What Album Have You Just Bought?

[DzM]

Alan Lomax Collection
Prison Songs v. 1 & 2

Collected recordings of Southern prison work gangs singing (same style as Po Lazarus from O' Brother Where Art Thou), plus some interviews with the inmates. It's fascinating, and sad, and uplifting. The parts I find particularly hard to listen to are the interviews. The inmates are so deferential. "Well boss, let me think on that..."

[KathleenwithaK]

Alan Lomax Collection
Prison Songs v. 1 & 2

Collected recordings of Southern prison work gangs singing (same style as Po Lazarus from O' Brother Where Art Thou), plus some interviews with the inmates. It's fascinating, and sad, and uplifting. The parts I find particularly hard to listen to are the interviews. The inmates are so deferential. "Well boss, let me think on that..."

Sounds interesting...but you made NO mention of a cd that somebody gave you FOR FREE whose soon-to-be-famous-son is on!

[DzM]

Sounds interesting...but you made NO mention of a cd that somebody gave you FOR FREE whose soon-to-be-famous-son is on!

But I didn't just buy that one, did I?

(Honestly I haven't had a chance to listen to it since we got back.)

[O'Blivion]

Alan Lomax Collection
Prison Songs v. 1 & 2

Collected recordings of Southern prison work gangs singing (same style as Po Lazarus from O' Brother Where Art Thou), plus some interviews with the inmates. It's fascinating, and sad, and uplifting. The parts I find particularly hard to listen to are the interviews. The inmates are so deferential. "Well boss, let me think on that..."

That sounds pretty great. I gotta get it.

Speaking of Po Lazarus and the
O Brother soundtrack, didja ever
hear the great story about the royalties for
that particular cut? It's worth reading, or
re-reading:

http://www.mustrad.org.uk/obrother.htm


My own recent purchases:


Western Union by Memphis Minnie - a proud new addition to my collection of Minnie's 78s, this one on Columbia.

The White Dove by the Stanley Brothers - I already have a copy of this (one of their best ever) so this one will be donated to Dr. Stanley's museum next year when we return to Virginia for his annual festival.


Triflin' Woman by Wynonie Harris - King Records' pre-eminent blues shouter refashioning Moon Mullican's up-tempo country piano blues (also on King) into a horn-driven R&B romp. Neither Harris and Mullican are ever given the credit they're due in the late-40s leadup to Rock & Roll - Mullican, for example, was a major influence on Jerry Lee Lewis.

I buy 33s sometimes too. Yesterday I got "Authentic Country-Western Cowboy Songs Vol 1" at a yard sale. The cover says it's in "true high fidelity" on Buckingham Records. Nowhere on the cover art does it mention who the recording artist is. The label says it's on "Palace Records", and below the un-numbered tracks it says in small print :

"Yodeling Slim Clark".


http://www.yodelingslimclark.com/

It's got "Rye Whiskey", about making moonshine up the holler - NOT an activity associated with cowboys; "Big Rock Candy Mountain", and "The Bum Song", which are both, I would argue, NOT authentic cowboy songs, but bum songs; "I Miss My Swiss" is set in the Alps, fer yodelin' out loud! "The Old Chisolm Trail" is the only actual cowboy song on the record! And Slim, I discovered was not an authentic cowboy, having started his career on the radio at age 14, in his native Massachusetts; in 1938, he started more than a decade of performances on WKNE in New Hampshire, including a memorable weekly show with legendary Keene announcer, Ozzie Wade. Later, he moved to Maine, where he starred in the 1960s on the Bangor radio program, "RFD Dinnerbell."

Yodeling Slim copied his act (and, in fact, his name - he was born Raymond LeRoy Clark
in Petersham, Massachusetts) from an earlier cowboy yodeler named Montana Slim.
Montana Slim was a guy from Nova Scotia named Wilf Carter, who,oddly enough
considering the whole "Montana" thing, is considered the father of Canadian Country-
Western Music. Carter got his nickname "Montana Slim" while he lived in New York City,
but he actually WAS a cowboy for a time, in Calgary.

Yodelin' Slim Clark wanted to be a cowboy from the time he was 8, and started his career
as a cowboy singer at age 14 (He first went on the air as "Wyoming Buck". A few months later
the radio station manager re-named him "Yodeling Slim Clark", and the rest is (a tiny footnote to) history.


"A cowboy," Clark said in his own defense, "is anyone who lives that type of life, no matter where he is."

