Happy 14 juillet (French National holiday)

Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli - Echoes of France (La Marseillaise, French national anthem) (buy) (1947)

Georges Brassens - La Mauvaise Réputation (buy) (1953)


July 14 (called Bastille day in English, althoug we never call it that way) is France's national holiday.

Tonight there'll be fireworks and "bals populaires", big balls for the people, generally held on every village/town big square or at the fire station (traditionally it's the firemen who are in charge of the dances).

Tommorrow will be the day of the big military parade on the Champs Elysées.

Georges Brassens, one of our greatest folk songwriters and poets (and my favorite French singer) says, in "La Mauvaise Réputation" (Bad Reputation) that "on the 14th day of July, I stay in my cosy bed / Marching music is none of my business"...

It's a great occasion to play old French music. This version of "La Marseillaise" (our national anthem) by Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli is my favorite by far, and, since it's an instrumental, you don't hear those agressive lyrics about war and blood.

Sometimes I tell myself that I should play more French music here, even though this blog is more about my love for American music. Don't hesitate to give comments if you liked those French songs, I could give you more. Sometimes, too, I wish that American people in general were a little bit more curious about other countries'cultures...

My bonus track : Boris Vian, a great songwriter, jazz critic, trumpet player and most of all, a fantastic author of novels, plays and short stories, begins this song (whose title can be translated as "We're not here to be given hell") with a humorous account of how he went to the military parade with his wife just to be held back by the police, and the way he protested (in a very French manner). In the next stanza the same guy goes home drunk with a friend and this time it's his wife that gives him hell, and hits him so hard with the rolling-pin that he ends up in heaven with his buddy, and once again they're turned back by St Peter. To which Vian answers "If you kick out the drunk, there must'nt be a lot of people left"... So the two of them go to hell, "and downstairs it was marvellous". The morale of the story : Protesting may prove fruitful in the long run...

Boris Vian - On n'est pas là pour se faire engueuler (buy) (1956)

Black ballads (3) : Railroad Bill and Kassie Jones, Heroes of the railway

Will Bennett - Railroad Bill (buy) (1929)

Furry Lewis - Kassie Jones (two parts) (buy) (1928)


On March 7, 1896, a man was shot at Tidmore and Ward’s general store in Atmore, Alabama (see photo above), and fell dead with 15 bullets in his body. The authorities and newspapers identified him as Railroad Bill, the famous outlaw who had been robbing trains in the Louisville to Nashville (L&N) railroad line and around, and murdered (at least) a lawman and 2 sheriffs that ware sent after him. You can find his whole story here at the Encyclopedia of Alabama, and an account of his death here at Lady Muleskinner Press.

Railroad Bill soon became a hero, especially to African Americans, who saw him as a symbol of rebellion against white power in these hard times of increasing segregation. He was said to be a sort of Robin Hood, selling stolen goods to the poor at a cheap price, and as a trickster and even a shapeshifter, able to turn into a dog or a fox when he was hunted. As Paul Oliver writes in his book Songsters and Saints :

Railroad Bill was the bad man/hero who was admired and feared by the black community; the outlaw on whom could be projected the challenge to the dominant whites, which, in a troubled time, they were too afraid to make themselves.

Ballads about Railroad Bill started circulating around 1900, and in 1929 Will Bennett, an unknown songster, recorded the most famous afro-american version in Tennessee. He puts himself in the place of the outlaw with a long description of his weapons, exactly like a gangsta rapper of the 1980's...

Kassie Jones (or Casey Jones, see photo above) was another great hero of the railway and subject of numerous ballads. He was the opposite of Railroad Bill : a white ingeneer who died in 1900 at the controls of his machine in a collision with another train while speeding to make up for lost time.

As he did for "John Henry" and the ballads on the Harry Smith anthology, Gadaya at The Old Weird America made a great post about Kassie Jones, including Lewis'bio, the whole story of the events depicted in the song and the history of the Casey Jones ballad. You can also find 50 different versions of the song !

