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

great cover of "Banjo Pickin' Girl" by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJJCK3PIYIU

oh, cool, the Digital Library of Appalachia has a bunch of songs that the Coon Creek Girls performed live on radio between 1939 and 1951. it also has some live material that Lily May Ledford performed at a college campus in 1980.

NPR piece on "There Breathes A Hope": http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=134028602&m=134083522

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KatZ92QQS_U

now this is some impressive footage. it's a 40-minute-long documentary by Mike Seeger and Alice Gerrard (who were married at the time) that shows them playing as a duo at home and in concert and meeting up with folk legends like Elizabeth Cotten, Roscoe Holcomb, and Lily May Ledford. it's a treat to watch Elizabeth Cotten sitting at the couple's kitchen table, playing "Freight Train" and reminiscing about her stint as the Seeger family's housemaid.

Mike and Alice's Bowling Green, which came out a year after the documentary, is one of the more "authentic" old-time albums to come out of the folk boom. they try their hardest to sound like an old backwoods couple dragged out of obscurity to document their repertoire, and the result is as homey and chilling as any real field recordings I've heard. "Love Was the Price," in which Alice sings a dead-eyed, suicidal lover's lament with nothing but a barely-audible droning cello for accompaniment, is the highlight for me.

While not exactly on point, Elijah Wald's book "Escaping the Delta--Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues," has some interesting discussion on what was pop and what wasn't back then plus how 'rockist' historians in search of their own version of authenticity hailed certain old performers over others.

Not read the book mentioned but I was struck by how different the styles in Robert Johnson's work were. almost like he was a human jukebox rather than a single stylist.
I've heard he was viewed as anachronistic at the time and only really picked up on by people outside the original medium getting interested.
Like Lomax had a different agenda than a party-throwing record buyer in trying to book him for the major New York event I can't think of the name of right now. & then he became famous among a bunch of later white record collectors who went onto create the 60s blues revival.

Can't find a dedicated Bristol Sessions thread, so I'll put this here.

Sometime last year, while I wasn't paying attention, Bear Family released a 5-disc box: "The Bristol Sessions, 1927-1928: The Big Bang of Country Music".

Looks pretty cool. Oddly enough, Amazon has it twice with slightly different prices but the item look identical to me...

My friends did this lo-fi cover of "All the Good Times". I love this version of the song so much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQxRa1UcZqQ&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOL4GtyWWQs

JSP was actually mentioned above. It's a reputable label. I have a Hoagy Carmichael disc put out by them (I think) and other titles which I can't recall right now. But no need to proceed with caution.

― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, December 11, 2007 6:57 PM (4 years ago)

JSP has gone to shit in recent years. they used to pay a lot of attention to sound quality (John R.T. Davies was a dedicated remastering engineer who did a lot of work for the label before he died in 2004), but now the quality control is very uneven, and it says here (I haven't fact-checked) that they lift mastering jobs from other companies' releases.

the first disc of their Leadbelly box sounds full and dynamic and has an ever-present but unobtrusive level of surface noise. weirdly, most of the material on the other three discs suffers from the heavy-handed use of noise reduction — a muffled, unlistenable mush that does no justice to the material. It's a shame, because there aren't many comprehensive Leadbelly sets, and the tracklisting is great.

but yeah, JSP has been suspect for at least the past six years, and if one of their sets doesn't have Davies' name on it, I'd recommend sampling it before you buy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IezlYcERTX8

another great old-timey tune with piano --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANkdDtgJx6A

no piano on this one but i love it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frupwl5UveA

great reminiscence by bert layne of the skillet lickers about getting into trouble with lowe stokes, clayton mcmichen etc. primarily abt the time lowe stokes got his hand shot off--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dXKDYrLLeo&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNaqFzdQEP4

http://www.youtube.com/v/DIB4Pio0Y4U&fs=1&hl=en

http://www.eastriverstringband.com/radioshow/?p=881

^^ radio program of R Crumb playing some of his country blues records. my friend john does these shows and they're pretty much all great.. many with crumb and other pioneering record collectors.