You can learn to be a cowboy without going out West, but I went out into Saskatchewan and Canada’s West to learn a little more about it. I picked up all kinds of cowboy material from the rodeos that I traveled around with as an entertainer. In the evenings after the big rodeos were over, I used to sing for hours to the cowboys sitting around the trailers and camps and trucks. They’d keep me awake all night, singing for them and I became very accustomed to the western type of life and the songs and stories. So that’s where my interest grew and was nurtured into my being a cowboy singer.

Clark also won an international yodeling contest in 1947. At that time he was recording 78s for Continental Records. I have one of them - "Yodeling Mad" , which is also on "Authentic Cowboy Songs Vol. 1". I believe Canadian folk singer/"poet" Jewel covers it in concert on occasion.

Describing his own fall from the avant-garde of fake cowboy yodeling to his later career painting pictures of whitetail deer, Slim said modestly and without fact-checking:

I did the first echo chamber that was ever made, and I did the first multiple recording that was ever made. That doesn’t make me any better than anyone else, it was just an experimental thing.

I had all kinds of chances to be up there on the top shelf, but it required staying and living in the big city, playing clubs, meeting with people all the time, and I was too much of a country boy to stand for that. I was brought up in the country and hunting and fishing were my life. They came first. So when I couldn’t do my hunting a fishing, I was very unhappy and wouldn’t be able to do the job I was supposed to be doing. I would disappear in the Fall from the city. They’d wonder where I was and I’d be on a hunting excursion. In the Spring, I’d disappear again because it was fishing season. They’d again wonder, “Where is this guy? We want him here, should have him here, but we can’t get ahold of him…He’s always in the woods somewhere.” So they lost patience with me and said, “To heck with him…we’ll get him when we can and if we can’t get him we’ll get somebody else.”

Anyway, Authentic Cowboy Songs Vol. 1 was well worth the dollar I spent on it.

[Niall]

amon amarth - with odin on our side
job for a cowboy - genisis

[Jon]

Some interesting choices in the above posts, every Lomax related CD I've come across has been a joy.

I've just forked out for The Box Set and I don't think it'll be leaving my MP3 player anytime soon

[slugz]

just look em in the eye box and its fecking ACE well done all concerned and these two gems... Junkie and the Juicehead Minus Me... Johnny Cash & Rockabilly Blues ... Johnny Cash and two large bottles of bushmills god help the people next door

[kgrunt]

Just got Braggy's Life's a Riot(CD version) on ebay, I always wanted it but I had not been able to find it on cd...good 16 minuts of song I was however surprised that lovers town was not on this album? Lovers town revisited is a totaly diferent song, I had the other from a Peel session and had always asumed it was from this album.

[Jon]

I think Lovers Town was only available on the Peel Sessions CD.

There is a boot of BIll & Wiggy performing the song at the first Joe Strummer Memorial (and Fireman Benefit) available for downloading somewhere on http://www.archive.org and have a look at the Live Music Archive.

[kgrunt]

Thanks jon. Lovers Town[not revisted] makes for easier writting...Never realise that the song was not a standard,always really liked it...maybe he will play it tomorow night Crap are there alot of boots on that site

[Jon]

You could shout out a request, or if you catch him pre-gig and mention it you're luck might be in.

I've just Amazoned myself a couple of CD's by The Editors who I reckond don't sound too far removed from The Killers, but Mrs Me thinks they're more Chameleons sounding. Either way they're a decent 'old-school' sounding band.

[firehazard]

I've just Amazoned myself a couple of CD's by The Editors who I reckond don't sound too far removed from The Killers, but Mrs Me thinks they're more Chameleons sounding. Either way they're a decent 'old-school' sounding band.

Editors are an excellent live band too, if you ever get the chance...

Just acquired the new album by The Mystery Jets. Pretty good.

[Jon]

Editors are an excellent live band too, if you ever get the chance...

They're supporting REM at the Southampton Rose Bowl a couple of days after my burfday, I've just bought 2 tickets

[Esther]

Anyway, Authentic Cowboy Songs Vol. 1 was well worth the dollar I spent on it.

O'Blivion, I sure do enjoy reading your posts about your oldtime music finds.

[dawson]

Anyway, Authentic Cowboy Songs Vol. 1 was well worth the dollar I spent on it.

O'Blivion, I sure do enjoy reading your posts about your oldtime music finds.

and then you look out of your window and see the mississippi river flowing through your garden?