Go to the Kassie Jones post on Old Weird America and find 40 different versions

While white singers emphasized the heroic behavior of the engineer and made him a symbol of self-sacrifice (he stayed at the control trying to stop his train and asked his fireman to jump to safety), the Furry Lewis version, which is the first recorded by an Afro-American, is quite different. Furry Lewis was an ex-hobo who had lost the use of a leg while trying to get on board of a train in his youth.

If you look at Furry Lewis' version (see here the lyrics of the traditional "white" ballad and the Furry Lewis version) it is not a chronological account of the facts but a sort of "stream of consciousness", jumping from the story to the narrator's point of view and to verses that seem to have no relation to Casey Jones and are borrowed from other ballads. The emphasis is not only on Kassie (who becomes almost a secondary character) but also on the figure of the "easeman" or "eastman", the narrator. Here's the final stanza :

I left Memphis to spread the news
Memphis women don't wear no shoes
Had it written in the back of my shirt
Natural born Eastmen don't have to work
Don't have to work
I'm a natural born Eastman, don't have to work

which makes Paul Oliver write :

The Eastman, or easeman, was a hustler, who lived by his wits, and, most often, as a pimp. Perhaps because the principal figure was white, perhaps because he died at the throttle straining to make up time, Casey Jones seems not to have been an enduring hero-figure in black ballads compared with the popularity of the engineer in white songs. If the moral of the story to some white singers was a reckless attention to duty, Furry Lewis's insouciant final stanza makes it clear where he stood.

In fact, just like Will Bennett's "Railroad Bill", it is very typical of what Paul Oliver calls the "blues ballad". The words are improvised, only the general structure is pre-established, with stanzas and, in the case of "Railroad Bill", a one-line refrain. In every recording Furry Lewis did of "Kassie Jones", the words were different : some new stanzas appeared and some others were put in a different place. These traits are found in the blues too.

Will Bennett ends his "Railroad Bill" with stanzas about his alcoholism, which have nothing to do with the Railroad BIll story. It is, in a sense, very symbolical of how the blues was born. Songsters, in addition to playing the old ballads, started to sing about their personal experience. The blues is very often sung in the first person.

I guess I've told you enough for today...

PS : Let me add, as a bonus track for those who'll have read the whole text, a great cover of Kassie Jones by Rory Block, 70 years after !

Rory Block - Kassie Jones (buy) (1998)

Tejano Roots (4) : Valerio Longoria

Valerio Longoria - El Canoero (buy) (1989)

Lisandro Meza - Cumbia Pa'Oriente (buy)

Valerio Longoria - Pasa Tiempo (buy)(1963)

Valerio Longoria & Freddy Fender - Escarcha (buy)(1963)

Valerio Longoria (1924-2000, see his bio here) was an innovator in many many ways for Tejano conjunto. He was one of the first to sing while playing, and to do so while standing up on stage. He added new instruments to the traditional ensemble like a set of drums or the saxophone and bass guitar; he could repair his instrument and manipulate new sounds (by adding an extra row of buttons, by altering reeds and bass stops), an ability that made him, as AMG says "a Les Paul of the accordion".

He also added a lot of new genres to his repertoire, and especially "tropical" music styles like cuban bolero and cumbia from Colombia. The first song posted here, "El Canoero", recorded with his sons on bass and saxophone, is a typical cumbia, a genre originating in Columbia, as you can hear in the next track, "Cumbia Pa'Oriente" (by Colombian singer Lizandro Meza).

The next 2 songs are Cuban boleros, the first tropical genre to be recorded by traditional musicians both sides of the Mexican-American border (see my post about Lydia Mendoza). The second one is sung by hispanic country star Freddy Fender.
The appropriation of these styles brought a more sophisticated tone to Tejano music.

PS : For those who speak Spanish, two great articles about Mexican cumbia here (from a lecture by Mexican scholar José Juan Olvera) and here (a Wikipedia article about Mexican cumbia)

And you know what ? It definitely makes me want to get deeper into Latin music, so I'll post again about it, maybe going South from Texas to Mexico, and then South again.

