With this blog, i want to use the Folkways Anthology as a roadmap to explore american folk music and maybe other countries traditions along the way. I’ ll use texts, images, music and videos gathered from my personal collection and from the net to make this work-in-progress enjoyable and educationnal the best i can. Any suggestions, additional informations, comments and critics are welcome…
I’ll use Harry Smith’s numerical order starting from the number one performance in the Anthology, “Henry Lee” by Dick Justice and end (someday…) with “Fishing Blues” by Henry Thomas. Each time, i’ll try to collect interesting links on the artist and on the song performed. There will be other performances by the artist and different versions of the selected song that i have access to. You’re invited to download and enjoy the selections but please, as much as you can, try to support the efforts of the small records companies and the artists by buying their records.
“In a windowless cabin, hidden away in a high cranny of the Kentucky mountains, lived Jilson Setters, who, for all his sixty-five years, had never seen a railroad. Neither had he heard a phonograph nor a radio. His home-made fiddle and his ‘ballets’ were good enough for Jilson Setters and mountain folk.”
from: “The Last Minstrel” by Jean Thomas, The English Journal, December, 1928
The story around Kentucky old-time fiddler James W. Day is an interesting case of mystified folkore. Born in 1861 in Rowan County, Kentucky, J.W Day was a blind fiddler and singer, often living as a beggar musician in the small towns around Kentucky. At the end of the twenties, a young woman interested in folklore named Jean Thomas “discovered” him as she was collecting songs and stories in Kentucky. Fascinated by the way mountain people preserved traditions of the British Isles, notably the singing of the old ballads, Thomas created the “American Folk Song Festival” to present authentic perfomers of mountain music. The feestival was held every year in Kentucky from 1930 to 1972. When she met J.W Day, she had the idea to present him as the archetype mountain fiddler,”The singin fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow” (Title of the book she wrote about him) and she built a whole story , part true, part purely her own fantasy, to promote him and his music around the country. Under the name of “Jilson Setters”, she arranged for Day concerts and recording sessions and she even took him to play before the King of England. We don’t know how Day himself reacted to all this fuss around him, as on the pictures Thomas took of him, he looked like a dignified old country man, surely proud of the venerable old tunes he could play on his fiddle, but also had to make a living, be an entertainer, the only way to survive for a blind musician during those years… His fiddle style was very unique also, as he was left-handed but played without re-stringing his instrument, with the strings upside down.. Like Elizabeth Cotten on the guitar, it gave him a unique style that is hard to duplicate. He recorded for the Victor Record Company and also for The Library Of Congress in 1930.
-Go here (Wikipedia page) to read more about Jean Thomas (she was nicknamed “The Traipsin’ Woman”) and the American Folk Song Festival
-On this page, you can browse the beautiful collection of photographs she took in the mountains, and among them, many of J.W Day
-I’ve compiled all the sides i have by J.W Day including two sides recorded for the Library of Congress (very noisy, you’ll be warned)
“Wagoner” is a very popular fiddle tune, a square dance’s favorite of the old days and maybe every old-time fiddler knows a version of it. It’s a tune in the key of C, a key less played than the regular A,G and D but if a fiddler knows one or two tune in C, it’s probably “Wagoner” or “Billy in the Low Ground”. All around the South, fiddlers calls it depending from the region they come from: Tennessee Wagoner,Nashville Wagoner, Texas Wagoner, Georgia Wagoner, North Missouri Wagoner, or just Wagner. I’ve compiled for you 28 versions, could have put many more, but it would have been a bit boring as the melodic contours of the tune remains very similar from one fiddler to another, apart maybe for J.W Day’s unique version, with a very unusual B part that modulate from C to D and John Morgan Salyer’s who fiddle a very unique “Wagoner”. The first part of the tracks were selected from the Digital Library of Appalachia web site, a unique resource for fiddle tunes.
(In the pictures, John Morgan Salyer from Magoffin County, Kentucky and a group of square-dancers)
Part 1: Home and Field recordings from the Digital Library of Appalachia
We leave the world of the folk ballads, who were typically sung in the privacy of homes, to music that was played in a social context, whenever groups of people reunited to either dance or pray together. The “social” set of the Anthology opens with a beautiful selections of fiddle tunes. The first one, with no back-up instruments, is a solo fiddle piece called “Sail Away Lady”. Played by John L. “Uncle Bunt” Stephens, a veteran old-time fiddler from Tennessee born in 1879, it represented, i quote Harry Smith, “american dance music in the period between the revolutionary and civil wars”. In those days, the “europeans settlers used the violon unaccompanied for dancing”, the banjo being introduced later in the middle 19th-century via contacts with african-americans.
-Uncle Bunt Stephens recorded only four sides for Columbia records in 1926. From this four sides, only “Left in the dark Blues” hasn’t been reedited on cd. If someone has a copy somewhere an can digitalize it, i’d be delighted to hear from him…
“Sail Away Ladies” is one of the most popular fiddle tune of all time, and belongs to a family of tunes that includes also “Sally Ann”, “Great big taters in Sandy Land” or “Dineo”. Its popularity is also due to the lyrics that goes with the tune, with a refrain that repeat the phrase “Sail away ladies, sail away” or ” Don’t she rock day-dee-o”. Almost every fiddler and string band has the tune in his repertoire and it is very popular among folk singers also. British skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan recorded it also under the name “Don’t you rock me Daddy-O”, making it a skiffle favorite in England in the 1950/1960’s.
-I choosed 30 variations of “Sail Away Ladies”, from fiddlers and string bands, folk and contemporary singers, and a bit of skiffle. Concerning the fiddle tunes renditions, i selected only the ones that goes under the “Sail away ladies” name or “Dineo” “Big taters in Sandy Land” names, which are all played in the same fiddle key of G. The “Sally Ann” tunes can be in D or G and sometimes A.
