EC's Old Time Emporium

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This thread is for 'old time' music and American Folklore.

To kick it off, here is mid to late 1920's rendition of tale of murderous Stagger Lee http://sites.google.com/site/thestaggerleefiles/ by Frank Hutchinson. Little is known about Hutchinson other than that he worked in the coal mines before recording roughly forty sides for Okeh in the style of "white man's country blues". Hutchinson's Stackolee is featured on Henry Smith's famous collection Anthology Of American Folk Music.
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[Russ]

Mississippi Sheiks - Sitting on Top of the World (1930)


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[MacGuffin]

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Tasty vittles from Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers
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Big Railroad Blues was later covered by Grateful Dead, who got started under the name Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, and continued to play classic jug tunes throughout their career.

Fun Fact: Gus Cannon appeared in the King Vidor's Hallelujah! (1929), during the late night wedding scene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_Cannon).

[Melville]

Great thread idea. Folk tales and songs about murder are the only reason I get up in the morning.

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Come all you midnight match-cut ramblers
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Short Leadbelly bio found here
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Also introduces Woody Guthrie, who we'll be hearing a lot of in this thread.

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Many delta blues traveling musicians wrote ditties about promiscuous sex, but Bo Carter, with such delights as Banana in Your Fruitbasket, Please Warm My Wiener, and My Pencil Don't Write No Mo', was a true gem in this regard.

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[Russ]

Blind Lemon Jefferson - Black Snake Moan (1927)

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Carter Family - Hello Stranger

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I'll be heading to library this week to brush up on Old Time folklore. A few posts on that end should balance things out as I originally intended them to be.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~
The Ballad of Charlie Lawson
Original Artist: The Carolina Buddies
March 1930
Source: People Take Warning! Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs, 1913-1938
-----------------------------------------
It was on last Christmas evening
The snow was on the ground
At his home in North Carolina
The miner he was found

His name was Charlie Lawson
He had a loving wife
But they never knew what caused
To take his family's life

They say he killed his wife at first
While the little ones did cry
"Please papa won' you spare our lives
For it's so hard to die"

But the raging man could not be stopped
He would not heed their call
He kept on firing fatal shots
Until he'd killed them all

They did not carry him to jail
No lawyer would he pay
They'll have his trial in another land
On the final judgment day

They all were buried in a crowded grave
While the angels watched all above
Come home, come home my little ones
To the land of peace and love

And now farewell kind friends and home
I'll see you here no more
But when we meet in another land
Our troubles will be o'er
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~


Story behind this little ditty found here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Lawson

[Melville]

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This recording isn't really old-timey, but it's an Appalachian folk song based on the old English Ballad of the Wexford Girl.

Lyrics:

I met a little girl in Knoxville
A town we all know well
And every Sunday evening
Out in her home I'd dwell
We went to take an evening walk
About a mile from town
I picked a stick up off the ground
And knocked that fair girl down;

She fell down on her bended knees
For mercy she did cry
Oh, Willie dear, don't kill me here
I'm unprepared to die
She never spoke another word
I only beat her more
Until the ground around me
Within her blood did flow.

I took her by her golden curls
And I drug her 'round and 'round
Throwing her into the river
That flows through Knoxville town
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl
With the dark and roving eyes
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl
You can never be my bride.

I started back to Knoxville
Got there about midnight
My mother she was worried
And woke up in a fright
Saying, ""Dear son, what have you done
To bloody your clothes so?""
I told my anxious mother
I was bleeding at my nose.

I called for me a candle
To light myself to bed
I called for me a handkerchief
To bind my aching head
Rolled and tumbled the whole night through
As troubles was for me
Like flames of hell around my bed
And in my eyes could see.

They carried me down to Knoxville
And put me in a cell
My friends all tried to get me out
But none could go my bail
I'm here to waste my life away
Down in this dirty old jail
Because I murdered that Knoxville girl
The girl I loved so well.

