Sounds Of the South (4) : American Folk Songs For Children

Almeda Riddle - My Little Rooster (1959)

In my modest opinion, the fourth disc in the box set Sounds Of The South is musically speaking the least interesting, although it has an undeniable documentary value.
Most of the performers were already present on the previous cds, but there are newcomers like Almeda Riddle (photo above), an unacompanied folk singer from Arkansas who sings 5 old nursery rhymes in a traditional way.
Among them "My little Rooster", "Frog Went a-Courting" or "Go Tell Aunt Nancy", a song that French singer Dick Annegarn adapted in 1999.

There are also a few bluegrass songs, blues by Fred McDowell or harmonica player Forrest City Joe. But my favorite one is by Bessie Jones and was recorded in the Georgia Sea Islands.

Bessie Jones & Group - Johnny Cuckoo (1959)

You'll notice, of course, the difference in singing between both performers.

And there is one more by the wonderful Estil C. Ball, here with his wife Orna fo a delicious "Paper of Pins" that I uncluded here in a post I made for Star Maker Machine about questions and marriage.

Now, the surprise. I don't do that usually but here I'll post the whole box set, given that it is out of print.

Sorry, all I have is a file and not the physical box set, so I can't give you any photos or liner notes. You may find the covers at Amazon.

DOWNLOAD HERE the full Disc 1 of Sounds Of The South : Sounds of the South - Blue Ridge mountain Music (97MB)

HERE Sounds Of The South Disc 2 : Roots of The Blues - The Blues Roll On (97MB)

HERE Sounds Of The South Disc 3 : Negro Church Music - White Spirituals (92MB)

HERE Sounds Of The South Disc 4 : American Folk Songs For Children (92MB)

Sounds Of The South : Spirituals

Vera Hall - Trouble So Hard (1959)

I've always wondered what would all these musicians from 50 years ago or more have thought if they'd knew that their recordings would still be heard in the 21st century, studied by scholars in universities in the whole world.

So imagine Vera Hall (see picture above), wife of a coal miner from Livingston, Alabama, recorded by Lomax fifty years ago, learning she sung on an international smash hit in 1999...

So here we go gain with our Sounds of the South antholgy, dedicated today to religious music, with black and white spirituals. Sadly this great box set is out of print, but wait until the next (and final) post and you might get a special bonus..

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning (1959)

Fred McDowell (above with his wife) is one of -if not THE- biggest discoveries of Alan Lomax. Lomax and Shirley Collins met him with his wife in the Como area, after visiting the Hemphill and Young families. They were struck by his talent, his pure Delta blues slide guitar playing. The guitar is another voice that responds to the singer, sometimes finishing verses, in the same style as Blind Willie Johnson, the Texas preacher, a way of playing that was common before the war.

Viola James and Congregation - Is There Anybody Here Who Loves My Jesus (1959)

Reverend G.I. Townsel - A Sermon Fragment (1959)

Attending mass in the ageing, Catholic churches of France is a gloomy thing most of the times. People barely sing, the hymns are boring as hell. Always makes me wish I was in a baptist church in Mississippi listening and singing with Viola James or in Alabama with Reverend G.I. Townsel. (Not that I go to church so often, now it is only for the occasional wedding or baptism, I confess). I really can't imagine any catholic priest engaging in a sermon like Rev. Townsel !!!

Alabama Sacred Harp Singers - Cavalry (1959)

Sacred harp singing is one of the most spectacular forms of hymn singing, especially in the Southern states. Still practised nowadays (see picture above), its most famous ambassadors were the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers recorded in 1942 and here in 1959. If it is much more formal and written than the black hymns and sermons we heard before, it is not less passionate and beautiful.

In the last post about Sounds of The South you heard a song by Virginia singer and fingerpicker Estil C. Ball. He was a very religious man who later recorded a lot of spirituals. So we'll quit with his rendition of "When I Get Home", with his friend. His guitar playing is typical of Piedmont, same as Doc Watson's. Something that strikes me is how much prewar religious songs were obsessed by death, seen as a relief from this world. An idea totally alien to our Western modern (and sometimes fake or exaggerated) optimism.

Estil C. Ball & Blair Reedy - When I Get Home (1959)

DOWNLOAD HERE the full Disc 3 of Sounds Of The South (92MB)

Sounds Of The South (1) : country

Neil Morris & Charley Everidge - Banks of The Arkansas/Wave The Ocean (buy) (1959)

I told you in a previous post that you'd soon hear again about Sounds Of The South, a 4-CD box set of field recordings made by Alan Lomax during his journeys in 1959 with Shirley Collins. The material on this compilation already appeared on 7 lps that were published in 1960.

I've heard the first 2 cds so far, and they are a goldmine, as I expected. I'll focus on the first one today (called Sounds Of The South & Blue Ridge Mountain Music), and especially on the country tunes, that stand for 17 of the Cd's 28 tracks.

