MetaFilter posts tagged with Blues and Country

"My cup runneth over with bloody water" -- Paul K.

ford and the prefects — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:02:31 -0800

Kentucky folksinger Paul K. has released his entire catalog online under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. (Scroll down through the absurdly large text and lengthy lacunae on K's site to get to the links!) From the fellers at Trouser Press:

Paul K is one of the post-punk generation's first bona fide bluesmen, a guy whose tales from the darkside are drawn from his own experiences as a reformed junkie and small-time criminal with the jailhouse record to prove it. Throughout the mid-'80s, the Louisville, Kentucky native (né Kopasz) released dozens of home-recorded cassette albums, but the onetime winner of a debating scholarship hamstrung his own progress by living a lifestyle sufficiently shadowy that he ended up a New York squatter pulling small-time stickups to make ends meet.

I'd particularly recommend The Big Nowhere, with its "Washington Square"-inspired slinker "Flood the Market," and last year's astounding Maintain Radio Silence.

The Anthology, notated.

1f2frfbf — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:15:25 -0800

"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 educational the best I can." (via)

Figuring out harmonies mathematically is like reading the mind of God.

1f2frfbf — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 07:36:29 -0800

The occasionally updated The Celestial Monochord claims to be the "Journal of the Institute for Astrophysics and the Hillbilly Blues" Highlights include: The connection between Gillian Welch and a rare South Carolina flower that was "discovered by a man who didn't name it, named for a man who didn't see it, by someone who didn't know where it was," . Did Tom Waits reinterpret Stephen Foster in Cold Cold Ground? A possible source for the title of Bob Dylan's breakout album. The connection between the New Lost City Ramblers and Voyager 1.

Rockabilly Rundown

Miko — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:24:09 -0800

Whole Lotta Shakin' - a PRI documentary series on the history of rockabilly, hosted by Rosie Flores.

Ramblin' Jack Elliott on the YouTube and Online

y2karl — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:37:54 -0800

In more or less chonological appearance, here are examples of one of our very own still extant national musical treasures:
Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Talking Merchant Marine
Ramblin' Jack Elliott - San Francisco Bay Blues
Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Salt Pork West Virginia
And here, from SXSW 2006, is Ramblin' Jack Elliott & Billy Bragg - The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd
Also from SXSW 2006, Jack Elliott & Marty Stuart - Engine 143
From last year, here is Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Old Shep
and Ramblin' Jack Elliott - South Coast
And from last week's Bill Graham's Birthday Bash, here is
Phil Lesh, Jackie Greene & Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Friend of The Devil From his official, albeit maintained in a rather desultory manner, web site, here is a Ramblin' Jack biography, with a note about his legendary semi-talking blues 912 Greens, which is the very best of the two or three songs written by Ramblin' Jack. And here is another take on the same song. I first heard him sing it at the Sky River Rock Festival in 1968--And there was this three legged gray cat named Gray that useta to lope along and *snap* fall down because Gray, he had stroke and he couldn't run on those three legs so good no how... and loved him and the song ever since. (As does at least one other member here, or so I suspect.) I only wish there were a free mp3 of it available at this moment. Oh, well, it's on his Young Brigham album. so get thee to a record store forthwith. Young Brigham was his horse at the time the album was recorded. I only just this moment reversed the name Young Brigham, by the way. D'oh! In addition, his daughter Aiyana had made a film entitled The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack There's a version of Ramblin' Jack's version of Don't Think Twice, It's Alright in this episode of A Prairie Home Companion. Supposedly the story goes--and I have heard this from Elliott himself in person--that a young and drunken Bob Dylan, upon hearing Elliott's take on the song, bequeathed the song to him for eternity. Somehow, I rather doubt that included royalties... It's a funny story in person with Elliott's Dylan impersonation. Not to mention the delicious irony involved in hearing Vanguard's Ramblin' Jack impersonating Columbia's Ramblin' Jack. It adds a whole other dimension of absurd. But, for a fact, he does own the song, singing alone.... And then there is....

