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Author Topic: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940  (Read 4467 times)

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Offline Mr.OMuck

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My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)

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Offline lindy

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2009, 02:39:44 PM »
There's so many reasons why this is a great piece of audio -- thanks O'Muck for sharing it -- but one of them for me is that it's the first time I've ever heard someone do "Stewball" besides Orville Johnson-John Miller-Grant Dermody. With a mandolin, too. I never did find out what the origin of that song was.

Lindy

----------------

Modified to say:

Duh, so I guess I'm the last one on this forum to figure out that Stewball was first recorded by Leadbelly. Is there any other source besides Mr. Ledbetter that anyone knows of ?

L
« Last Edit: February 09, 2009, 04:16:43 PM by lindy »

Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2009, 08:11:09 PM »
I'm waiting for SOMONE to comment on the sound quality! This is THE best recording I'Ve ever heard of Leadbelly's Twelve string, or him altogether for that matter. Damn thing sounds like its in the room and is a piano!
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)

http://www.youtube.com/user/MuckOVision

Offline CF

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2009, 06:56:34 PM »
These do sound great Muck. Thanks for the link. There's much of interest here for the blues & old-time folk fan. I can't believe I just heard of Down Home Radio!

http://www.downhomeradioshow.com/
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Offline Cambio

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #4 on: February 11, 2009, 03:03:31 AM »
Holy smokes!  That's unreal.  I'm still reeling from the fact that Leadbelly had a radio show!?!?  I wonder if they have the LPs of the other shows?
Thanks for the post OMucky.

Offline CF

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #5 on: February 11, 2009, 06:00:45 AM »
Quote
Holy smokes!  That's unreal.  I'm still reeling from the fact that Leadbelly had a radio show!?!?  I wonder if they have the LPs of the other shows?

I was wondering this as well. At the end of the program it says Leadbelly will be back next week with the Oleander Quartet. Where is this show? The Guthrie program was aired as a tribute to Henrietta Yurchenko who originally produced the show. Perhaps she didn't produce the other shows & they don't know where they presently are. I would love to hear more of this.
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Offline uncle bud

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #6 on: February 11, 2009, 07:30:06 AM »
Lead Belly's radio show was on WNYC in New York. According to the Life and Legend of Lead Belly, Woody had been appearing on another show also produced by Henrietta Yurchenco (there's a lady it would have been great to meet) and meanwhile bugging management to give Lead Belly a show, which they finally did in the fall of 1940. It was called Folksongs of America, also produced by Yurchenco, and was broadcast on Wednesday evenings for 15 minutes. There was a skeleton script, but most of the show was just Lead Belly doing his thing. He'd open with a bit of "Irene" then do some songs and apparently have guests. At the end of the show they'd tell listeners they could write to Lead Belly if they would like lyrics to the songs and he would send them along. He apparently had really great stationery, with "Sweet Singer of the Swamplands" across the top and photos of him with his guitar, and doing a little tap-dancing. I don't know that I've ever seen an image of this (description is from the bio), perhaps it is in the Steidl book. Anyway, Yurchenco said Lead was extremely proud of the show.

How long the show ran would take some more digging, though there is reference to a show for Christmas 1941, so at least a year. There are indeed recordings available from Lead Belly's radio show, some on Document, I believe. Relatively few I think, and certainly not a year's worth. The World Arbiter label CD called Lifting the Veil that came out last year has a few songs from the show, including the weird Sermon on Pancakes that I added to the quote thread recently. I think those recordings were fairly recent discoveries, though it's not clear from the CD notes. So perhaps there are more recorded shows to discover. Lead Belly also did a show while in California on KRE and there are a couple other broadcasts from radio that eventually made it to disc.

When I met with Alvin Singh, I asked him about unreleased recordings, and he wasn't aware of any that weren't already available, except for one possible lead on one song at the Library of Congress.

« Last Edit: February 11, 2009, 08:19:11 AM by uncle bud »

Offline Bunker Hill

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #7 on: February 11, 2009, 12:11:21 PM »
The first side of a 1969 Biograph LP contains a proposed WNYC broadcast of WG & HL recorded 19 June 1940 which I must admit to not having played since I first made the purchase. I'll rectify that this coming weekend....

Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #8 on: February 11, 2009, 08:56:15 PM »
Henrietta Yurchenco (1916-2007)


Dear Friends,

I am very sorry to report that Henrietta Yurchenco, my friend and co-creator of Down Home Radio, died on the morning of Monday Dec. 10th at the age of 91. Although she had not been feeling well for some time, her death was never-the-less sudden and shocking. She was an extraordinary person, incredibly full of life, energy and love for people and for music. Henrietta leaves behind untold numbers of friends, devoted students and people who she influenced in any number of ways. The value of her work documenting and promoting the indigenous cultures of Mexico, the United States and many other parts of the world is extraordinary.

