Hi all, If you've been reading the lyrics threads, you know I've been listening to the JSP set "Ain't Times Hard" recently. When I first got the set, I was really disappointed by it, and thought it was kind of a snooze--too many versions of "Red Cross Store". This go-round I'm liking it quite a lot, and particularly like the variety of people and material on it, including a lot of more modern players you don't often see turning up on these sets. It's kind of nice, too, to have lyrics that address social issues and aren't the same old "my baby left me" or "I left my baby" stuff. All best, Johnm
Been listening to Appalachian Blues on Smithsonian Folkways. Nice but hardly essential cross section of their back catalog. The cuts are: 1. My Baby's Gone - Sticks McGhee 2. Louise Blues - Big Chief Ellis - (featuring Cephas & Wiggins) 3. Sitting on Top of the World - Doc Watson 4. Railroad Bill - John Jackson 5. Don't Let Your Deal Go Down - Bill Williams 6. You Don't Know My Mind - Pink Anderson 7. Blues around My Bed - J.C. Burris 8. Hesitation Blues - Reverend Gary Davis 9. Pawn Shop Blues - Brownie McGhee 10. Road is Rough & Rocky, The - Archie Edwards 11. Hoodoo Blues - Martin, Bogan & the Armstrongs 12. Red River Blues - Lesley Riddle 13. Walking Cane - Peg Leg Sam Jackson 14. One Dime Blues - Etta Baker 15. Mississippi Heavy Water Blues - Roscoe Holcomb 16. Outskirts of Town - Josh White 17. See What You Done Done - Baby Tate 18. I Got a Woman - Marvin Foddrell/Turner Foddrell 19. Girl Dressed in Green - John Tinsley 20. Blues in the Morning - E.C. Ball 21. Wine Blues (Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-Oh-Dee) - Sticks McGhee
Been listening to Big Joe Williams' "I Got Wild" To my ear a great sound and they included some conversation in the studio with him and the recording people that I found fascinating and gives you some interesting information about his guitar - apparently parts of "I Got Wild" were recorded with not all nine strings - though I couldn't tell it.
One of my old favorites, the Black Twig Pickers' Soon One Morning.
I've always had a soft spot for the BTPs; unlike a lot of newer old-style string bands, they manage to avoid sounding like either fakers or outsiders, nailing the old sound and spicing it up with a bit of Fahey-style American Primitivism. The fiddle tunes are nice, as is the long ending drone-thing, but my choice cuts are the good "Make Me Up a Pallet", the great "Oh Death," and the utterly magnificent Floyd Allen, which for my money is one of the greatest American fakesongs ever written:
Sorry about that; I was going for some sort of poeticism there, but I think I just wound up being unclear! By "fakesong," I mean a non-traditional song written to closely emulate some sort of traditional music (i.e, widely spread music without a single known author). Some famous examples might be "I Wonder as I Wander" (a hymn more-or-less entirely written by John Jacob Niles, but explicitly in emulation of folk carols), or "Blackleg Miner," which is supposedly an English folk song but is now widely thought to have been written by A.L Lloyd. For that matter, most of the songs written by Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie would probably count.
"Floyd Allen" was, as far as I know, written by the Black Twig Pickers, but is pretty obviously meant to be a John Hardy/Stagger Lee-like narrative folk ballad. In my opinion, at least, such attempts usually sound forced and "inauthentic" in the worst way; but "Floyd Allen" doesn't at all, which makes it very impressive and very good in my eyes.
Sorry, this has been a bad first set of posts on the forum; too much folk! I promise to hew closer to the blues in the future.
Hi Blind Uncle, Don't worry about it--everything you're discussing fits fine here, at least as far as I'm concerned. I know Hobart Smith sang a sort of bad man ballad called "Claude Allen". Might your guys just have changed the given name of the protagonist? All best, Johnm
Thanks, John. Though I must warn you, as something of an unreconstructed folkie, I might find it hard to keep from polluting your reasonable discussions with lengthy analyses of the mechanics of oral tradition.
If I'm not mistaken, Claude Allen and Floyd Allen both deal with the same (rather interesting) historical event (http://theroanoker.com/interests/history/hillsville-massacre), but beyond that they seem to be unrelated musically and lyrically. Having only the one CD and no background information on the band, I have no idea what went into "Floyd Allen"'s composition or if they even composed it all, but I haven't found any traditional prototypes for it.
Brownie's Blues was originally released by Bluesville Records in 1962. Supported by his longtime accompanist Sonny Terry, as well as second guitarist Benny Foster, Brownie turns in a nicely understated record that's distinguished by surprisingly harmonically complex and jazzy guitar work. Among the highlights are versions of "Killin' Floor," "Trouble in Mind" and "Every Day I Have the Blues," as well as the boogieing "Jump, Little Children" and "I Don't Know the Reason."
Review by Thom Owens (Allmusic Guide To The Blues)
Robert Jr. Lockwood & Johnny Shines - Sweet Home Chicago: The JOB Sessions 1951-1955
Robert Jr. Lockwood and Johnny Shines get paired together on this release from P-Vine (essentially an expanded version of an earlier disc from Paula Records) because of their association with blues great Robert Johnson (Shines as his running buddy and Lockwood as his stepson) and because both happened to record for JOB Records in Chicago in the early '50s. Shines turns in a striking ten-song set here, perhaps his best session ever, with taut electric guitar work on tracks like "Gonna Call the Angel" and "Fish Tail," while Lockwood mostly serves as a sideman on the other portion of the disc, although his vocals and guitar work on "Aw Awbaby" (a version of "Sweet Home Chicago") are quite striking. Shines fans should definitely pick this up, while Lockwood admirers may want to look elsewhere for a better representation of his skills. Steve Leggett - Allmusic Guide To The Blues
I've been listening to the first two volumes of this series, while very little of it was new to me, The sound quality is imho stunning.......while two cd sets for about $16.50, may be a bit pricey, the generous number of tracks, 29 per disc and over 88 minutes of playing time make for some very fine listening.....
« Reply #524 on: September 25, 2017, 06:07:08 AM »
Found on Spotify all but one volume (11) of the Too Late, Too Late series on Document. I put all of them into a playlist, 301 songs, and have been listening on shuffle play the last few days.