Black balllads (2) : Jack Johnson and the Titanic : when the blues brought the news

Leadbelly - the Titanic (buy) (1948)


First I'd like to wish all my American readers a happy 4th of July. Please check out Darius'blog, Oliver di Place, for great Independance Day posts here.

Let's go on with our exploration of Afro American balladry. Yesterday I found this great Leadbelly song in a French compilation called Black Heroes : From Stagger Lee to Joe louis.
Another subject of ballads was the news, the real events (and not only legends). The sinking of the Titanic gave birth to hundreds of songs. As always, Gadaya made a great job of compiling the best Titanic songs in his blog.

When that great ship went down : the Titanic variations at Old Weird America

But what's also interesting in Leadbelly's song is the mention of Jack Johnson, not the singer, but the boxer, a true Afro American hero. He became heavyweight world champion in 1908 after defeating Canadian Tommy Burns who until then had refused to fight a black man. The legend has it that he wanted to board the Titanic but was turned back because, as Lead sings, the captain "didn't haul no coal".
Apart from that song, Jack Johnson is absent from folk songs, but Miles Davis dedicated an album to him in 1970.

Musically, the Leadbelly song is very close to this one by Johnnie Head, who only recorded 2 sides in 1928. With his kazoo and tenor voice, he must have come from a vaudeville/medicine show or even jazz background.

Johnnie Head - Fare thee Well (buy) (1928)

Other athletes (like boxer Joe Louis or baseball players Jackie Robinson or Larry Doby) were the heroes of folk songs, but there's a song I really like, that I also discovered in the Black Heroes compilation. I guess it's the perfect post for a 4th of July. It tells the story of how a poor Mississippi farmer called the White House in 1934 to save his mortgaged farm. Pdt Roosevelt himself picked up the phone and helped him.
The news went nation-wide and Memphis Minnie made a song out of it the following year.
Find more here about the story.

Memphis Minnie - Sylvester and his Mule Blues (buy) (1935)

Black ballads (1) : John Henry

Ed Cabbell - John Henry (from the Digital Library of Appalachia) (2000)

The Two Poor Boys - John Henry Blues (buy) (1931)

Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry - John Henry (buy) (1958)

Today we'll start a series of posts about Afro-American ballads, a musical form that came just before the blues. Ballads were derived from European sources (see previous posts about folk songs), but very soon in the 19th century American ballads emerged, and among them, the ballads of black folk-heroes. The songsters and itinerant musicians carried these songs all over the country, and soon they would evolve into blues, the main difference being that in the blues, singers tell their personal story.

John Henry is by far the most popular of the black ballads, and the most covered in many genres, by musicians of all origins.

First of all, if you want to know and hear more about John Henry, go to Gadaya's John Henry post on The Old and Weird America. My fellow French blogger from Britanny has made a wonderful work of picking no less than 100 versions of the song compiled in 4 different playlists that you can download. The result is amazing. You will also find useful links (including this site dedicated to JH) and a great review of the song.

For this blues oriented post, I only chose African American versions. John Henry was a steel driving man and the famous Big Bend episode told in the song, when he competed against a steam-powered drill, might have taken place in West Virginia. This Appalachian origin explains why the song was covered by countless country and bluegrass musicians.

Painting : Palmer Hayden

In the first version I posted, Ed Cabbell mentions this last fact with humor in his spoken intro, before performing the song a capella, the traditional, work-song way. One of the reasons why the song is so popular, beside the symbolism of its lyrics, was the melody, with its short phrases and pauses, that made it an ideal hammer song, as Paul Oliver states. And please click on the guy's name, you'll learn many intersting things (in short he's a scholar, activist and historian of the Afro American community in the Appalachian).