PART 1: FIDDLERS AND STRING BANDS
Uncle Dave Macon from Go Long Mule
Original Orchard Grass String Band (Dineo Ladies)Digital Library of Appalachia
Jody Kruskalfrom Poor Little Liza Jane
The Iron Mountain String Bandfrom Iron Mountain String Band: An Old Time Southern Mountain String band
Kenny Bakerfrom Baker’s Dozen
New Lost City Ramblersfrom Volume 5
Everett Kays (Big Sweet Taters in Sandy land)Digital Library of Appalachia
Parker & Doddfrom Times Ain’t Like They Used To Be: Early American Rural Music
Henry L. Bandyfrom Kentucky Mountain Music, Part 4
Leonard Bowles & Irvin CookDigital Library of Appalachia
Tom, Brad & Alice from Holly Ding
Camptown Shakersfrom Camptown Shakers
Bruce Molskyfrom Lost Boy
Unidentified fiddlerDigital Library of Appalachia
Elizabeth LaPrelle from Lizard In the Spring
Rufus Kasey(Dineo) Digital Library of Appalachia
Bonnie Russell and the Russell Familyfrom Mountain Dulcimer Galax Style
Now that i came at the end of the first volume of of the Anthology i want to look back on the subject of ballads and at the sequencing of the songs chosen by Harry Smith. We have to keep in mind that the Anthology isn’t just a good collection of 78rpm records of American Folk Music, it’s first of all the creation of an artist/collector who wants to reveal some recurring patterns in this old records that tell us profound things about America and the american experience. In his interviews, Harry Smith spoke about the Anthology as a well-structured collection, made in four parts (he actually never finished editing the fourth one but Revenant records issued his selection of songs a few years ago) each part having his own theme and its own colour connected to one of the four elements (Air, Fire, Water and Earth). Smith’s family was deep in theosophy and occultism and it influenced him a lot in his life and in his work. In many ways, he made the Anthology a unique object; in the front cover of each record was a ancient drawing of “The Celestial Monochord” (also the name of an important blog about the Anthology) showing the hand of the Creator tuning it. The booklet also had a unique design, full of little images and drawings of animals, objects, musical instruments. The pictures of the musicians found on the pages of the booklet looked like they sounded, from another age, from another world gone by. The core of the booklet was a numerical listing of each track, with a newspaper like headline resume of the subject or the lyrics of each song with some notes, bibliography and discography. There was also an alphabetical index, a bibliography and a foreword and afterword by Smith and by Moses Ash, creator of Folkways Records. The record company, created after World War 2 by the son of the famous Yiddish writer Sholem Ash, had the ambition to cover all the world’s musical traditions, including sounds of nature, speeches and voices of poets, writers, politicians, etc…, all that could be recorded on disc and had an interest for the knowledge of humankind. In 1952, with the advent of the long-playind disc, it was now possible to put several tracks on each side of a record. Harry Smith, who had started collecting old records when he was a teenager, wanted to sell to Ash his huge collection of 78rpm records. Ash proposed him instead to compose an Anthology which would represent different aspects of American folk and vernacular music. Until the Anthology came out, american folk music was studied only through transcriptions of old ballads made by folklorists like Francis Child and Cecil Sharp or by field recordings made by people like John and his son Alan Lomax. To the serious folklorist, the “hillbilly” and “race” records issued by commercial recording companies in the 1920’s and 1930’s were not considered enough “authentic” material to a proper study of folklore. But it took an excentric artist like Harry Smith, on the marge of the academic world, to reveal the fascinating world that was hiding behind the grooves of this old records.
Ballads
The term “Ballad” (derived from the old french word for medieval dance songs) usually means a narrative song that tell a a concise story through imagery rather than litteral description. More often than not ballads are telling tragic love stories but they can have also comical, religious or historical topics. They were passed down orally from generation to generation in the British Isles since medieval times and many immigrants to the New World took them and continue to sing them there, especially in the appalachian mountains. The melodies and words were sometimes changed and altered with time and new stories and events were transformed in songs in the ballad form (folklorists call them “Native american ballads”). With the rising and popularity of the print paper, songs were put on cheap sheets and distribued in the towns and cities. Called “Broadside ballads”, they included many of the traditional themes of the older ballads like love, legends, murder, religion but every event that catched the attention and imagination of the folks could be put in the song format. Next to the words, the most-often anonymous author would sometimes indicate that the song can be sung with a certain melody from another popular song and with time, the new ballads were included along with the old ones in the repertoire of folk singers.
Harry Smith start his anthology with americanized versions of the old ballads from the British Isles found in the repertoire of old-time singers. All the first selections are derived from longer ballads collected by Francis Child. “Henry Lee” came from Child no.68 “Young Hunting” (Harry Smith said that he didn’t like so much the Dick Justice record but it had the lowest number of the Child Ballads so it had to come first…) “Fatal Flower Garden” from “Sir Hugh”, “The House Carpenter” from “James Harris/The Daemon Lover”, “Drunkard’s Special” from “Our Goodman”, “Old Lady and The Devil” from “The Farmer’s Curst Wife”. “The Butcher Boy” is an amalgation of two english ballads from the 18th century, “The Cruel Father” and “There is an alehouse in yonder town”. “The Wagoner’s Lad” is made of floating lyrics found in other folksongs. “King Kong Kitchie Ki-Me-O”, a version of the famous “Frog-went-a courtin’” can be traced back to an entry in a 1580 register of the London Company about “A Moste Strange Weddinge of the Frogge and the Mouse”. Versions of “Old Shoes and Leggins” can be found in british and scottish folk songs collections.
With “Willie Moore”, Harry Smith shifts to “Native American Ballads”, ballads that were found only in the New World. These new ballads have many things in common with their older european relatives in styles and topics but the emergence of a new industrial world of factories, trains, ships, the influence of african-american music and speech made this kind of songs typically american. Ballads about murdered girls (Willie Moore,Omie Wise), outlaws and criminals (Cole Younger,Charles Guiteau, John Hardy, Stackalee, Frankie), trains and ships accidents (The Titanic, Engine 143, Kassie Jones), farmers and workers’s struggle against hard times (A lazy farmer boy, Peg and awl, John Henry, Down on Penny Farm, Mississippi Boweavil, Got the Farm Land Blues) formed this new repertoire of folk songs that are in the same time extremely specific of certain times and places but also the most universal and timeless tales of the human condition ever put in the song format.
The sequencing of the songs by Harry Smith is very elaborate and carefully made as many links and relations appear from one song to another. Apart from the related topics and themes described above, some songs can also be put together for their humor and wit (Drunkard’s Special, Old Lady and the Devil, King Kong Kitchie Ki-Me-O, Old Shoes and Leggins, A lazy farmer boy, Peg and Awl, John Johanna) or for their musical similarities ( The “modal” quality of the old love ballads, the “Black Ballads” and their similar proto-Blues structure, etc…) Many other less obvious and mysterious links can appear with time for the attentive listener and for those who see the Anthology not as just a good collection of songs but a world in itself, a world some would call “Harry Smith’s World”, “Smith’s Memory Theater”or “The Old, Weird America”.
