early Jazz Greats" and "Pioneers of Country Music" trading card sets all together, with little bios for each artist/group, and it comes with a CD! I didn't buy it yet, but I'm thinking about it, and I thought some of you might dig it. Here's the address for a page with a bit of a better description on it:

http://budplant.com/product.asp?pn=RCRH

Sorry I don't know how to make it a fancy link with a picture.

P.S. Don't forget there's an R. Crumb show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in SF. I haven't gone yet, but I'm planning on going soon!

swansea

A great clip of Joanna Newsom performing her song 'Swansea': http://youtube.com/watch?v=y55RIbj4a8A
For those who don't know her, she is a contemporary harp-playing folk artist from California with an unusual and captivating voice, and overtones of medieval-ity. She is beloved among the indie culture crowd yet her music is extremely poetry-fused and unexpected. Titles of other songs include "Sprout and the Bean" and "Inflammatory Writ"...

Spring break...

Almost over, folks, enjoy it while it lasts... (not in reference to previous--yes, approved--video)...

since nobody's posting anything...

here's my old band, madam i'm adam, playing our blusiest song live at Stebbins Hall (a co-op) last semester. it's called "all the hot bitches want to get in my britches." you can't see me, but i'm off to the right playing guitar. watch at your own risk (i'm serious, especially if you decide to watch the other videos-"dont' know which part of me" is pretty safe because i wrote it, but i can't vouch for the others).




p.s. tony, feel free to tell me to take it down if you deem it innapropriate. i'm not trying to self-promote, this band isn't even together anymore. i mostly wanted everyone to see my friend ben's rockin' harmonica playing, in light of the great harmonica playing in the videos we watched on thursday.

Big Mama Thornton

Big Mama Thornton doing Hound Dog before Elvis covered it:
(I hope I pasted it in properly...)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2aHVING6XQ

From the field...

This just in, from a photographer friend, Lewis Watts (formerly at Berkeley, now teaching at U.C. Santa Cruz)--one of his shots from Mardi Gras. Lewis LIVES Songs & Places. Here's a line from his e-mail: "I went to Mardi Gras for the first time last month. Very interesting. It answered and raised many questions about the culture of New Orleans."

Answered and raised... the picture says it all.

More sources...

These come on good recommendation ((Thanks to Loren Madsen!):

www.prewarblues.org

www.bluebeatmusic.com

Photo, by the way, is Tommy Johnson--from the 1920s.

Prince Heathen

...
"O lady, will you weep for me?
Lady, tell me true."
"Ah never yet, you heathen dog,
I never shall for you."
















From "Prince Heathen," as performed by Martin Carthy, Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, March 17, 2007
Photo from http://www.tradmusic.com/artistinfo.asp?artistID=256

SONG SYLLABUS / WEEKS 9 & 10

Photo: Marion Post Walcott (FSA), just outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, late 1930s. Library of Congress.

Week 9: Thursday, March 15
Blues I: DELTA ROAD, CITY LIGHTS

Week 10: Thursday, March 22
Blues II: Chicago

"SWEET HOME CHICAGO"
Robert Johnson
Compare Kokomo Arnold, “Old Original Kokomo Blues,” in AAS

"CORINNA, CORINNA" (Alan Lomax 577/588)
S&P Muddy Waters
MH Ollie Gilbert #0961

“CARELESS LOVE” (Alan Lomax 574/585, J&A Lomax 39/64)
Lonnie Johnson
We chose the Lonnie Johnson version, but compare Skip James’ version

MH Max Hunter #0686 ***
MH Bill Greer #1424
MH Kris Ann Parker #1521

This is a sea of music—let’s concentrate on the Mississippi Delta Blues first, then work our way up the Mississippi (or more accurately, the Illinois Central, departing from New Orleans, with a stop in Memphis. The fare—in 1940, from Memphis—$11.10). Here we go!

DELTA BLUES (MISSISSIPPI)
Charley Patton (the source)
Son House
Robert Johnson
Skip James
Muddy Waters (his early recordings!)
Mississippi Fred McDowell (Northern Mississippi blues style)

CHICAGO:
Muddy Waters
Johnny Shines
Howlin’ Wolf
Little Walter
Elmore James
plus
Big Joe Turner (Kansas City)
Bobby Blue Bland (Memphis)




And of course, all the rest (just scratching the surface):

KING BISQUIT TIME (Helena, Arkansas Radio)
Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller)
Robert Lockwood Jr.

TEXAS:
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Mance Lipscomb
Lightin’ Hopkins
T-Bone Walker

ALSO:
Leroy Carr (How Long, How Long Blues—one of the first songs everyone learned))
Blind Blake
Blind Willie McTell
Lonnie Johnson (we have him on “Careless Love”)
Kokomo Arnold
Bukka White
Big Joe Williams
Roosevelt Sykes

BLUES WOMEN:
Bessie Smith
Ma Rainey
Ida Cox
Memphis Minnie
Louise Johnson
Victoria Spivey
Big Mamma Thornton
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (gospel singer--in a category of her own!)

SONGSTER TRADITION:
Henry Thomas (takes us back into the 19th century)
Mississippi John Hurt
Rev. Gary Davis
Furry Lewis (Memphis, sonster tradition)
and of course,
Elizabeth Cotton

JUG BANDS:
Mississippi Sheiks
Memphis Jug Band

Examples from most of these artists are available on the African American Song Archive. This list just scratches the surface, of course. The archive does NOT feature better-known (and more commercially popular) artists such as Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson or Howlin’ Wolf. You’ll have to use iTunes or other resources to find them. (A friend just recommended the following site--I haven'tdone more than take a peek, but it looks good: www.prewarblues.org)

This is a sea of music—let’s concentrate on the Mississippi Delta Blues first, then work our way up the Mississippi (or more accurately, the Illinois Central, departing from New Orleans, with a stop in Memphis. The fare—in 1940, from Memphis—$11.10.


Dorothea Lange photo, FSA, Mississippi, 1930s. Library of Congress.

SOME KEY YouTube SELECTIONS:
Son House: Dead Letter Blues
Mississippi Fred McDowell
Furry Lewis: When I Lay My Burden Down
Skip James: I'm So Glad, and Crow Jane
Roosevelt Sykes: Sweet Home Chicago
AND
Sister Rosetta Tharpe: I Hear Music in the Air
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeaBNAXfHfQ