S/D: Old-Timey Music (e.g., Prewar Gospel Blues, Bluegrass, Mountain Music)

I've been in touch with one of the folks who works there lately, and they apparently still have a bunch of LPs in a warehouse!

That label is a treasure.

Me & my buddy Keegan are playing old time music & country blues on our radio show tonight at 8pm on eastvillageradio.com, then it will be archived for a week.

HI GUYS WE ARE ON DA INTERNET RADIO NOWZ!!!

If I can't listen live (I'm going to try), I'm definitely going to check out the archieved show. Thanks for the link.

Just saw the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Yes their oldest member is just 31 (i.e., they're not on 78 rpm records)but they learned Carolina Piedmont style sounds from old fiddler Joe Thompson,and Old Hat Records Marshall Wyatt likes 'em.

where can I get that American Pop box set?

Here is a youtube video for a Skillet Lickers tune with politically incorrect lyrics.
How do people interested in this style of music deal with this kind of thing? When I first heard this particular tune, I was surprised by it only because I wasn't expecting it and was kind of embarassed to be listening to it. I know that racist & anti-black sentiment were probably fairly common among rural Southern whites in the 20s & 30s, but it was surprising to me that Rounder would have reissued that particular cut on LP well-after the N-word became highly unacceptable.

i own two versions of that song, one by the skillet lickers and one by uncle dave macon. i guess i deal with it by not listening to them. i don't mind that they're on the cds -- sort of helps to keep things in perspective. but i'd as soon not catch myself tapping my foot to it, you know?

(whereas i'm able to be amused by the awful sexism of something like "why do you bob your hair, girls" -- which i'm sure would make some hillary clinton voters nod their heads knowingly and say "see? do you see?")

If you guys don't mind I might use this to catalog youtube videos of old time music.

let's start with roscoe holcomb playing "john hardy." i was looking for clarence ashley videos, and i still like his version better, but this is really cool to watch.

and HERE is clarence ashley. with unknown accompaniment playing guitar. a comment for the video mentions doc watson as "an accompanist" but i do not know if that is watson playing guitar or not. do you?

skip james. i was thinking looking for the burnette & rutherford track. called "all night long" but this is still good despite the abrupt ending and lack of hand footage.

the only burnett & rutherford video does not feature any moving pictures at all.

this is the CREEPIEST THING EVER, WATCH WITH CAUTION IF PRONE TO NIGHTMARES:

xpost: no, here's a pic of clarence and doc:

http://www.ibiblio.org/DocWat/pics/p1903.gif

and how bout a little uncle dave:

I'm not normally a fan of videos in the "watch this record spin" vein, but i've been on a blue sky boys kick and this is a wonderful track.

there's a bunch of dock boggs clips from the '60s.

the stompy organ in that uncle dave video is going to make some busker a fortune. all you need is a few bellows, some hose, a melodica and what, super glue? i guess and some straps to attach the bellows to yer feet. xp

i love the dock.

martin, bogan & armstrong:

(there's a bunch of clips from louie bluie too. maybe the whole movie.)

point of trivia: i've actually held that banjo that dock's playing there. mike seeger has it now. i'm trying to write something about it right now.

do you play banjo, tipsy mothra?

Another kind of weird video. It's an old popeye cartoon what's a combination of grainy and awfully pixelated.

that's a combination of blah blah...

R Crumb & Geeshie Wiley

Blind Willies.

i don't play a lick of banjo, but i went to interview mike seeger a while back and he got out dock's banjo and played a couple tunes and then handed it to me so i could appreciate the heft of it. it was pretty cool. then his wife made us vegan-cheese sandwiches...

anyway there are of course lots of gary davis clips

and son house

(looking at these clips makes me hugely appreciative all over of mike seeger and all the other guys who went tracked all these dudes down while they were still alive. it's too bad we don't have film of most of them in their prime, but nice that we have them at all.)

sleepy john estes w/yank rachel

That's really cool that you got to interview Mike Seeger. I love reading articles & essays by people of his ilk--field collectors, folklorists et al. not to mention liner notes.

i like the blind willie video for including the mctell interview at the beginning. so much of blues scholarship is based on the recollections of a handful of old men; I was just reading an article the other day which was essentially a summation of Ishmon Bracey's recollections. Apparently there was doubt about who had accompanied him on a particular cut at a sessions, and no copy of 78 was found until after Bracey had passed away.

I can't get that Yank Rachel/Estes video to load. Who besides Yank Rachel used the mandolin extensively in the blues idiom?

a little off target of this thread, but there's some really nice Django footage here:

Bukka White tellin it like it is.

maybe i'll teach myself to fingerpick this winter with extensive use of youtube instructional videos.

carl martin played mandolin, that's the only other one off the top of my head. i'm sure there was a lot of it around in the late '20s/early '30s era, before banjo and mandolin sort of got segregated out of the blues.

i can't find any clips from this video online, but i'd like to see it. i saw him play when he was i think 99, and he was awesome. he'd introduce songs like, "i learned this one in 1928..."

there's lots of great videos of Tommy Jarrell.

again, only vaguely appropriate, but i am going to bed:

Lonnie Johnson's mandolin is great on "Today's Blues" (Cora Perkins vocal.)

<IMG SRC=;
Furry Lewis "I Will Turn Your Money Green"

oops i dunno why i tried to embed that as an image must be because i am an idiot.

HAY GUYS.
ROY HARVEY IS AWESOME KTHX.

Can you dig Mississippi John Hurt Spike Driver Blues? I knew that you could.

I guess Jack Rose has been selling a CDr of his favorite guitar pickin 78s. Eclipse has copies, maybe? I read about it somewhere online.
I'm still jamming my copy of "Mountain Guitar" on County, so I'm covered I think. But if anyone has or sees a track list of the Jack Rose CDr I'd love to see it.

Not sure why I haven't posted this here before...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokum

playlist lately has been heavy on:

darby & tarlton
lowe stokes & mike whitten "katy did" = one of my fave breakdowns

oh god can of worms w/r/t hokum article.

Bascom Lamar Lunsford fiddling & buck dancing, circa 1928-1935:

Cool. A place where I can post a bluegrass clip or two. Here's the Osborne Brothers from the killer Bluegrass Country Soul documentary. They're even sporting a drummer.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NhiOaSWuFjU&hl=en&fs=1";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NhiOaSWuFjU&hl=en&fs=1"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Oh fuck it. Go here:

The supposed first recorded hokum song (1928's Tampa Red & Georgia Tom's "It's Tight Like That") was ironically by Thomas A Dorsey, the man known for institutionalizing gospel in the popular marketplace.

This was also the same year of the first two Boogie-Woogie recordings (Pinetop Smith's "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" and Cow Cow Davenport's "Cow Cow Blues").

Combined, I see these as the real roots of R&B/Rock-n-Roll.

Jimmy Martin -- "Freeborn Man"

I got some old-timey records today. Like any other day.
Two volumes of Cliff Carlisle on Old-Timey
Two volumes of Grayson & Whitter on Old Homestead.

Total cost: $20.

I've been meaning to get some Grayson & Whitter. I did pick up a volume of Gid Tanner stuff recently.

I also picked up the last couple CDs from the Black Twigs (a.k.a. Black Twig Pickers). They're from Ironto, Virginia, and they make some awesomely raw yet informed Appalachian folk.