[Melville]

Cajun folk fiddler Dennis Mcgee
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Bukka White - Fixin' To Die Blues

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The Dixon Brothers - Intoxicated Rat

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The Italian Hall Disaster (sometimes referred to as the 1913 Massacre) is a tragedy that occurred on December 24, 1913 in Calumet, Michigan. Seventy-three men, women, and children, mostly striking mine workers and their families, were crushed to death when someone falsely yelled "fire" at a crowded Christmas party. (source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster)

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Skip James - Hard Time Killing Floor Blues

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Son House - Forever On My Mind

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Here BBQ Bob uses a hammer-and-claw picking style to crank out some mean 12-bar stanzas with a little ragtime syncopation

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Recorded at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman in 1947 by Alan Lomax. Artist is presumably unknown.

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Didier Herbert - I Woke Up One Morning in May

1929 (Columbia 40517F)111390)). Originally released in 1952 - Folkways Recordings. Re-released 1997 by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Washington, D.C. Harry Smith writes in his original liner notes: Vocal solo with guitar.
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Robert Johnson - Love in Vain

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http://www.theblogofrecord.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/safe-revolver-advertisement-19042.jpg

http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Robert.Johnson-13.jpg


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http://copperrobot.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/CreepyKidOldTimeAd.jpg



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http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_vkYCO2_xAuM/SaNMpZFjD1I/AAAAAAAAA54/c3PxpQwWdFA/s400/Asthma+Cigarettes+Ad.jpg

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The Cruel Mother - Shirley Collins: False True Lovers

Child Ballad #20

Notes:
============================== =============
The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century.

Recorded
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
False True Lovers A collection of British love longs adapted and sung byShirley Collins
Folkways Records FG 3564 (LP, USA, 1960)
Fledg'ling Records FLED 3029 (CD, UK, June 10, 2001)
Smithsonian Folkways FG 3564 (CD/download, USA, 2007)
False True Lovers (Fledg'ling FLED 3029)
False True Lovers (Bo'Weavil WEAVIL05)
Bo'Weavil Records WEAVIL05 (LP, UK, 2006)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Description
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A woman falls in love with her father's clerk and becomes
pregnant with illegitamte *twins (usually sons). She delivers the children in the wood and promptly murders and buries them there. On her way home she passes little children playing and wishes they were her own. She tells the children how she would dress them finely, they respond that when they were hers she did not do so, but instead murdered them and will face damnation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* this was my reading of it.
============================== =============

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This isn't really old-time per se, but the footage is so moving that I am willing make an exception and push into the 1950's.

Big Bill Broonzy - When Did You Leave Heaven

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Bill's style was fermented out of Mississippi ragtime blues despite his early departure for Chicago.

Belgium 1956 video (4 songs) found here
http://bluesnote.multiply.com/video/item/18/Big_Bill_Broonzy_-_Low_Light_Blue_Smoke_1956

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Semi-rare footage of Jimmie Rogers playing BlueYodel No. 1. The payment he was offered for this session was a simple cup of coffee*. Unfortunately, the date here is unknown to me. He died in 1933 of consumption during a recording session in New York.

*not really, as that was part of the show. Also, you don't see many brakemen in spit-shined leather loafers.

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Some of the later Lomax archive material is outstanding.

Jack Owens and Blind Bud Spires - Can't See Blues
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Sam Chatmon - The Preacher and the Bear
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Robert Pete Williams

Prisoner's Talking Blues

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Scrap Iron Blues

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Here is a bio I ripped off paganmaestro (the upper to youtube):