The Down Home Radio project was not Henrietta?s first time around with radio, it was more like her fourth or fifth, and yet she approached it with all the zeal of someone a quarter her age. Henrietta started her radio career in early 1940 as a producer at WNYC here in New York. She produced a series of programs featuring American folk music and music from around the world, and was also the producer of Leadbelly?s radio program. She worked closely with Leadbelly preparing the scripts for the show and doing whatever else producers do! She arranged for Pete Seeger?s first radio appearance as well as Woody Guthrie?s first radio appearance in New York. It was not easy to find foreign ethnic bands at that time or even to get recordings, so in order to get talent for her world music radio shows she would hit the streets, casing ethnic community houses and restaurants, union halls and other places to find musicians to put on the air. Henrietta was back on the air for a short time in the late 50?s on WBAI, and then for almost all of the 1960?s on WNYC where she did a show called ?Adventures in Folk Music.? On this program she did the first, or one of the first, radio interviews with Bob Dylan. Name almost any folk musician (and many ?non-folk? musicians and other artists) of the last 60 years and Henrietta had them on a radio show at one time or another. That or they came to one of her famous parties, or appeared at a concert she produced or all of the above.

Over the years Henrietta worked with many other folklorists and ethnomusicologists including Alan Lomax and Charles Seeger (Pete?s father), a very important musicologist who needs to be rediscovered by people today. Henrietta often liked to repeat a quote by Charles Seeger, something she heard him say at a Society for Ethnomusicology conference in the 1970?s- ?Studying the music is fine, but never forget the people.? By this she meant to remind me, other field workers and anyone else who would listen that song is a fundamentally human expression and should not be divorced from the actual lives of the people making it. She recognized that most music studied by enthnomusicologists and folklorists is produced by oppressed classes of people, minorities and indigenous tribes who live in poverty either in rural areas or in city slums, and that the condition of their lives should not be glossed over in the study of their music.

In 1941 Henrietta, her husband Boris Yurchenco and some friends took a huge road trip from New York City to Mexico City. There was a great cultural scene going on there at that time, with artists doing all kinds of things, as well as other outlandish pursuits such as the brand new possibility of field recording. Henrietta had experience in radio and knew the right people, and so she was asked by Mexico?s Institute of Anthropology to start going into the most rural areas to record. Henrietta was in the right place at the right time and seized the opportunity. She told me that when the man offered her the chance to go into the field and record she ?nearly bit his hand.? She was very excited. Accompanied by photographer Augustin Maya and a native guide, Henrietta ended up lugging 300 pounds of recording equipment through the Sierra Mountains of Mexico on a mule. They slept on the ground, braved scorpions and other dangers and found people and music unknown to outsiders or thought to have been lost for hundreds of years.



All of these things I?ve been describing were very outside of the bounds proscribed for women at that time. But Henrietta never gave that sort of thing any regard and advocated strongly for women?s rights in all of her work throughout the years. Henrietta?s field work among the Indian and Mestizo population of Mexico continued in earnest up through recent years. She also conducted field work in Guatemala, Columbia, Ecuador, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Johns Island South Carolina, Spain and Morocco.

In 1966 Henrietta began teaching Ethnomusicology at City College in New York. She was vigorously opposed to academic pretense and bureaucratic nonsense and gave straight talking and by all accounts very inspiring courses. I wish I could have taken those! She had workshops on how to play many different instruments and styles of music and produced many concerts at City College. Henrietta was always very politically minded and active starting way back in the 30?s, and at City College was very involved in the Anti-Vietnam-War Movement. She remained politically active, going to demonstrations, speaking out against war and oppression, singing and promoting protest and peace songs until the end of her life. She retired from City College in 1987 at the age of 70 as Professor Emerita, but the Ethnomusicology classes would always visit her at her home every semester to meet the ever friendly and inspiring matriarch.



I met Henrietta when she was 89. Although I knew her for a much shorter time than virtually all of her other friends, we became close, worked together a great deal, and she had a profound impact on me. I had read her autobiography ?Around the World in 80 Years? while living in California, loved the book and was introduced to her by a mutual friend shortly after I moved back to New York in 2005. We hit it off immediately, and shortly there after I asked her to host Down Home Radio with me. To my delight she was way into the idea of doing an internet radio show and building something from the ground up. Henrietta had a profound influence on me in terms of my thinking about life! - but especially about culture and music in particular. Many of our conversations about the ideas behind Down Home Radio were challenging to me, and she always expressed her thoughts and positions very clearly and without reservation. We almost always came to agree, and her positions were always calculated to challenge me in ways that needed challenging. Henrietta imparted more abstract things to me as well, such as how to hear and see music in a more universal way, how to open my ears.