The first song (above) is a traditional medley played by two musicians from Mountain View area in Arkansas, Neil Morris & Charley Everidge. The latter is the one on the mouthbow, an instrument of possible African origin with that incredible sound (especially when it's played by White musicians)

There's another great recording of Neil Morris alone, giving his very own interpretation of the murder of Jesse James. The spoken introduction is great, the song, a little less.

Neil Morris- Jesse James (buy) (1959)

Now, an interesting version of "The Farmer's Curst Wife", a song that you can find in Harry Smith anthology as "The Old Lady And The Devil". It is hung here by Estil C. Ball (see picture above), a folk and gospel singer from Rugby, VA.
Lomax had recorded him as early as 1941. Ball was a bus driver by trade, and recorded a couple of lps for County and Rounder, often singing with his wife, mostly gospel songs, but also ballads like this one. I'll probably come back to him in a future gospel post.

Estil C. Ball – The Farmer's Curst Wife (1959)

Let's stay in the Old Dominion with a bluegrass group called The Mountain Ramblers from Galax, VA. If, like me, you've never heard of them before, please read their AMG bio.

First a "straight" electric country band, they went bluegrass and acoustic after a few shifts of musicians. The Mountain Ramblers are a cult band, which never recorded "commercialy" but had a tremendous influence through the Lomax records. Or at least that's what Eugene Chadbourne at AMG says. I suspect him of exageration, especially when he says they "are considered as important to the early beginnings of bluegrass as the first records by mandolinist Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys", but maybe I'm wrong..

The Mountain Ramblers - Big Tilda (1958)

Lomax was as enthousiastic, writing that "In my opinion they stand for a new wave of American music, far more important than the city folkniks, the Paris-oriented longhairs, the selfconscious 'cool' men and the weary technicians of Tin Pan alley. They have a new orchestral form to play with and a mature singing style, and they are enjoying themselves."

I'm not (yet ?) a specialist of bluegrass history, but I know that Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs had started to record bluegrass in the late 1940s, so more than 10 years before. But Chadbourne says that the Lomax Lp was the first bluegrass record imported in Australia, for instance.

Anyway, the Mountain ramblers didn't seem to be aware of that. According to the AMG bio, "The band was recorded in 1958 by Alan Lomax, out on one of his many music gathering and recording explorations. He was fortunately able to record tracks featuring the group with its prime lineup of players. Well, almost. Bluegrass or folk music enthusiasts would invariably nod their heads knowingly at the mention of Lomax, but to some members of this group he meant nothing and in fact, guitarist Herb Lowe said he would rather go to a dance than waste time hanging around a recording session. As a result, these recordings feature a substitute guitarist, the young Eldridge Montgomery. It was his first performance with a group of any kind, so the praise that normally is bestowed on these Mountain Ramblers tracks should be doubled to count for this obvious handicap."

The Mountain Ramblers - John Henry (1958)

Hobart Smith has already appeared here in the fife and quills post . A "sadly overlooked master of Appalachian folk music" (AMG), he was a multi-instrumentist playing banjo, guitar, piano and the fiddle, as here. I usually find solo fiddle pieces a bit boring, but this one is fantastic. You can't help stamping your feet in unison.

Hobart smith - John Brown (1958)

That's all folks for today. There are still 2 records to explore (and maybe the 13 volumes of the "Southern Journey" collection at Rounder, not to mention the rest of the Lomax collection there).

DOWNLOAD HERE the full Disc 1 of Sounds Of The South (97MB)

Fife and drums (2) : The Young Brothers by Alan Lomax

Ed Young & Brothers - Chevrolet (buy) (1959)


I finally got the "Sounds Of The South" boxset with recordings by Alan Lomax and it's a goldmine.

The Young brothers recordings I told you about in a previous post
are in my collection now, and I have to say that I agree with the guy who wrote that it's the best f&d band Alan Lomax recorded. And they sing ! And it's way better recorded than Lomax's previous tracks from 1942.

So here is the passage refering to the Young brothers performance in Lomax's book The Land Where The Blues Began :

He always danced as he played, his feet sliding along flat to the ground to support his weaving pelvis, enticing someone in the crowd to cut it with him, turning this way and that, always with dragging feet and bent knees, and always leaning toward the earth.
His brothers Lonnie and G.D. Young played with him, Lonnie at the tail of the orchestra beating the bass drum, and G.D., a tiny sprite of a man –like a little dried-up ginger root and just as peppy- on the snare drum. Once you looked closely, you saw that the mainspring of the action was Lonnie and his bass drum. Lonnie was tall, lean as a country hound, with a flat, shiny roach of hair on top, always laughing quietly and, when his drumsticks were breaking out, always dancing. Movements flowed from Lonnie's midsection throughout his body. He played the lead in the band's polyrhythm, his padded sticks making a low, murmurous, but heated comment on the squeals of Ed Young's fife, as G.D. Young, the little brother of the bunch, riffled the snare drum. They went in for subtle stuff, quiet stuff. They capered without lifting their feet; their shoulders, belly, and buttocks separately twitched to the beat.