(Almost) Nothing is known about The Two Poor Boys, apart that they came from East Tennessee and recorded one session in 1931. We don't even know for sure if they were black or white, although I ( along with the majority of historians) really think they were the former, contrary to what Wikipedia says. Their version is interesting because it has a strong hillbilly heritage : the mandolin, the singing and the floatin verse "Who's gonna shoe your pretty little feet", taken from old English ballads. The two guys were probably songsters and played material of various origins. Read more about them here at American String Conspiracy, a great blog that sadly has gone dead.

The third rendition by Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry is an old favorite of mine, because it was in my father's collection when I discovered blues 25 years ago. I guess this is the version I hear in my head when I think about John Henry. The duo was from the Piedmont region, just like our hero.

Mississippi John Hurt - Spike Driver Blues (buy) (1928)

Cephas & Wiggins - Nine Pound Hammer (buy) (1996)

Those are the main 2 variants of the song I also wanted to post. The first is by Mississippi John Hurt, one of the best songsters ever recorded (We will soon come back to his amazing life story). Here the melodyic line, at least in the very first verses is about the same, but the story is a bit different. It's a sort of "post-John Henry" song where the worker prefers to leave than to go on working like this, as if Henry's death had changed something. It's also a symbol of the musician and songster's life, who prefers his freedom and independance to hard labor. Leadbelly did another great version of that song with his "Take This Hammer". Note that Lead used to boast he could pick a bale of cotton a day (an impossible job for one man) in a very John Henry-like attitude.

"Nine-Pound Hammer", first published as a "negro folk-song" in the 20s became a country and bluegrass hit for the Monroe Brothers, Merle Travis or Tennessee Earnie Ford. Cephas & Wiggins, a sort of modern McGhee-Terry duet from Virginia recorded it in 1996 for their beautiful album Cool Down

And what about you ? What's your favorite version of John Henry ? Tell me, please !
Consider checking Gadaya's post on OWA before. Merci Gadaya for your help as the main source of this post.

From Honolulu to Nashville : Hawaiian music and country

Hi, today we're going to the islands... And Btw, I'd love to read more comments from you guys. I mean you are 200 or more to come here everyday, and no one drops a line ? C'mon guys, don't be so shy, just tell me if you love the music here. Put gas in RI's engine !
I know it's not technically easy to leave comments, but maybe this will help.

Benny Nawahi - Maui No La Ka Hoi (buy) (1930)

Sol Hoopii - Hula Girl (buy) (1933)

The music played by Hawaiians in America had a tremendous influence on American popular music until World War II, and especially on country music, where steel guitars and yodels became a trademark.

Guitars were first introduced on the islands by Mexican vaqueros in the 19th century. In the years 1870-80, Hawaiian musicians invented a new way of playing guitar. By raising the nut they could play with the guitar lying flat on their lap, sliding a bottle or a piece of steel on the strings. The sounds produced matched their traditional way of singing. They played open chords and used countless different tunings.

The annexation of Hawaii in 1898 gave birth to a real passion in America. People were dreaming about these paradise islands, and the first tours by groups of musicians were hugely successful. The Bird of Paradise follies in 1904 in Broadway turned this fashion to a real craze.
Crowds were stunned by Hawaiian guitarists and singers, and their records sold by millions, making Hawaiian music a best-selling genre. Hawaiian musicians easily adapted their art to vaudeville, country, blues, and jazz.

It is mainly for them that American instrument makers from Central Europe (Dopeyra or Rickenbacher) created metallic guitars like the National or the Dobro.
The king of these guitar players was Sol Hoopii, a real genius and perhaps one of the best slide guitarists of the century. His only rival was King Benny Nawahi, who started to play on Trans-Pacific boats before settling in California.

Roy Smeck - Twelth Street Rag (buy) (1931)

Jimmie Rodgers - Everybody Does It In Hawaii (buy) (1929)

This revolutionary way of playing the guitar was soon imitated by many American musicians from the mainland, jazz men, bluesmen who sometimes, thanks to old African traditions like the diddley-bow, were already familiar with slide playing, and country guitarists.