To ask Ramblin’ Jack Elliott a question is to tug at a snag in a sweater, only to see the yarn unfurl of its own volition, dropping in aimless loops, curling and snaking itself into a variegated fable. Every answer is a folk tale. Conversation is an exercise in free association, switchbacks, good-humored evasion, meanders, and box canyons. Jack Elliott does his talking without aid of a compass.

On the Road Oh, man, tell it brother... I once interviewed Ramblin' Jack for Seattle's own Rocket magazine. I had done my research, knew about him singing harmony on Bob Dylan's first studio recording of Mr. Tambourine Man in 1964 and had been to 912 Toulouse Street, to boot. And I had pictures to prove it--Wow, man, I've had people tell me they'd been to 912 Toulouse before but you're the first person to show me picturesand I got Ramblin' Jack ramblin' for near onto ninety minutes. And here's tip for future interviewers: don't eventhink of cutting him off. Go with the flow--for he brooks no interruption. And never a word of it has as yet been printed, don't you know ? Not in the Rocket, that's for sure. Mr. Elliott didn't have any 'product' out at the time. GrrCharlesCrossGrr...

Country Blues Guitar Filter: Keys to the Highway: Some Country Blues Resources

y2karl — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:14:08 -0800

CountryBluesGuitarFilter: Keys to the Highway: Some Country Blues Resources --although Weenie Juke Radio is now dead and gone, Weenie Campbell lives on, with forums, guitar lessons and linkage galore. Keys To The Highway lists lyrics and guitar keys and tunings for some notable artists. And the one for the Mississippi Sheiks is a link to the fine country blues music blog Done Gone, which has on its front page list of links just about every prewar, country blues and related site worth linking. As does Weenie Campbell. And at WeenieCampbell there are also some audio lessons in mp3 from the great guitarist and guitar teacher John Miller, these days a resident of my fair city.

Faking It: the quest for authenticity in popular music

jason's_planet — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 07:58:34 -0800

“We consider the 'primitive' music of blues singers such as Leadbelly to be more authentic than that of the Monkees. But all pop musicians are fakes . . . Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor . . . have turned out their personal record collections to produce a persuasive defence of inauthenticity as the defining characteristic of great popular music[.]” (via)

y2karlTube - Simply Beautiful

y2karl — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 12:56:06 -0800

Clarence Ashley - The Coo Coo
Skip James - Crow Jane
Howlin' Wolf - How Many More Years
Son House - John the Revelator
Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys - Close By
Houston Stackhouse & Joe Willie Wilkins - Cool Drink Of Water
Muddy Waters - Honey Bee
Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys - Lone Star Rag
Mississipi John Hurt - You Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley
Maybelle & Sara Carter - Cannonball Blues
Al Green - Simply Beautiful
Enjoy. Note that, too, save for Mississippi John Hurt, there is more by each of the above artists linked on each clip's page.
The first is via FaheyGuitarPlayers, the rest were all in a day's surf. On dial-up, even.

It was raining the day mama picked me up from prison

Miko — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 07:11:16 -0800

So You Think You Hate Country Music? Then listen to this. The roots of American country music may surprise you. In this series of NPR programs, trace the gradual development of real country music through the first half of the 20th century. Learn how a woman's instrument of the late 1800s, the parlor guitar, became the the central symbol of country and rock; see how African-American musical forms like gospel and blues meshed with the development of country and early rock and influenced the traditional forms in turn; listen to German-Mexican hybrids of accordian style; find out why women had so many honky-tonk torch songs to sing in the late 40s. The series contains hours of content (narrative, interviews, music tracks), and a multitude of excellent links for deeper digging.

RealAudio 78s

staggernation — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 19:38:31 -0800

701 78s. A huge set of "old-time" music recordings from 1924-1946, made available in RealAudio format by honkingduck.com. Not high sound quality, but an invaluable collection for anyone with any interest in early recorded bluegrass, folk, country, blues, etc.