Here’s more Carolina Tar Heels tracks for you… I already introduced the band on my “Peg’n Awl” post a few months ago…The sound on some track is pretty bad but i hope you’ll enjoy nevertheless…
The song who close the “Ballad” volume on the Anthology can be describe as a humorous Mountain Blues describing the bad luck of a farmer that push him to move to town. It seems that the song was the creation of The Carolina Tar Heels themselves as i can’t find no other recordings apart from “covers” of the Tar Heels version by revivalist old-time bands. But the theme of the poor farmer and his struggles to survive during hard times can be found in many other songs…So i made a little compilation of songs with this theme, including some covers of “Farm land Blues”.
- Page 1 and Page 2 for the music and words of “Got The Farmland Blues”
Let’s hear hillbilly, bluegrass, folk and Blues songs dealing with the “farmer’s Blues”…
Charley (or Charlie) Patton is considered by many the most important bluesman of all times, the father of the “Delta Blues”, which is a genre that most people see as the “real, deep Blues”. Raised near the famous Dockery Plantation, a big cotton and sawmill plantation and the “mythical” birthplace of the Blues, Patton learned his skills with Henry Sloan, an older Bluesman born in 1870. His powerful guitar playing and vocals influenced all the other musicians around him, including Willie Brown, Tommy Johnson, Son House and the younger Robert Johnson would learn to play the Blues from them. Patton was very popular in all the South and he was a real showman on stage, making tricks like playing the guitar behind his head or his back, interspreading different vocal comments during his songs. His erratic life, his inclinations toward booze and women and his short life also contributed to make him a “Blues” icon.
Like for Robert Johnson, the label “Delta Blues” is quite limiting the range of their music. The repertoire of Patton (and Johnson) included a broader range of popular music, religious songs and pieces that came from the white tradition and they could includes them along with their “Blues” to please different audiences. The fact is that we see them today as genuine folk musicians rather than “entertainers” is due in part to the romantized and almost mystical way they were described by white Blues lovers and writers. He recorded more than 60 sides during his rather short career, some with other musicians, some with a female vocalist, but a large part of his recordings he plays alone with his guitar. His unique spontaneous style and incredible timing combined with percussive effects on the guitar, vocal eccenticities made some of this sides, the most passionate pieces of music ever recorded.
-Go to this wikipedia page for a more complete biography and a list of his recordings
-Music writer and musician Elijah Wald, who wrote a very interesting book about Robert Johnson (“Escaping the Delta”), wrote also a superb essay about Patton, where he tries to picture the musician in “context”, escaping the romanced and mythical proses so common about Blues icons.
-There are two books dedicated entirely to the life and music of Charley patton:one by guitar player John Fahey and the other by Stephen Calt and Gayle Wardlow.There are both out-of-print but you can maybe find them by doing a research on the net.
-Those with a low budget can nevertheless have Patton’s complete recordings with this JSP box-set or with excellent compilations issued by Yazoo records
-From my part, i offer you the 14 sides Patton recorded for his first session in Richmond in 1929:
-When Paramount released “Mississippi Boweavil Blues” in 1929, instead of the artist’s name, they wrote “The Masked Marvel” and organized a contest for the customers to guess the real identity of the artist. The winner would win a free record of his choice… In 1952, on the Anthology, Harry Smith choosed to keep the “Masked Marvel” name on the record…
The Boll Weevil Variations
The Boll weevil, a little insect that feeds on cotton buds and flowers, originated in Mexico and migrated to the U.S in the late 19th century.First in the Texas area and then all across the South, it destroyed the cottonfields and plantations and caused the migration of thousands of farmers and field workers toward the northern big cities. It became the subject of many songs in the 20th century but the most famous of this “Boll weevil” songs present a rather humourous dialogue between a farmer and the little bug and the chorus most of the time, repeats the phrase “Looking for a home”. Folklorists think the song originated with black people and one of the older version is the one Charley Patton sang in his 1929 recording “Mississippi Bollweavil Blues”. It was sometimes sung in a manner of a “field holler” by blacks but Leadbelly’s version, which has the “looking for a home” chorus became the most famous, the one many folksingers sang during the Folk revival.
-For more informations about the boll weevil and the damages he made in the South go to this wikipedia page and on this page, wou’ll find many interesting articles.
-Like i said above, the boll weevil was widely sung during the 20th century and you can find versions in many genres of american popular music: Blues, Jazz, Country, Folk, Rock n’roll, etc… I’ve selected 60 performances that i liked, staying mostly in the folk/blues tradition, with numerous wonderful field recordings made by Alan Lomax and other across the South. I’ve included some versions from the pop/rock world (Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran) but didn’t include the Brook Benton version, which was a huge hit in the 1960’s (you can listen to it on Youtube).
(The title is always “Boll Weevil” “Boll Weavil” or “Boll Weevil Blues” unless where indicated)
“FIELD RECORDINGS, SONGSTERS, BLUESMEN…”
Part 1
Richard Amerson from Boll Weevil Here, Boll Weevil Everywhere – Field Recordings
Ma Raineyfrom Countin’ the Blues
Oscar Woods from Texas Blues: Early Blues Masters From The Lone Star State
Otis Webster from Country Negro Jam Session
Blind Jesse Harris from Field Recordings Vol. 4: Mississippi & Alabama (1934-1942)
“Renters caught by poverty on George Penny’s farm picture landlord as miser, thief, and liar” Harry Smith’s notes from the Anthology
The Bently Boys, from which we know nothing except that they were from North Carolina, recorded “Down on Penny’s Farm” in 1929 for Columbia Records. It featured banjo and guitar and the flip side track “Henhouse Blues” feaured also a fiddle player. Apparently they didn’t record anything else but their version of “Penny’s farm”, thanks to the Anthology, inspired the young Bob Dylan for one of the first song he wrote when he came to New York City, “Hard times in New York Town”. It would also inspire him to write his “Maggie’s Farm” a few years after. Harry Smith said that “Penny’s farm” was “a regionalized recasting of an earlier song called “Hard times”. On this page of “Mudcat cafe”, there’s an interesting discussion about the song and its origin and it feaures the lyrics of the Bently Boys version as well.
-”Penny’s Farm” was done quite often in the recent years by folk musicians and old-time string bands,including a very unusual version on an album called “Wayne Horvitz:Joe Hill:16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices and Soloist”, a parody version called ” Down on the funny farm” by the Good Rockin’ Daddies…In the 1930’s, Gid Tanner (with Riley Puckett) did his version and called it “Tanner’s farm. During the folk revival, Pete Seeger recorded the song and a variant called “Hard times in the mines”. His brother Mike did as well with “Hard times in these mines”.
