Dick Justice’s World:
Not much is known about Richard “Dick” Justice. Born in 1906 in West Virginia, he recorded only ten songs in 1929 for Brunswick Records in Chicago. From his recordings, we can tell he was very influenced by black Blues singers, especially Luke Jordan, from who he took his rendition of “Cocaine”, but he also sang songs that originated in the British Isles ballads tradition, like “One morning in May” and “Henry Lee”. On four of the ten sides he recorded, he play back guitar to the fiddle of Reese Jarvis. He also played music with fellow West-Virginian singer and guitar player Frank Hutchinson and they worked together in the coal mines of Logan County.
Here’s a one-hour compilation i made that includes all of Dick Justice’s recordings, a few tracks from his friend Frank Hutchinson and four tracks by Luke Jordan.
Tracks selection:
1.Henry Lee Dick Justice
2.Old Black Dog Dick Justice
3.Little Lulie Dick Justice
4.Brown Skin Blues Dick Justice
5.Cocaine Dick Justice
6.One Cold December Day Dick Justice
7.Guian Valley Waltz Dick Justice/Reese Jarvis
8.Poor Girl’s Waltz Dick Justice/Reese Jarvis
9.Poca River Blues Dick Justice/Reese Jarvis
10.Muskrat Rag Dick Justice/Reese Jarvis
11.The Miner’s Blues Frank Hutchison
12.Logan County Blues [1927] Frank Hutchison
13.The Chevrolet Six Frank Hutchison
14.Cumberland Gap Frank Hutchison
15.The Deal Frank Hutchison
16.K.C. Blues Frank Hutchison
17.Pick Poor Robin Clean (Take 1) Luke Jordan
18.Cocaine Blues Luke Jordan
19.Won’t You Be Kind Luke Jordan
20.My Gal’s Done Quit Me Luke Jordan
DOWNLOAD “DICK JUSTICE’S WORLD” (zip file)
Here’s a funny cartoon illustrating Dick Justice’s Cocaine
The Henry Lee Variations
The opening song of the Anthology, “Henry Lee” is an americanized version of an old ballad from the British Isles called “Young Hunting” (It goes with other names as well, like many aural folk songs). At the end of the 19th century, the american scholar and folklorist Francis J. Child published “The English and Scottisch popular ballads”, an enduring work that gathered and compiled songs transmitted orally from generation to generation, some dating back to the Middle-Ages. Most of the songs came to the United States via immigrants from the British Isles. A lot of them settled in the appalachian mountains and kept the memory of this songs alive.
The first selections in the Anthology, as Harry Smith wrote in the handbook, are all derived from Child Ballads, each one having a particular number, and with Smith’s obsession with numerical orders, he choosed the one with the lowest number in his list (Child n;68) to open the set. Like many other ballads of this type, the subject is betrayed love and murder. In fact, it’s now common to call them “Murder Ballads”.
-Go here to read an interesting article about this song and have the lyrics
-Here’s 14 selected performances of this haunting ballad:
1. Henry Lee by Dick Justice (The original selection and the opening track of the Anthology)
2.Lowe Bonnie by Jimmie Tarlton (Another american variant recorded in the same period)
3.Young Henerly by Maggie Hammons Parker (An unaccompanied performance recorded by Alan Jabbour for the Library of Congress in the seventies)
4.Lady Margot & Love Henry by John Jacob Niles ( From his album “Ballads”)
5.The False True Love by Shirley Collins ( accompanying herself on the 5-string banjo, from her first album “False true lovers”)
6.Love Henry by Tom Paley ( From his duet album with Peggy Seeger in the sixties; I think Bob Dylan’s version is based on this, al least that’s what he wrote on the liner notes of “World gone wrong”)
7.Loving Henry Lee by Miriam Stafford, Rita Weill & Janet Smith (from the lp “Berkeley farms: Old-time & country style music of Berkeley” recorded by Mike Seeger and issued on Folkways in the sixties)
8.Love Henry by Martin Simpson (from “Kind Letters”)
9.Young Hunting by Brian Peters (the more traditionnal version by this fine english folksinger and musician)
10.Love Henry by Bob Dylan (from “World gone wrong”)
11.Henry Lee by Peggy Seeger (from “Heading for home”)
12.Henry Lee by Nick Cave & P.J Harvey (from Nick Cave’s “Murder Ballads”)
13.Henry Lee by Shearwater (a moving version from this indie-folk band)
14.Love henry by Jolie Holland (from her last album “The living and the dead”)
DOWNLOAD THE HENRY LEE VARIATIONS ZIP FILE
Nick Cave’s new version of the song is beautiful and haunting.
See his famous rendition in duet with P.J Harvey with this superb clip on Youtube
Ok, it’s surely not the Henry Lee we’re talking about but it’s fun to see young June Carter with his sisters and Mother Maybelle on this clip