The first blues record ever recorded by a man, "Guitar Rag", by Sylvester Weaver in 1923, was a Hawaiian-style instrumental. Leon McAuliffe, Bob Will's guitarist, did a great cover of it, "Slide guitar rag"; Cousin Jody with Roy Acuff, Jimmie Tarlton, Cliff Carlisle played or featured laptop steel guitars.

New York City multi-instrumentalist Roy Smeck (photo above) learnt steel guitar after seeing Sool Hoopii on stage, and became one of the most stunning virtuosos of the instrument, as you can hear on his version of "Twelth Steel Rag", a piece were jazz and swing meet country music.

Jimmie Rodgers, the "father" of country music, toured with a Hawaiian group of musicians in medicine shows before recording his first sides. His famous yodel is more Hawaiian than Swiss : the melodic line of his trademark yodel is the same as "Maui", (my first post). JImmie recorded two songs with Hawaiian guitarists Joe Kaipo and Charles Kama in 1929, including this "Everybody Does It In Hawaii".

Danny Stewart - Les Femmes d'Amérique (buy) (1937)

I have to thank, once again, Mr Gérard Herzhaft, French scholar and ethnomusicologist, who wrote a lot about the subject, and is the author of the great compilation Hawaiian Music : Honolulu - Hollywood - Nashville 1927-1944 (Frémeaux & Associés) featuring 4 of the 5 tracks I'm posting today.
He also wrote the liner notes (in French and English) that helped me a lot and and were my main source of information for this post. A shame that his encyclopedia of country and folk wasn't translated into English.

Last track I want to post is in French. Hawaiian music was big in my country too in the early 20th century, because of French Polynesia and the links we have with this part of the world. Les Femmes d'Amérique is a ballad originating in Tahiti (the main French Polynesian island) , here sung by Danny Stewart and played by Augie Goupil's band. Goupil was a Tahitian musician and bandleader working in Los Angeles. The chorus could be translated as :

American women are so pretty / But to have them, you've got to have dollars
While in Tahiti / You have them for nothing
Vive Tahiti / The land of love (le pays des amours)

A to Z : Derroll Adams (1925-2000)

Derroll Adams - Portland Town (live) (From the out of print Live album, 1976)

Derroll Adams - Oregon (buy) (1977)

Derroll Adams - Freight Train Blues (From the out of print Feelin' Fine album, 1972)

Derroll Adams was a very influential figure in the folk community in the sixties and seventies, but his recordings are scarce and hard to find. He's much more popular in europe than in his native country. A banjo player and singer, he led a unsteady life, marrying five times, changing jobs and homes (see his full biography). A left-wing sympathizer, he wrote anti-war songs like Portland Town, met Woody Guthrie and Rambling Jack Elliott in the fifties in California.

In 1957, he relocated to England, playing gigs and recording with Elliott in London.
Derroll stayed for good in Europe, marrying and settling in Brussels. He met Donovan in the mid-sixties in London and and became the subject of the younger singer's song, "Epistle to Derroll". He can be seen in Pennebaker's movie, Don't Look Back, introducing Dylan to Donovan.
Then his marriage broke again, and despite an album for Decca in 1967, his rebellious way of life, and serious bottle problems prevented him from pursuing a steady career.

In 1970, Derroll Adams married his fifth wife, and settled down in Antwerp, Belgium. He recorded several LPs (Check out his discography here), and gave countless gigs all over Europe until the late '80s. In 1990, folk musicians like Rambling Jack Elliott, Bert Jansch and Pentangle musicians came to Courtrai, Belgium, to celebrate Derroll's 65th birthday on stage.
In the 1990s, his health was failing and he turned to painting. He passed away in 2000 in Antwerp.

Belgian TV made what looks like a great documentary on Derroll. You can see three distinct videos on Youtube, including that one (I love what Arlo Guthries says about folk music at the end)

Did you know him ? And if you didn't, did you like what you've heard ? Please don't hesitate to give your comments, you've been quite silent, these days, but I know you come on a regular basis.