Enjoy!
TRACK LIST
Down On Penny’s Farm, The Bently Boys, from TheAnthology Of American Folk Music
Down On Penny’s Farm,Jeff Warner and Jeff Davis, fromOld Time Songs for Kids
Down On the Funny Farm,Good Rockin’ Daddies, fromBorn to Boogie
Penny’s Farm,Lost Mountain String Band, fromWaiting for the Boogerboo
Penny’s Farm,The Holy Modal Rounders, fromToo Much Fun!
Hard Times in These Mines,Mike Seeger, fromTipple, Loom & Rail
Penny’s Farm,Tom Akstens and Neil Rossi,All Around the Mountain
Joe Hill: Action 11 – Hard Time in the Country,Danny Barnes, Northwest Sinfonia, Bill Frisell, Rinde Eckert, Robin Holcomb, fromWayne Horvitz: Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices, and Soloist
Penny’s Farm,Pete Seeger,from Darling Corey/Goofing-Off Suite
Penny’s Farm ,Pete Constantini, fromWe Won’t Move: Songs of the Tenants’ Movement
Penny’s Farm,Olav Undeland, fromRiding The Blind
Hard Times in the Mill,Pete Seeger, from American Industrial Ballads
Down on Pennys Farm,Natalie Merchant, fromThe House Carpenters Daughter
Hard Times In New York Town,Bob Dylan, from The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991
-Here’s an interesting and funny clip of a 1960’s documentary about “young beatnicks” in England. In the beginning, a young Wizz Jones (british folk/Blues singer and guitar player) is doing a parody song using “Down on Penny’s Farm”
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Down On Penny’s FarmBently BoysAnthology Of American Folk Music
Down On Penny’s FarmJeff Warner and Jeff DavisOld Time Songs for Kids
Down On the Funny FarmGood Rockin’ DaddiesBorn to Boogie
Penny’s FarmLost Mountain String BandWaiting for the Boogerboo
Penny’s FarmThe Holy Modal RoundersToo Much Fun!
Hard Times in These MinesMike SeegerTipple, Loom & Rail: Songs of the Industrialization of the S
Penny’s FarmTom Akstens and Neil RossiAll Around the Mountain
On Tanner’s FarmGid Tanner & Riley PuckettEarly Country, Vol. 1
Joe Hill: Action 11 – Hard Time in the Country – Danny BarneDanny BarnesWayne Horvitz: Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices, a
Penny’s FarmPete SeegerDarling Corey/Goofing-Off Suite
Penny’s Farm – Pete ConstantiniPete ConstantiniWe Won’t Move: Songs of the Tenants’ Movement
Penny”S FarmOlav UndelandRiding The Blind
Hard Times in the MillPete SeegerAmerican Industrial Ballads
Down on Pennys FarmNatalie MerchantThe House Carpenters Daughter
Hard Times In New York TownBob DylanThe Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991 [Disc 1]Down On Penny’s FarmBently BoysAnthology Of American Folk Music
Down On Penny’s FarmJeff Warner and Jeff DavisOld Time Songs for Kids
Down On the Funny FarmGood Rockin’ DaddiesBorn to Boogie
Penny’s FarmLost Mountain String BandWaiting for the Boogerboo
Penny’s FarmThe Holy Modal RoundersToo Much Fun!
Hard Times in These MinesMike SeegerTipple, Loom & Rail: Songs of the Industrialization of the S
Penny’s FarmTom Akstens and Neil RossiAll Around the Mountain
On Tanner’s FarmGid Tanner & Riley PuckettEarly Country, Vol. 1
Joe Hill: Action 11 – Hard Time in the Country – Danny BarneDanny BarnesWayne Horvitz: Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices, a
Penny’s FarmPete SeegerDarling Corey/Goofing-Off Suite
Penny’s Farm – Pete ConstantiniPete ConstantiniWe Won’t Move: Songs of the Tenants’ Movement
Penny”S FarmOlav UndelandRiding The Blind
Hard Times in the MillPete SeegerAmerican Industrial Ballads
Down on Pennys FarmNatalie MerchantThe House Carpenters Daughter
Hard Times In New York TownBob DylanThe Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991 [Disc 1]Down On Penny’s FarmBently BoysAnthology Of American Folk Music
Down On Penny’s FarmJeff Warner and Jeff DavisOld Time Songs for Kids
Down On the Funny FarmGood Rockin’ DaddiesBorn to Boogie
Penny’s FarmLost Mountain String BandWaiting for the Boogerboo
Penny’s FarmThe Holy Modal RoundersToo Much Fun!
Hard Times in These MinesMike SeegerTipple, Loom & Rail: Songs of the Industrialization of the S
Penny’s FarmTom Akstens and Neil RossiAll Around the Mountain
On Tanner’s FarmGid Tanner & Riley PuckettEarly Country, Vol. 1
Joe Hill: Action 11 – Hard Time in the Country – Danny BarneDanny BarnesWayne Horvitz: Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices, a
Penny’s FarmPete SeegerDarling Corey/Goofing-Off Suite
Penny’s Farm – Pete ConstantiniPete ConstantiniWe Won’t Move: Songs of the Tenants’ Movement
Penny”S FarmOlav UndelandRiding The Blind
Hard Times in the MillPete SeegerAmerican Industrial Ballads
Down on Pennys FarmNatalie MerchantThe House Carpenters Daughter
Hard Times In New York TownBob DylanThe Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991 [Disc 1]
Walter “Furry” Lewis, born in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1893 was a superb country blues singer and a versatile guitar player with a relaxed and sponatenous style. He spent most of his life in the city of Memphis, Tennessee, which was a rich musical center for african-americans in the first decades of the 20th century. He learned his skills on the road with medecine shows, on mississippi riverboats, streets and clubs, playing music with W.C Handy’s orchestra, but settled down in Memphis after loosing one leg as he was hopping a train. On Beale street he would meet and play with many fine Memphis musicians like Gus Cannon,members of the Memphis Jug Band, Jim Jackson etc…He recorded more than 20 sides between 1927 and 1929 but as the Depression put a stop to record sales, he returned to work as a street sweeper around Beale Street. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he had a “second career” in the sixties, thanks to the “Anthology” and the Folk/Blues revival. It was Samuel Charters, the great music researcher and writer, that found him and record him first a the end of the Fifties.When Charters first met with Furry, he hadn’t play music for more than 20 years and dind’t even own a guitar. But when the “Blues” is in you, it stays forever and when he returned to play, his natural talent for playing and singing the Blues was unchanged, maybe he was a little bit slower on the guitar but his music gained in emotion and power with age. He would fingerpick or play with a bottleneck, depending on his mood and the song, the music flowing from him, in a natural and almost improvisationnal way.He became a prominent figure on the Blues and Folk festivals, made numerous new recordings,opened shows for the Rolling Stones and other rock stars and was the only country blues singer of his generation gaining popular attention, without changing his repertoire, deeply rooted in the african-american tradition of rags and blues. He died in 1981, at the age of 88.