Robert Pete Williams (19141980) was a Louisiana-based bluesman. He used unconventional tunings and song structures. He had no formal education, spending his childhood picking cotton and cutting sugar cane. At age 14, he moved to Baton Rouge to work in a lumberyard. At age 20, Williams fashioned a crude guitar by attaching five copper strings to a cigar box. When he had enough money, he bought a cheap, mass-produced one, but kept many of idiosyncratic approaches he'd already developed. He got his start as a performer at church gatherings, fish fries, suppers, and dances. From the 1930s into the 1950s, Robert Pete played music and continued to work in the lumberyards. He was discovered in Angola prison by ethnomusicologists Dr Harry Oster and Richard Allen, where he was serving a life sentence for shooting a man dead in a local club in 1956, an act which he claimed was in self-defense. Oster and Allen recorded Williams on the grounds of Angola, performing songs about life in prison. Under ongoing pressure from Oster, the parole board eventually issued a pardon. In December 1958, Williams was released into 'servitude parole', which required 80 hours of labor per week on a Denham Springs farm without due compensation, and only room and board provided. This parole prevented him from working in music, though Robert Pete kept playing. Williams' music had achieved some favorable word-of-mouth reviews based on the Angola recordings, and he played his first concert outside Louisiana at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. By 1965 he was able to tour the country, traveling to California, Illinois and Massachusetts. In 1966 Robert Pete toured Europe. In 1968 he settled in Maringouin, west of Baton Rouge, and returned to family life and work outside of music. In 1970, Williams began to perform once again, touring blues and folk festivals throughout the United States and Europe. His music appeared in several films notably, the Roots of American Music; Country and Urban Music (1971); Out of the Blues Into the Blacks (1972) and Blues Under the Skin (1972) the last two being French-made films. His most popular recordings included "Prisoner's Talking Blues" and "Pardon Denied Again". Robert Pete Williams was inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame. He died in Rosedale, Louisiana on December 31, 1980, at the age of 66. "Prisoner's Talking Blues" remain one of the saddest blues pieces ever recorded.

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Nelstone's Hawaiians - Fatal Flower Garden

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Othar Turner's Rising Star Fife & Drum band (Turner, fife; G.D. Young, bass drum; E.P. Burton, snare; Eddie Ware, snare) playing a picnic night at Othar's farm in Gravel Springs, Mississippi, August 1978. Source: Alan Lomax archive.

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Stanley Hicks and his brother Ray perform Roving Gambler (which the brothers called "Roman Gambler"). Shot by Alan Lomax and crew at Stanley's home in Banner Elk, Beech Mountain, North Carolina, September 8-9, 1982.

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From Genghis Blues:

Kongar-ol Ondar and Paul Pena - Kongurey (Where Has My Country Gone?)

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Woody Guthrie - Goin Down The Road Feelin Bad (the Asch Recordings)

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This is a personal favorite. I've never heard a harmonica sound so beautiful.

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Ray Hicks (August 29, 1922 - April 20, 2003) was a story teller, a Appalachian folk historian, and musician. He was famous for his variegated tellings of the Jack Tales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_tales).

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Buddy Moss - Stinging Bull Nettle

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Jerry Garcia and David Grisman - Off To Sea Once More

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An old sea shanty about a poor sailor named Jack who gets drunk ashore and whose money ends up with a thieving whore. He is then forced to sign onto a whaling ship, but he can't endure life as a sad, woe-ridden, shame afflicted drunkard forced to bear the high seas in his ragged main-lander clothing and so he wishes to die in arms of the whore that robbed him

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Roscoe Holcomb & Wade Ward - Moonshiner

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This is the voice of Appalachia. That high lonesome sound.

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Tracing the evolution of a classic.

Kokomo Arnold - Black Mattie
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R.L Burnside - Po Black Mattie
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Robert Belfour - Black Mattie
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North Mississippi All Stars - Po Black Maddie
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Clarence Ashley - Dark Hollow
Recorded on October 23, 1929 for Columbia.

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Mark Lanegan - Little Sadie
A nice rendition of Lightnin' Wells' classic.

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Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys - Mule Skinner Blues

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Roscoe Holcomb - Black Eyed Suzy

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Bill Cornett - Hook and Line

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Kentucky homegrown.

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Baby Gramps


Go Eat Worms
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Big Rock Candy Mountain
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Cape Cod Girls
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Uncle Dave Macon - Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy
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Maggie Jones - Suicide Blues

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Footage of Peg Leg Sam from the documentary Born For Hard Luck

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Nimrod Workman - I Want to Go Where Things Are Beautiful

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Mance Lipscomb - Evil Blues

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[Russ]

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..but I really like Alan Wilson's version too..


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