She often liked to repeat a saying she had heard from an ethnomusicological informant in Mexico, ?la ley es una cosa y la vida es un otra,? - ?the law is one thing and life is another.? Henrietta used music, particularly the texts of songs, to find out about the real customs and thoughts of people, not empty assertions about the law as defined by government officials and the clergy. She was very adamant about that. Henrietta believed that the mechanisms governing people?s real lives, as reflected in their songs, had to do with a system of ?sexual politics? and the interaction between the roles of men and women in a society.

I have not even begun here to list her works. For more information on her books as well as her many fascinating articles, criticism (she wrote for the American Record Guide, Sing Out! and many other publications) fieldwork, radio appearances and other endeavors visit her website at www.HenriettaYurchenco.com . There you will also find a more complete chronology of her extraordinary and eventful life.

Best regards-

Eli Smith
New York City
Dec. 16th, 2007

Henrietta and I recorded a lot of radio shows, quite a few of which have yet to be aired. Look out for those in the coming months. Here are links to several of the shows we did which document key aspects of her research:

Pre-Columbian Indian Music of Mexico and Guatemala

Mexico: Indian and Mestizo Music of Michoacan

Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie: Live on WNYC 1940

Songs of the Sephardic Jewish Women of Morrocco

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)

http://www.youtube.com/user/MuckOVision

Offline Chris A

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #9 on: February 12, 2009, 07:31:05 AM »
Thank you for posting that, Phil. A remarkable lady. It is amazing how how some people manage to contribute and achieve so much, yet remain relatively unknown.

Just listening to her on the Leadbelly program told one that she was very special, indeed, but Eli Smith's details makes one deeply regret not have met Henriette Yurchenco in person.

Offline Stuart

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #10 on: February 12, 2009, 08:22:09 AM »
Phil: I'll second Chris's thank you. She really was an insightful person who understood the importance of taking the initiative and doing the hard work to bring one's ideas and insights to fruition. Thanks again. Much appreciated.

Offline CF

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #11 on: February 12, 2009, 09:03:07 AM »
The Down Home Radio shows are all available on the site as mp3 downloads. Really great stuff. I'm in the middle of Henrietta & Eli's Bessie Smith show. I forgot how sublimely dirty 'I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl' is. And I loved Henrietta's insight on the quality of Bessie's vocals. She also tells an anecdote about one of my fav blues artists, Victoria Spivey, who laughs at the idea of her music being considered 'Folk': 'Pete Seeger is a folk singer. I'm a BLUES singer.'   
Stand By If You Wanna Hear It Again . . .

Offline Chris A

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #12 on: February 12, 2009, 11:53:33 AM »
I just listened to the show dedicated to Bessie Smith. I'm afraid the presentation was a bit na?ve. Mr. Smith and Ms. Yurchenco seemed to be treading on unfamiliar ground. We do not assume, based upon his hit song, that Tony Bennett had a tragic love affair in Frisco, and neither should we take every lyric Bessie sang as a personal expression. Also, she agrees when he mistakenly attributes a quote re Bessie to Alice Walker?that was, of course, Ruby Walker, Bessie's niece by marriage.

Enough nit-picking, even with the factual errors, she was charming and one does, after all, have to make allowances for age?He, however, should have done his homework.

Sorry to be so critical, but Bessie has had a special place in my thoughts since I first heard one of her recordings on the Danish radio, 61 years ago!

Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #13 on: February 12, 2009, 01:24:14 PM »
Chris I read your wonderful book Bessie sometime in the seventies at a time when I was listening intensely to her. She remains for me the greatest singer in the idiom, a huge countrified voice channeled into a Blues form a little too polished for her wild edge, creating a consistent tension which super-charges her music. Back when I had a bigger and more supple voice I certainly employed her influence in my own singing. Her saying "I never heard such shit!" often pops into my head in response to daily absurdities. I also relished Mahalia Jackson's admission that Bessie was her primary influence. Is there any evidence of Bessie having played with more rural sounding accompanists? Did she ever play with Big Bill Broonzy for example? Any close encounters with Memphis Minnie, or did they inhabit two separate worlds?
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)

http://www.youtube.com/user/MuckOVision

Offline Chris A

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Re: Leadbbelly & Woody Guthrie live radio show, WNYC 1940
« Reply #14 on: February 12, 2009, 02:18:26 PM »
Thanks for the kind words (but sorry you read the original book and not the revised, expanded 2003 edition :))

Bessie and Ma Rainey (who was more country) did tour together with the Moses Stokes company, but they apparently didn't team up as an act. I'm sure that?along the way?she found herself performing with a country artist or two. Lonnie Johnson was, of course, with her for a short time. Basically, however, Bessie was a vaudeville performer and while the T.O.B.A. booked a wide variety of acts, including yodelers, the country blues artists were regularly bypassed. I have always found that to be somewhat odd, considering the fact the the people who filled Bessie's theater and tent seats were essentially the same people who bought the country blues records and partied in the juke joints.

 


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