Ed Young & Brothers - Jim and John (buy) (1959)

The dance, as you might suppose, began at once, the Young brothers supplying the music, and as participants there were wives, flirting half-grown daughters, cousins, kids, neighbors drifting in -all experts at the Delta slow drag. The chocolate tape was sliding off the reels and across the silver recording heads, while the needles on two meters jumped to the beat in the face of the big Ampex. This was 1959 and I finally had German mikes and a Cadillac of a recorder and I was doing stereo - the first stereo field recordings made in the South. You should hear the recordings – for me, a life's dream realized.

I love Alan Lomax, especially when he gets lyrical...

As I told you, fifes and quills were progressively replaced by a more powerful, more expressive competitor : the harmonica. After recording the Young bros, Lomax went to Arkansas where he found Forrest City Joe, a bluesman who played the harp with a band in the Sonny Boy Williamson style. Check out this great solo performance :

Forrest City Joe - Levee Camp Remiscence (buy) (1959)

Then after that, Alan tried to go to the Black part of town in West Memphis to find more musicianq, but immediately got busted and thrown out of town by two threatening cops. That was Arkansas in 1959...

Anybody interested in more Sounds of the South tracks ? Please let me know. It's a hard to find record and it costs like 200 bucks on Amazon ...

You can DOWNLOAD HERE the full Disc 2 of Sounds Of The South (97MB)

Fifes and quills

Flutes or pipes are not very common in blues recordings, because in the 1920s they were already part of the past, and had been replaced by the harmonica. In the blues, there are of two sorts :

The quills

Everybody with an interest in music should read Land Where The Blues Began by Alan Lomax.
When Alan Lomax came first to the hill country near Senatobian, in northern Misssissippi, in 1942, he met Sid Hemphill, a multi-instrumentist, born around 1876. Hemphill showed him the quills, "a set of hollow canes of varying lengths, bound together with the tops even". They are the same instrument as the Greek or Romanian panpipes, or the Inca's rondador. The quills were of various sizes, 4-tube to 10-tube for Sid.

In my first post about Indians and the blues, I'd put a recording of Sid Hemphill playing the quills in a fashion that called back to his African and Indian roots.

"Them's the quills...that's old folks' music. Music of olden time. Back yonder almost everybody used to play on quills. Now, ain't hardly common no more."

Henry Thomas : Old Country Stomp (buy) (Chicago, june 1928)

Another great quills player was Henry Thomas, who recorded 25 sides for Columbia in 1928. Being born in the 1870s, like Sid Hemphill, he was one of the oldest blues musicians ever recorded. The song above is an old square dance tune from the 19th century.

Read more about the quills here in this great Web page by a guy named Norm Sohl.
Ed at the great blog The Blue bus made also a great post about the quills.

The fife or fice



In Land Where The Blues Began there is this great description of Napoleon Strickland making his fife :

Majesterially, he draws the red-hot poker out of the coals and, holding up a section of cane, says, " Now this is something you go fishing with, but I'm gonna fix it so it will make music." He puts the cane down on the floor and, holding it steady with his foot, burns the first finger hole into the barrel, then puts the poker into the coals again. " Now I'm gonna show you how I make it sing."
He holds the flute uo to his lips and licks the place where he will blow it. Then he burns in that hole. Next he licks his other fingers and spreads them along the barrel, locating the other finger holes in accordance with his normal way of spreading his hand along the barrel when he plays. These tuning points are marked with spit. He nicks the chosen witted points with his big clasp knife - "See, I takes my knife and I swings each one of them out."
"How far apart do you put the holes ?"
"About half an inch, I think"
Here we witness black magic. No micrometer, not even a ruler or a pattern, has controlled the tuning of his fife. The finger holes are simply set a comfortable and familiar distance apart, where his fingers naturally fall when he's playing. He carefully burns out and enlarges these holes, one after another. He delicately touches the end of the cane. "When the sound come out this end, you got it made." Napoleon opines. "Now I'm gonna burn the jintes out of the cane." So saying, he pushes the red-hot poker up the barrel of the new fife, and as he burns through each joint of the cane, delicate notes of smoke rise in the kitchen air. Withdrawing the poker, he blows the barrel of the fife clear of smoke, shavings, and cinders. He rubs the cane to cool it off. "Now," he says proudly and with his widest grin, "here's the fice, and i'll do it like this."

Of course, fife is often accompanied with drums (and I soon will post about that style).
Ed Young was another fife player that Lomax met on his hill country trips. Here is a improvised version of "Joe Turner" he recorded with white banjo player Hobart Smith.

Ed Young & Hobarth Smith : Joe Turner (buy)



(this photo and the first one were taken by Alan Lomax).