Old Time Holiday Train #4

A happy Sunday & a happy Boxing Day.  Although it was much delayed, it’s now time for the last run on the Old-Time Holiday Train, so let’s get on board with a couple of great tunes!

The Memphis Jug Band: K.C. Moan (1929)

Is there anything quite like jug band music?  A sound that hovers between the blues & hot jazz, with any number of other elements thrown in—& to top it off, a “homemade,” “do it yourself” aesthetic that can rival even the most punk of punk rock bands.  After all, by definition, jug bands use “found” instruments , starting with the jug itself, & continuing thru washboard bass, tissue & comb kazoo, bones, & even homemade guitars, mandolins & banjos.  Gus Cannon of Cannon’s Jug Stompers learned the banjo on an instrument made from a frying pan & a raccoon skin, & while Cannon played a more conventional instrument by the time he was a known musician, there are records of jug band musicians playing pie plate banjos & gourd guitars.

The Memphis Jug Band was a very loose confederation of musicians gathered around Will Shade, who sang, wrote songs, & played guitar & harmonica.  The group at various times included musicians who also had significant solo careers, such as Memphis Minnie & Casey Bill Weldon.  “K.C. Moan” is a wonderfully straightforward blues song that was later covered by the Jim Kweskin Jug Band.



Charlie Poole & the North Carolina Ramblers: White House Blues (1926)

Speaking of a tune that mixes genres, we end this season’s holiday train tour with the “White House Blues.”  These days the “White House Blues” is considered a “bluegrass” or “old-time” tune, in the sense that it comes thru the Euro-American old-time tradition.  But structurally, “The White House Blues” is as much a “blues” as “K.C. Moan,” even if it isn’t given the syncopated inflection we generally associate with blues & other forms of African-American music.  It wouldn’t be hard to adapt the song to that kind of treatment, however, especially given the underlying 12-bar blues structure.

“The White House Blues” is itself an adaptation of an earlier song, “The Battleship of Maine.”  The latter is a satirical song of Spanish-American War vintage, & it provided the melody for its equally topical descendant.  For those who are interested, the New Lost City Ramblers covered “The Battleship of Maine,” & you can hear a live version of that here.

Charlie Poole & the North Carolina Ramblers were a popular string band of the 1920s, & their music certainly has an eduring appeal.  Poole played banjo & developed a three-finger picking style that provided rhythmic drive to the band.  By the way, in banjo (& guitar) terms “three-finger” means “thumb, index & middle fingers”—despite what your 1st grade teacher told you about the “thumb not being a finger.”  Although modern bluegrass banjoists use three-finger patterns based on those developed by Earl Scruggs, Poole’s patterns were less syncopated.

Hope you enjoy “The White House Blues!”

Old Time Holiday Train #3

Hello, folks—the train’s running behind time this morning, which is more than a little appropriate to the two songs.  Fortunately, no actual wreck seems imminent.  Also: apologies to aficionados of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, who will see that today’s pairing comes straight off the first “Ballads” record of his compilation.  The pairing of “Engine 143” & “Kassie Jones” was just too good to pass up.

Carter Family: Engine 143 (1929)

The Carter Family from southwestern Virginia have had a profound impact on U.S. popular music, from country & folk to gospel & even rock (rockabilly in particular).  Perhaps the greatest single influence on future musical styles came from the guitar-playing of Mother Maybelle Carter.

In the 1920s the guitar was still primarily a rhythm instrument.  Even if we look at the great blues guitarists of that time, we don’t hear much in the way of “lead” playing such as we’d think of the thing nowadays.  The rhythmic backgrounds could be quite intricate—they could be contrapuntal, both in terms of harmonic lines & actual rhythm—but they didn’t tend to be break out into “melody.”  At least in terms of what would later become country music, Maybelle Carter’s playing changed this, as she perfected a style that incorporated melody with rhythmic playing.  This style is called “Carter picking” or “Carter scratch” in her honor. 

Although most folks nowadays play Carter style using a flatpick, Maybelle Carter played with a thumbpick & a fingerpick on her index finger—in this, her style was closely related to what is called “two-finger” banjo picking (she also played banjo, in fact, which she learned from her mother).  There has been some controversy as to how much influence African American musician Lesley Riddle had on her playing, but her connection to the banjo means at the very least that her innovative guitar style had some deep roots. 



