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

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.)

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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.

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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.

I LOVE Black Twig Pickers!!

In 2004 I went to the Pasture Fest & Jubilee in Rural Wisconsin, which was mostly free-folk/drone/psychey kinda stuff, but they played as well. They could often be found in the parking lot (read: field) jamming with locals, surrounded by dancing children. It was awesome.

no need to capitalize Rural above, I guess. The town was Soldier's Grove IIRC. I had to drive through BLACK EARTH, WI. I decided I want to retire there.

Yeah, the Black Twigs do rule! They're super interesting. They play psych/noise/drone festivals because of their ties to Pelt/Jack Rose. But they also know straight up mountain folk and are highly respected in the area.

Plus, I just saw the Kruger Brothers. Their second set featured fiddler Bobby Hicks, who played with Bill Monroe in the 50s. He's still got it. Man, did he jam. They also brought vocalist Maynard Holbrook up on stage. He's wild. He sings true high lonesome.

Drag City, or one of their subsidiaries, is putting out an LP by Nimrod Workman. Compiled by Nathan Salzburg with access to the Library of Congress recordings. Classic coal mining balladeer. "Pneumoconiosis is the black lung blues."

guys, his NAME is NIMROD WORKMAN!!!!

our radio show tonight at 8pm EST on www.eastvillageradio.com (or itunes under radio>eclectic) is going to be two hours of 20s & 30s music, from blues & gospel to hillbilly to hot jazz with a smattering of cajun and hawaiian as well. Hope you listen. After tonight it'll be archived for a week.

we are on the radio now! on your ITUNES.

The new Dust-to-Digital 'Art Of Field Recording Volume II' should be with me on Friday. Christmas bonus hurrah (so much better than a bottle of booze)!

I shared an office with a dude in grad school who would shoot you in the head if you said that bluegrass was "old-timey".

"bluegrass was strictly a post-war innovation."

Was your office mate R. Crumb?

i could see that, like how i can get weird about the distinctions between "dixieland" and traditional jazz, and bands that play strict repertoire vs treating it as living music

He was a young dude, maybe 25 or so, and the angriest math grad ever. He'd get pissed off about the most trivial things like once I asked a friend (not him) for a ride to buy something from like Target or somesuch, and he started yelling at me that I shouldn't ask and that I should take the bus instead. So, I never discussed music with him of my own volition. I only happened on his views about old-time and old-timey when I learned he played banjo when he moved into the office and I asked him what kinds of things he liked to play. He talked about bluegrass and people who play bluegrass as if they would be better off with no hands and no ears.

Once, before I realized he was such a freak, I listened to him play banjo, and he sounded quite good to my unlearned and still attached ears.

There is definitely issues within the scene, community, etc. Usually bluegrass folks don't have a problem with old time musicians -- they are to be respected. But there are many old time musicians who look down on bluegrass, especially "progressive bluegrass." Mike from the Black Twigs told me about a jam circle in either Roanoke or Richmond led by this by this old, blind fiddler. He would swat any player with his bow who dared break out a bluegrass lick. Bluegrass is interesting. Many think it's the sound of the mountains. Yet many old time/hillbilly musicians see it as an invasive species, so to speak.