-For more details on his biography, go here or here
-To read a fine article (in pdf format) Playboy magazine made on Furry in 1970, click here
-Here are the 25 sides he recorded at the end of the 1920’s for the Vocalion and Victor record companies. Be sure to check the other recordings Furry made in the 60’s and 70’s for various labels. (Many are available on cd format)
-Let’s see the man in action with this beautiful footage clips found on Youtube:
First, here’s Furry doing his version of “Kassie Jones”
A little bit of “Brownsville Blues…
And let’s end with this masterpiece performance of “When I lay my burden down”. See how he’s relaxed with the guitar and make his wonderful tricks, reminescences maybe of the medecine shows of his youth
The Casey Jones Variations
“FATAL WRECK – Engineer Casey Jones, of This City, Killed Near Canton, Miss. – DENSE FOG THE DIRECT CAUSE – Of a Rear End Collision on the Illinois Central. – Fireman and Messenger Injured – Passenger Train Crashed Into a Local Freight Partly on the Siding-Several Cars Demolished.” Jackson, Tennessee Sun newspaper, april 30, 1900.
Soon after the fatal train collision that killed engineer John Luther Jones (he was nicknamed “Casey” because he was from the town of “Cayce”, Kentucky) on april 30, 1900, heroic tales of his death started to be told across the South. When he was living, Jones already had a growing reputation among railroad folks for his trademark whistle (every engineer at this time could make his own whistle) and for his aptitude at being always on time. After his death, he became a real heroic figure and the song about him helped to carry his memory over the years.Like “Frankie and Albert” , the story of the Casey Jones ballad goes back and forth between the folk and popular music worlds. It originally started with Wallace Saunders, a black engine wiper who worked on a railroad shop in Canton. Saunders was known for his ability to make songs about people and singing or whistling them as he was working. The song he made up about Casey Jones, derived from an older african-american “Blues ballad” called “Jimmy Jones”. It had a very catchy tune and people along the railroad line started to sing it. Illinois Central Engineer William Leighton loved the song so much that he told about it to his two brothers Frank and Bert, who were vaudeville performers. The Leighton brothers re-arranged the song with a chorus they added and sang it in theatres around the country. Finally two other vaudeville performers Lawrence Seibert, singer and Eddie Newton, composer, took the credit for the song and published it in 1909 under the title “Casey Jones , the brave engineer”. From then it became a very popular piece and althought it described a tragedy, the song had a humorous feel and a catchy melody that pleased everyone. Recordings were made of the “vaudeville” Casey Jones” and this version enterred as well the oral folk tradition where it could be mixed with older songs. Many parodies and other songs were also made, using the “Casey Jones” melody.
-For a complete study of the Casey Jones ballad i recommend once again the wonderful book by Norm Cohen called “The Long Steel rail”. Cohen discuss the origins of the song and study the different lyrics of each version.
-Lyrics for the Furry Lewis’s version, as well as the Mississippi John Hurt’s version can be found on this page
-I compiled 50 different versions of “Casey Jones”, from the hundreds that were recorded since 1912. Like the John Henry, Frankie or Stagolee ballads, the song found his place in the major genres of americana music:Pop, Folk, Blues, Jazz, Cajun (wonderful version by The Balfa Brothers) and i tried to represent the best versions in each one.(I didn’t include The Grateful Dead’s rock version because it’s a complete rewriting, both words and melody, of the song) I included also parodies (The Union Scab) and songs that are related to the Casey Jones ballad (Milwaukee Blues, Jay Gould’s Daughter, On the road again, Ben Dewberry’s final run, Freight train Boogie, J.C Holmes Blues).
(The song title is always “Casey Jones” unless where indicated
Legend says that when A.P. Carter first met Sara, she was singing with the autoharp “Engine 143″. He was coming around her home selling fruits and she was just 16 years old then. Soon A.P Carter would marry her and make her sing the songs from her family’s tradition and the ones he collected around the hills of Virginia.
-This is my second compilation of recordings by The Carter Family. Here you have all the recordings they made on February 1929, from which came “Engine 143″ and “Little Moses” which were featured on the Anthology
TRACK LIST
1.Sweet Fern
2.My Clinch Mountain Home
3.God Gave Noah The Rainbow Sign
4.I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes
5.Little Moses
6.Lulu Wall
7.Grave On The Green Hillside
8.Don’t Forget This Song (My Home In Old Virginia)
“The report reached the city this morning that train No. 4, (the vestibuled) had been derailed a short distance east of Hinton, and the investigation by the ADVERTISER shows that there was an accident to this train, but not so bad as at first rumored.
At about 5 o’clock this morning the train ran into a rock, which had rolled on the track from the mountain above, two miles east of Hinton. The train was running at good speed, and the collision caused the engine and express and postal cars to be derailed. The engine was badly damaged, and in overturning caught the engineer, George Alley, of Clifton Forge, well known here, in some of the machinery, breaking his right arm and scalding him so severely that he died six hours after the accident occurred.
Two firemen, who were on the engine were also scalded but sustained no other injuries. No one else, either of the crew or passengers, was injured, though all of them had a shaking up and a bad scare. No particular damage was done to the passenger cars and at 9:30 the track was cleared and the train started east.”
Since the end of the 19th century, the themes of railroads and trains became a important part of american folk songs, particulary songs about train wrecks. The most famous of them all would be “The wreck of the old 97″, thanks to his numerous recordings by popular and hillbilly musicians in the 1920’s and 1930’s. “Engine 143″ (also called “The Wreck on the C & O” or “The FFV”) was also a popular “train wreck” song, one that was part of the oral tradition and continued to live through recordings, particulary the one by The Carter Family, which became the most well-known version of the song until today. It seems that this ballad, that carried the memory of the tragic death of engineer George Alley, was full of little details that were not true at all to the real story. In his study of american railroad songs, “Long Steel Rail”, Norm Cohen enumerates them: “George Alley’s mother did not come to him with a basket on her arm, as she had died years before; George’s hair was straight and black, not golden or curly; Jack Dickenson was not on the engine at the time (and it has not been explained who he was and how he became implicated in the ballad; the engine was numbered 134, not 143; George’s fireman did not have time to wave goodbye to him, nor did he jumped into the river…; George’s mother did not come to his side as he was dying; his last words were very likely “Are they coming?” rather than “Nearer my God to Thee”. The Carter Family’s version, in fact did not carry all the details of the longer ballad but focused more on the heroic death of the engineer.
