Hi all,
After digging deep into old time music for the past 10 or so years (a drop in the bucket compared to the time spent by others here I'm sure) I'm always surprised when I make a new discovery. This time was more surprising as it was on an LP I owned but had never got around to listening to the B side. The record is 'Native American Ballads', an RCA Victor collection of mostly Anglo-American ballads/folksongs and not, as the name might suggest, ballads from the Native American tradition.
While listening to the B side yesterday I was struck by the song 'Wreck Of The Six Wheeler' by Newton Gaines, a take on the train wreck theme which also includes a variation of the 'gonna lay my head on the railroad track...snatch it back' line at the end. His delivery is fairly unique and I immediately checked the sleeve and was surprised I'd never heard his name.
It looks like Gaines only recorded 4 sides for Victor in 1929 (two were released under the name Jim New on the Timely Tunes label) but also made some cylinder recordings for John Lomax around 1908-10. While searching for info on him I was surprised to find he was a Professor of Physics at Texas Christian University but was also an avid singer of cowboy songs, hence his recordings.
Here's an article from TCU on Professor Gaines:
https://physics.tcu.edu/history-of-the-department/newton-gaines-cowboy-physicist/And here's a blog that has some more info on Gaines as well as two of his songs streaming, including the aforementinoed 'Wreck of the Six Wheeler', these examples taken from the record released under the name Jim New.
http://oldtimeblues.net/2016/01/10/timely-tunes-c-1564-jim-new-1929/And thanks to youtube here's the song that drove me to make this post:
And here's the flip side of that record:
