Topic: Tempo Changes

[Lyndvs]

Sleepy John.

[banjochris]

I see your "Vernita Blues" and raise you Fiddlin' John Carson's "Swanee River." This is incidentally one of my favorite old-time recordings.

[Lyndvs]

Well,I fold!.Amazing stuff  hadn`t heard that in years.



I will offer up a little Charley though,hopefully to save face a little.

[banjochris]

That's a great one, and reminds me of Blind Willie Johnson's (and later Lead Belly's) "Let Your Light Shine on Me."

[Forgetful Jones]

I had never heard Estes's Vernita Blues or Carson's Swanee River before. Both are great!

I Shall Not Be Moved - Haven't heard that one in a while. Also Great.

I just discovered this tune recently:


Recorded in 1897!!!! Wow. I had no clue. I love the way they slow it down and dive into that minor key. I listened to this probably 25 times in a row today. I'm struggling deciphering what they are saying though. One day soon I'll attempt to write down what I can and add to the lyrics section. I may need to look up some other versions of the song for help with the words.
Apparently they recorded another tune in 1897 "Who Broke the Lock," but it doesn't turn up on YouTube, eMusic, iTunes, Amazon or anywhere else I've looked (digitally).

[sam]

both Cousins and DeMoss tracks appear on  Lost Sounds compilation on archeophone.
hear a snippet here, well worth the price of admission: https://archeophone.com/artists/c/sam-cousins-ed-demoss/

[Mr. Crump]

Forgetful Jones, that is a beautiful, intense performance! I am glad to learn about Cousins and DeMoss -- thank you for that.

The song may be related to the more familiar gospel song "Poor Mourner's Found a Home," and that might help to decipher the lyrics. However, if there is a relationship, I can't hear it.

If I am hearing the words correctly, and if I am not letting my Frank Stokes obsession get the better of me, this older spiritual seems to be one of the sources for Stokes's "You Shall." That is, it seems to be the source for the title and the hymn in the last verse. "And the good Lord set me free." I just checked and it still sounds to me as though Stokes is saying "pray mourner" rather than "poor mourner."

Did everyone else already know this?

[Forgetful Jones]

Sam- Thanks for the heads up on the Lost Sounds comp. Definitely seems worth picking up.

Mr. Crump - Sounds like "Poor Mourner" did the same thing for you as it did for me. I'm still pretty mesmerized by the performance as well. I listened to "You Shall" a bunch last night, while checking out the lyrics in the Stokes thread here. Man that song got bumped up to one of my favorites. "Had to fight about it...but he owed me... my money"  So good!

[Stuart]

Sam- Thanks for the heads up on the Lost Sounds comp. Definitely seems worth picking up.

There's also the book by the same name which I highly recommend:

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82bnq3sk9780252028502.html

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Sounds-Recording-Industry-1890-1919/dp/025207307X

[oddenda]

Definitely a worthy book, as is the CD of examples with the same name issued on Archaeophone.

pbl

[Mr. Crump]

There is a really excellent discussion of the relationship between "Poor Mourner" and "You Shall" in Paul Oliver, Screening the Blues. I had not seen it before.

Oliver thinks that the actual title of Stokes's song is "You Shall Be Free." That sounds dubious to me. One of the most distinctive things about Stokes's song is the way he clips the phrase "You shall" in the chorus and does not complete the sentence until the final verse.

What I found most surprising in Oliver's discussion is that the association of "Poor Mourner" with "Run, N--, Run" is very old. The songs have been fused since before the Civil War, apparently. The association makes sense, I guess, if you consider that "Run, N--, Run" was a slave song before it was a minstrel song. In other words, a song about a runaway slave eluding capture would have been sung together with a hymn of emancipation.