-For a complete study of the song, see “Long Steel Rail” by Norm Cohen
-On this page, you’ll find the lyrics of all The Carter Family songs
-As i’ve said above, most of the recording versions of the songs since the 1940’s are “covers” of the Carter Family’s version, so you’ll hear Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Judee Still, The Kossoy Sisters, Townes Van Zandt among others doing “their” version of the Carter Family recording. For slightly different versions of the ballad, you’ll hear recordings by Ernst Stoneman, Roy Harvey, Austin Harmon, Doc Watson (and also his mother Annie singing a beautiful acapella version). Of interest also is Dave Von Rank doing a “parody” of the song and Robin Holcomb for a more contemporary reworking of the Carter’s version. And finally there are txo alternate version by the Carters themselves, one by A.P and Sara from the 1950’s and one with the young June Carter singing.
TRACK LIST
Fate Of George Allen On Engine 143,The Carter Family, from “The Acme Sessions 1952/56″
The Brave Engineer,Roy Harvey & The North Carolina Ramblers, from“Charlie Poole with The North Carolina Ramblers”
Engine 143, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, from ”I Stand Alone”
Engine 143, Barter Theatre, from“Keep On the Sunny Side: The Songs and Story of the Original Carter Family”
George Allen, Austin Harmon,from “Railroad songs & ballads:Library of congress recordings”
Engine 143, Johnny Cash,from “Complete Live At San Quentin / Orange Blossom Special”
Engine 143 (The Wreck On the C&O),Neil Woodward, from “Michigan’s Troubadour, Way of the Rail”
F.F.V, Doc Watson, from “Home Again!”
The Wreck of the FFV, Fast Flying Vestibule, Judee Sill, from “Dreams Come True – Hi – I Love You Right Heartily Here “
Engine 143,The David Grisman Bluegrass Experience, from “DGBX”
The Wreck On The C&O,Ernest V. Stoneman, from “The Unsung Father Of Country Music”
Engine 143,The Carter Family, from “On Border Radio – 1939″
Engine 143,The Shivers, from “Across the Blue Ridge”
The FFV, Annie Watson,from “Classic Railroad Songs from Smithsonian Folkways”
Engine 143,The Kossoy Sisters With Erik Darling, from “Bowling Green”
Engine 143, Joan Baez, from“Joan Baez, Vol. 2″
Engine 143,Robin Holcomb, from “The Big Time”
F.F.V., Townes Van Zandt, from“Delta Momma Blues”
Georgie on the IRT, Dave Van Ronk, from “Folkways Years, 1959-1961″
George Alley’s FFV, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs and The Foggy Mountain Boys, from “Folk Songs Of Our Land”
William Smith and his wife recorded four songs for Paramount in 1927. They were either from Texas or the Carolinas. William Smith was a kind of “guitar evangelist” with a percussive guitar style and a growling voice, much like Blind Willie Johnson and other singers from this period. Judging by the songs they recorded, they mixed topical songs with religious overtones with purely religious repertoire, but they could have been singing many other styles of music, like black street singers often do. The counterpoint voice of his wife who plays also with a sort of washboard all kind of percussive effects over William’s singing and repetitive guitar riffs give the Smiths a unique and raw sound unheard since then on records.
-I’ve compiled the four tracks the Smiths recorded with some performances by other “sanctified couples” or related style of music.
Enjoy and feel the Spirit!
TRACK LIST
“When That Great Ship Went Down” byWilliam & Versey Smith
“I Believe I’ll Go Back Home” byWilliam & Versey Smith
“Everybody Help The Boys Come Home” byWilliam & Versey Smith
“Sinner You’ll Need King Jesus” byWilliam & Versey Smith
“The ‘Titanic sank on Sunday, April 14, 1912. The following Sunday I saw on a train a blind preacher selling a ballad he had composed on the disaster. The title was “Didn’t that ship go down?”
The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was an event that made a big impression on people’s collective mind as it was one of the first in a serie of disasters in the modern world that showed the vulnerability of Man’s creation against God’s Creation, nature. Soon after the event, songs began to circulate and some were put in print on broadside papers. For many singers, the disaster was a kind of modern “tower of Babel”, God punishing man’s arrogance, especially among black singers who saw in the disaster God’s punishement for the segregational policies of the boat’s company (Black were not allowed on board). The most famous folk song about the Titanic was a song usually known as “When that great ship went down”. Despite his chorus “Wasn’t it sad when that great ship went down” the song was usually sang with an upbeat and joyous feeling, the ironic twist gave by the creators of the song, african-americans who were mocking white folks supremacy. Like in other folk ballads, there are key verses that helped memorize the song, for example: “…The rich would not ride with the poor..” “… the band was playing “Nearer my God to Thee”. It became with time a famous song to sing with children at camp-fires.