Furry Lewis: Kassie Jones, parts 1 & 2 (1928)

Furry Lewis was, quite simply, an amazing singer & fingerstyle guitar player, equally adept at playing music from ragtime to blues.  His roots go way back.  He was born some time in the 1890s—the exact date is uncertain, as he gave various dates over the course of his life—& he had some success as a traveling musician in the ‘teens & early 1920s.  But apparently with an eye on some financial stability, Lewis took a job as a Memphis city street sweeper for his main source of income—a position he held from 1922 until he retired in 1966.  Fortunately for us, he had a brief but fruitful stint making records for Vocalion & Victor in 1927 & 1928; he might have even continued as a recording artist, but the Great Depression had a major impact on the recording industry in general, & so-called “race records” in particular.

So again, as with a number of artists, Lewis was re-discovered in part because of Smith’s Anthology, as well as by the interest in his 78 sides from within the 1950s & 60s folk movement.  He had a second musical career in his retirement that included recordings & a number of live appearances—for instance, opening for the Rolling Stones & appearing on Johnny Carson! 

Lewis played an old-style form of fingerpicking that in its own way is also closely related to banjo playing.  In fact, it would be hard to over-state the influence of the banjo on all forms of old-time music, even the blues where the banjo itself rarely was featured.

You’ll notice that Kassie Jones in appears in a part one & a part two.  The reason for this is actually quite simple.  The standard size ’78 rpm record was 10 inches, & this record held approximately three minutes per side.  If a song was longer than three minutes, there was a part one & a part two—another well known example is Robert Wilkins’ great blues song “Rolling Stone.” 

Enjoy!

Old Time Holiday Train #2

Happy Saturday, folks!  The Old Time Holiday train is pulling into the station (just a bit behind time) with two more great tunes for your enjoyment.

Critic Greil Marcus wrote about Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music as portraying the “weird old America.”  Today’s two examples are definitely from that same place, tho neither song is found on the Anthology (Dock Boggs, who performs “Danville Girl” is found on two songs on Smith’s magnum folk opus, however). 

In old-time music, we often hear about “modal” songs—songs that are built less on the harmonic structure of chord changes & more on the use of a certain scale.  In particular the modal songs tend to use either a variation of the minor scale called the “Dorian mode” (what Pete Seeger called “mountain minor” in reference to a banjo tuning used for playing in this mode) & the “Mixolydian mode,” which is a more or less major scale with one tone altered.  If you have a piano, you can hear an example of the Dorian mode by starting on a D note & playing all the white notes in ascending order until you reach the next D; you can hear an example of the Mixolydian mode by starting on a G note & then playing all the white notes in ascending order until you reach the next G.

What may not be quite as well known is that the blues also ventured into modal territory, particularly in the Mississippi Delta & environs, & particularly in the hands of slide guitar players.  While we tend to think of blues songs having a very defined chord structure (the “12 bar blues”), in fact a fair number of early blues songs relied much less on those changes & only hinted at them.  On to the songs themselves!

Dock Boggs: Danville Blues (1927)

Dock Boggs was an extraordinary banjoist & singer who made some records for Brunswick back in the 1920s.  He sang with a raw emotion & urgency that really seems to come from some weird old world, & his style of 3-finger banjo picking was intricate & beautiful.  As with many of the old-timers, Boggs used banjo tunings that accomodated his music’s modal character.  For “Danville Girl,” he tuned the banjo to #fDGAD, a series of open string notes that allow him to hover between major & minor modes.  If you know the song “Danville Girl” from its later major chord incarnations, you won’t even recognize this version. 



King Solomon Hill: The Gone Dead Train (1932)

Not very much is known about King Solomon Hill.  He was born Joe Holmes in 1897 (at least that’s generally accepted, tho it’s not certain), & took his later stage name from his address in Mississippi: King Solomon Hill Baptist Church.  We do know that his playing was memorable & powerful, tho unfortunately he left behind only 8 tracks (a total of six songs, with two takes each of “Whoopee Blues” & “Down on Bended Knee”); we do know that the tracks were recorded for Paramount in Grafton, WI in 1932. 