Wow, that Bobbie Leecan version of Nobody Needs You When You’re Down And Out is beautiful.

The piano on that Skip James record is also incredible.

i was really impressed by that "Decatur Street Drag" tune... great stuff. it's fun to listen to these guys talk about records.

http://cdm16020.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/collection/p15131coll4/searchterm/Video.Music/field/type/mode/all/conn/and/order/subjec/page/2

video archive of old-timey and blues music... great stfuf.

ahhh i love this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfUe0nkuV20

that is awesome - they have more stuff? is that 20s or 30s?

late twenties.. they recorded, uh, 8 sides i think? "georgia stomp" is on the harry smith anthology.

copy of bamalong blues/k.c. railroad blues on ebay at the moment that i've bid on. but i dont think i'll win. it's a rare record, and the copy for sale is a nice copy. prob sell for $400+ if i had to guess. maybe much more.

ah ok... georgia stomp is pretty happening too.

they were a great duo. andrew baxter recorded with the georgia yellow hammers -- "G Rag" being one of the earliest integrated country music recordings.

oh yeah the baxters are the shit

zow, jack white can be as weird and silly as he wants as long as he makes things like this possible:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/jack-whites-third-man-records-to-co-release-paramount-records-set-20130924

the LPs reissues of blues stuff third man is releasing sound bad are ugly and redundant. but if he's subsidizing the paramount box set then all is forgiven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReoKKsWtXvU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHRGXvfSu3s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixCql24CFFg

<3 me some nugrape twins
http://tofuhut.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_tofuhut_archive.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzbMALS0Edo

rockin'.

thanks -- that's great!

been listening to some skillet lickers 78s tonight. can hear some of the real bluegrass roots in some of these thirties sessions w ted hawkins on the mandolin. fast pickin and melodically inventive, by old-timey standards.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hawkins+rag&sm=3

hey i have only listened to the second ep of this so far but man it just slays, this is gonna be part of my week,

http://soundcloud.com/yetimike/buked-scorned-the-gospel

mcgonnigal is very much a bro

listening to it now. gracias.

pretty major pre-war blues story in ny times magazine today by john jeremiah sullivan.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/13/magazine/blues.html?hp&_r=0
totally amazing

this is great.

Don't want to blow your mind twice in one day but here is something else that will make you think twice: http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=240701&sid=68adecf93f0a6d6a9f44886f63059313

Just took a peek at Elijah Wald's The Blues: A Very Short Introduction and, while it seems reasonable enough, the guy inevitably comes up with either a challop or mistake to stick in my craw. In this case it is saying that Hank Williams was born in Georgiana, Alabama. No he wasn't, even though he grew there, he was born in nearby Mount Olive. Is such a picturesque and a propos fact so hard to remember and get right?
/little_things_that_make_you_irrationationally_angry

Probably wrong thread for that anyway

that john jeremiah sullivan piece is fucking amazing

For some of us, reading that article is the payoff for decades of music geekery, the way This is Spinal Tap was the payoff for watching lots of rockumentaries.

yeah it both totally de-romanticizes the whole thing and deepens the mystery immeasurably. which is quite a thing.

otm. It has the effect of one of those famous Hitchcock scenes where he starts with a wide angle shot from the top of a huge ballroom filled with people and then slowly, every so slowly, the camera zooms in to eventually arrive at the Macguffin/key/blinking eyes of the killer.

It makes me wish I was a history teacher so I could say Put away the textbook, we're spending the next week on this.

Not that history teachers ever do that, but they should.

Had an AP physics teacher who one sunny day let us go out and study the aerodynamics of the frisbee.

Other, more jazz oriented message board totally digging on that article, but disputing whether "Low Down Dirty Shame" was done by the gentleman mentioned in the article or another Don Wilkerson who played with Ray Charles and Amos Milburn and passed away a few decades ago.