-For a more detailed article about the song, go to this page
-I’ve tried to include here all the best performances of “Titanic songs” that i know, restricting myself to music that is “folk related” (Blues,country and old-time music, yiddish song) and didn’t include any classical pieces or songs related to the popular James Cameron’s movie “Titanic”. For once i decided not to classified the performances into genres but mixed everything, so you can jump from a blues to an old-timey version, from an old recording to a contemporary performance, etc…I hope you’ll enjoy this as much as i did when putting all this tracks together…
TRACK LIST
PART ONE
The Titanic,Ernest Stoneman, from “People Take Warning”
The Great Ship Went Down, Cofer Brothers, from ”Georgia Stringbands Vol. 1″
Titanic Blues, Hi Henry Brown & Charlie Jordan, from “People Take Warning”
The Last Scene Of The Titanic,Frank Hutchison, from ”Complete Works Volume One”
The Great Titanic, Roy Acuff, from ”The Best Of…”
Titanic Blues, Virginia Liston, from “Virginia Liston Vol. 2 (1924-1926)”
The Titanic,Pete Seeger, from ”American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 3″
The Titanic,The Carter Family, from ”The Acme Sessions 1952/56″
The Great Titanic,A.L. Phipps and the Phipps Family, from “Phipps Family – Faith, Love and Tragedy”
The Great Titanic,Tom, Brad & Alice, from ”Been There Still”
Titanic Man Blues,Ma Rainey, from “Ma Rainey Vol. 3 (1925-1926)”
Titanic,Rolf Cahn, from “California Concert with Rolf Cahn”
Titanic,Bright Newton, from The Max Hunter Folksong Collection
Titanic,Bob Gibson, from ”The Riverside / Folklore Series Volume 1″
Titanic,Hans Theessink , from “Titanic”
Titanic,Dan Zanes, from ”Parades And Panoramas”
When That Great Ship Went Down,The Dixiaires, from ”The Greatest Spirituals, Vol. 2 (1946-1951)”
Titanic (When That Great Ship Went Down),Rory Block, from “Confessions of a Blues Singer”
Titanic,Spider John Koerner, from “Raised By Humans”
From all the Anthology artists, only a few were rediscovered during the Folk revival. Some were dead, some were unable to play music anymore, but some had a second career, thanks to the Anthology and the work of folk and blues entusiasts who looked after them and gave them a chance to perform and record again. Furry Lewis, Clarence Ashley and Dock Boggs notably, were took out of their hometowns and working life to make public performances all over the country and make new records. To all of them, their musical career had stopped during the Depression and couldn’t believe people had any interest about records they have made some 30 years ago. The most surprised of them all was Mississippi John Hurt, who by chance had recorded a few 78 rpm records at the end of the 1920’s in Memphis and New York, but apart from that, spent all his life working in the farms and fields around his hometown of Avalon, Mississippi. He was a kind of “back porch” musician, playing the guitar and singing mostly to entertain his family and neighbours, or maybe for a square dance he would accompany a fiddle player but had no ambition to make a career or something like that and it reflects in his music and the songs of his repertoire. Most of it was pre-blues black folk ballads and spirituals, all played with a ragtime feel, thanks to his alternating bass and gentle and melodic picking on the guitar. He was not a “Blues” singer in the usual sense but more of a “songster”, and his music reflects a time and style of country black music that precedes the “Blues” craze of the 1920’s, when most of the recorded black guitar singers were supposed to sing “Blues” mostly because that was what the record companies wanted to sell to the public.
We’re lucky that on his recording session in New York in the 1920’s, John Hurt sang a song he made about “Avalon, my hometown…” that reflect his longing for home as he was away for the first time, finding himself so displaced and lonely in the big city. Thanks to this song, Tom Hoskins, a young Blues enthousiast who discovered Hurt’s music like many others on the Anthology in the 1960’s, could manage to find him in 1963 in Avalon, still farming and working hard to feed his many children and grand-children. From then until his death in 1967, he became a much-loved figure of the Blues and Folk scene, charming everyone with his gentle manners and his delicate songs. He was the perfect “grandfather” of the Folk Revival, the “patriarch of the hippies” as someone called him. During these 4 years, he made numerous public performances at festivals and coffee shops, recorded many new albums and influenced many youngsters to pick the guitar in his style, a legacy that is still alive today, more than 40 years after his death (just take a look on Youtube and see how many acoustic guitarists try to recreate his arrangements).
-There are numerous places on the web where you can read about him but this page is a good place to start, giving a discography and a list of good links.
-I offer you now the 13 tracks John Hurt recorded in the 1920’s and will later make a compilation of my personnal favorite performances from the 1960’s that i’ll post when we get to his “Spike Driver Blues” at the end of the Anthology.
(This download will be available only for a short period of time, as MJH records are easily available elsewhere, so try to support the small record companies like Yazoo and Rounder records by buying their reissues, with great liner notes and photographs)
Here’s a short one shot during the Newport Folk Festival
You really have to see him play and talk to realize what a sweet human being he was…
-MJH was the first Anthology artist that i listened, long before i discovered the Anthology itself and like many others, was captivated by his guitar playing and did my best to learn it. Stefan Grossman was a precious help during those years i learned to pick the “Country Blues” on the guitar with his instructional books and later on videos (most of it is available on dvd now). Have a visit to his Guitar Worshop’s website.
The Frankie Variations
“NEGRO SHOT BY WOMAN“
Allen Britt, colored, was shot and badly wounded shortly after 2 o’clock yesterday morning by Frankie Baker, also colored. The shooting occurred in Britt’s room at 212 Targee Street, and was the culmination of a quarrel. The woman claimed that Britt had been paying attentions to another woman. The bullet entered Britt’s abdomen, penetrating the intestines. The woman escaped after the shooting.”
- St Louis Globe-Democrat, October 16, 1899.
With “Frankie and Johnny” (the most usual name of the song) we have a fine example of a folk song that entered the world of popular music via writers and composers of Tin Pan Alley (and later via Hollywood movies) who reshaped the old song and made a new version that became “the” version that everybody sang, included folksingers. How old and from which event came the original “Frankie and Albert” (The change to Johnny as the man’s name was made by Tin Pan Alley writers. Johnny sounded more good for them than Albert) was well debated over the years between scholars and folk music writers. Some said it goes back as far as the Civil War but the first printed versions were all from the early 20th century. The original ballad was of course inspired by the story of Frankie Baker, a young black girl who killed her lover Allen “Al” Britt in St-Louis in 1899 because he was flirting with another girl, Alice Pryor (it’s easy to see how “Al Britt” became ”Albert”, less for the girl’s name, who becomes Nellie Blye or Alice Frye, etc…) But an older version could have derived from a 1832 famous murder case, the murdering of Charles Silver by her wife Frances. Murder ballads sometimes are being changed in the course of time to fit a new event, to something people could relate more easily. It is said that soon after Frankie Baker got arrested for the murder of her lover, people started to “sing the news” in the streets, selling printed ballads about the affair. The first version of the song was called simply “Frankie killed Allen” and was composed by Bill Dooley a St.Louis pianist. Like the 5 dollar Stetson hat in the “Stackolee” ballad, the song displays some little details, real or invented, that hit the imagination of the listeners. Almost every version tells about a “hundred dollar suit of clothes” that Frankie bought to her man, her 44 gun hidden in her clothes, how many bullets she shot at him, the sound of the shot gun (Root toot toot) and so on…And of course, the leitmotiv phrase of the song “He was her man but he done her wrong”. Like in the traditionnal english ballads, it’s the sum of all this little details that makes the story memorized by the singers,and keep the old story alive, as if every singer who sing them can live the events once again. In the beginning it was popular mostly with afro-americans in the South but whites learned it soon from recordings of the popular Tin Pan Alley’s versions, except maybe for appalachian musicians who all heard black folk music and sang their own version of the song which is a bit different in the melody, usually under the name “Frankie Baker” (Listen to Tommy Jarrell, Fred Cockerham,Louise Foreacre and the Virginia Mountain Boys on my compilation, their versions are quite similar). The popularity of the song never decreased and became the subject of theater plays, movies, books. The universal themes of love, betrayal and murder coupled with a simple Blues structure, catchy words and melody made it the most common folk song played by american musicians and singers in the 20th century. Over the years it was shared by jazz players, rock n’roll teenage bands, folk singers, country and hilbilly musicians, Bluesmen, lounge singers. If there ever was a song that is public domain, this is it…
-First of all, you have to read the excellent essay by Paul Slade, which tells us in details about the life of Frankie Baker and how the popularity of the song followed her all her life. He gives us also a detailed filmography of all the movies inspired by the song.(Read also his “Stackolee” essay)
-You can go to this Wikipedia page to read more in detail about the song and also here for a discography and 10 different lyrics versions.