Hill played slide style guitar & favored the open D tuning (in other words, the 6 strings of the guitar, when unfretted, will sound a D major chord).  Because of the way open tunings typically work on a guitar, however, it’s pretty easy to make the sound drift between major & minor in true bluesy fashion.  As far as the guitar part goes, Hill essentially stays on the D chord throughout, & any hints at chord changes come thru in the vocal & chord fragment riffs.

You may be interested to know that King Solomon Hill used a cow bone as a slide!

Old Time Holiday Train #1

Two things I like a lot: old-time music & trains.  I say, why not combine them?  Especially when you consider the fact that the most popular post all-time on Robert Frost’s Banjo was one of the segments from last year’s Blues Christmas Train series.

So you can understand why I’m returning to a similar series this year.  Except this time around, I’m not sticking simply to the blues—nor am I sticking to what generally falls under the rubric of “old-timey” music—namely, old-time country & fiddle tunes.  Instead, I’ll be looking at songs from the 1920s & 1930s, & in each post comparing & contrasting a selection from the “hillbilly” genre (as it was known at the time) with one from a “race” record—again, using the parlance of the day.  The fact is, even these early attempts at genre creation were to a large degree dictated by the biases & tastes of the recording companies & the field recorders.  In fact, the lines between “hillbilly” music & “race” music were often crossed by the musicians themselves—we need only look to Jimmie Rodgers, the “father of Country Music” to find a hillbilly musician who played the blues, while there’s documentary evidence that a number of African-American blues musicians—including such luminaries as Robert Johnson & a young Muddy Waters—crossed over into cowboy music in the 1930s when their audiences demanded it—see Elijah Wald’s Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson & the Invention of the Blues.)

Today, we start with two classics!

Delmore Bros: Blue Railroad Train (1933)  What was there about brother acts in old-time country music?  In addition to the Delmore Brothers, there were the Blue Sky Boys, Bill & Charlie Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, & later on, Jim & Jesse McReynolds & the Louvin Brothers.  All of these acts had distinctive sounds, & the Delmores were no exception.  Alton & Rabon Delmore came out of Alabama to become early stars of the Grand Ol’ Opry.  In addition to their smooth harmonies, the Delmores were also notable for using the tenor guitar (played by Alton), a somewhat uncommon instrument, especially in country music.  The tenor guitar is tuned like a tenor banjo in fifths (C-G-D-A) & was a transitional instrument in some hot jazz bands as the sound began to steer away from banjos toward the more mellow guitar.

The more mellow sound of the Delmores’ certainly constrasted with the more strident sounds of mountain music recorded in the 1920s—think of Dock Boggs, Uncle Dave Macon or Charlie Poole.  But particularly like Boggs (in this way & perhaps no other), they did inject a blues feel into the music—flatted thirds, a certain “bent note” inflection in the vocals.  The Delmore’s had what Bill Monroe would late call “the high lonesome sound.”  It sure sounds good on “Blue Railroad Train.”


 
Tommy Johnson: Cool Drink of Water (1928)

Tommy Johnson was a singularly talented musician & one of the most memorable of the first generation of Delta bluesmen.  He recorded only 16 songs in two recording sessions, one in Memphis & one in Grafton, Wisconsin, but every one of those is a classic.  Johnson’s guitar playing is intricate & powerful—sometimes paired, as in this song, with Charlie McCoy’s mandolin playing—& then there’s his voice—

for my money, he had the most compelling falsetto in old-time blues—a sound that brings to mind the great “high lonesome” voices of Appalachian or “hillbilly” music—that tingling sense of existential despair that rings true whether it’s sung by a white banjoist from the mountains or an African-American guitar player from the Mississippi Delta.   Of course, the “high lonesome sound” was actually used by a number of blues singers: just think of Robert Johnson’s vocal on “Hellhound on My Trail,” or any number of vocals by Skip James, just to name to well-known bluesmen. 

“Cool Drink of Water” is one of the best old-time songs, whatever the genre.  Enjoy!