-I compiled for you 60 variations, presenting all the different musical genres that used the song. I restricted myself to versions i really loved or thought as important, of course there are many more and i maybe forgot to include “your” favorite version. If so, tell me about it in the comments… (The different categories are just guidelines and many tracks could have fit in more than one genre)
Part 1:Blues
1.Frankie And Albert – First Half, Lead Belly, from “Leadbelly Vol. 1 1939-1940″
2.Frankie And Albert – Completion, Lead Belly, from “Leadbelly Vol. 1 1939-1940″
3.Frankie & Albert, Charley Patton, from “Complete Recordings: 1929-1934″
4.Frankie And Albert (Cooney And Delia),Booker T. Sapps & Roger Matthews, from “Field Recordings Vol. 7: Florida (1935-1936)”
5.Frankie And Johnny (The Courtroom Scene), Whistlin’ Alex Moore, from “Whistlin’ Alex Moore (1929-1951)”
6.Frankie And Johnny (The Shooting Scene), Whistlin’ Alex Moore, from “Whistlin’ Alex Moore (1929-1951)”
7.Frankie And Johnny, J. Wilson, from “Field Recordings Vol. 1: Virginia (1936-1941)”
8.Frankie And Albert, Jewell Long, from “Rural Blues Vol. 2 (1951-1962)”
9.Frankie and Albert, Mance Lipscomb, from “Captain, Captain!”
10.Frankie And Albert, Joe Callicot, from “Ain’t A Gonna Lie To You”
11.Frankie and Johnny, John Jackson, from “The Harry Smith Connection: A Live Tribute to the Anthology”
12.Frankie and Johnny, Big Bill Broonzy, from “Classic African American Ballads”
13.Frankie And Johnnie, Furry Lewis, from “Shake ‘Em On Down”
14.Frankie & Johnny, Patent Medicine, from “Songbook, Vol. 4″
15.Frankie and Johnny, Toby Walker, from “Just Rolled In”
16.Frankie and Albert, Mississippi John Hurt, from “Friends Of Old Time Music”
With this blog, i want to use the Folkways Anthology as a roadmap to explore american folk music and maybe other countries traditions along the way. I’ ll use texts, images, music and videos gathered from my personal collection and from the net to make this work-in-progress enjoyable and educationnal the best i can. Any suggestions, additional informations, comments and critics are welcome…
The song who close the “Ballad” volume on the Anthology can be describe as a humorous Mountain Blues describing the bad luck of a farmer that push him to move to town. It seems that the song was the creation of The Carolina Tar Heels themselves as i can’t find no other recordings apart from “covers” of the Tar Heels version by revivalist old-time bands. But the theme of the poor farmer and his struggles to survive during hard times can be found in many other songs…So i made a little compilation of songs with this theme, including some covers of “Farm land Blues”.
The Boll weevil, a little insect that feeds on cotton buds and flowers, originated in Mexico and migrated to the U.S in the late 19th century.First in the Texas area and then all across the South, it destroyed the cottonfields and plantations and caused the migration of thousands of farmers and field workers toward the northern big cities. It became the subject of many songs in the 20th century but the most famous of this “Boll weevil” songs present a rather humourous dialogue between a farmer and the little bug and the chorus most of the time, repeats the phrase “Looking for a home”. Folklorists think the song originated with black people and one of the older version is the one Charley Patton sang in his 1929 recording “Mississippi Bollweavil Blues”. It was sometimes sung in a manner of a “field holler” by blacks but Leadbelly’s version, which has the “looking for a home” chorus became the most famous, the one many folksingers sang during the Folk revival.
Walter “Furry” Lewis, born in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1893 was a superb country blues singer and a versatile guitar player with a relaxed and sponatenous style. He spent most of his life in the city of Memphis, Tennessee, which was a rich musical center for african-americans in the first decades of the 20th century. He learned his skills on the road with medecine shows, on mississippi riverboats, streets and clubs, playing music with W.C Handy’s orchestra, but settled down in Memphis after loosing one leg as he was hopping a train. On Beale street he would meet and play with many fine Memphis musicians like Gus Cannon,members of the Memphis Jug Band, Jim Jackson etc…He recorded more than 20 sides between 1927 and 1929 but as the Depression put a stop to record sales, he returned to work as a street sweeper around Beale Street. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he had a “second career” in the sixties, thanks to the “Anthology” and the Folk/Blues revival. It was Samuel Charters, the great music researcher and writer, that found him and record him first a the end of the Fifties.When Charters first met with Furry, he hadn’t play music for more than 20 years and dind’t even own a guitar. But when the “Blues” is in you, it stays forever and when he returned to play, his natural talent for playing and singing the Blues was unchanged, maybe he was a little bit slower on the guitar but his music gained in emotion and power with age. He would fingerpick or play with a bottleneck, depending on his mood and the song, the music flowing from him, in a natural and almost improvisationnal way.He became a prominent figure on the Blues and Folk festivals, made numerous new recordings,opened shows for the Rolling Stones and other rock stars and was the only country blues singer of his generation gaining popular attention, without changing his repertoire, deeply rooted in the african-american tradition of rags and blues. He died in 1981, at the age of 88.
Soon after the fatal train collision that killed engineer John Luther Jones (he was nicknamed “Casey” because he was from the town of “Cayce”, Kentucky) on april 30, 1900, heroic tales of his death started to be told across the South. When he was living, Jones already had a growing reputation among railroad folks for his trademark whistle (every engineer at this time could make his own whistle) and for his aptitude at being always on time. After his death, he became a real heroic figure and the song about him helped to carry his memory over the years.
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