Henry Thomas, Texas songster

Henry Thomas - Bull Doze Blues (buy) (1928)

Henry Thomas - Fishin' Blues (buy) (1928)

Henry Thomas, aka "Ragtime Texas" was one of the oldest Black folk musicians to ever record. Born in Big Sandy, Tx, in 1874, he recorded in 1928-89 when he was in his fifties. The 23 songs he left us (available on the Yazoo compilation Texas Worried Blues) are a great document on the music that was there before the blues. Henry was the archetypal songster, capable of playing any kind of popular music to entertain his audience and earn his life.
If you want to know more about the man please read this excellent article in The Handbook of Texas Online.

In fact Ragtime Texas only waxed a handfull of "bona fide" blues, and the rest was of various origins : rags, reels and other country dances, vaudeville and minstrel songs, with floating verses taken from many different popular songs.
His lively guitar playing, his use of the quills (see previous post), make him a very original figure of a great influence. His music was re-discovered thanks to the Harry Smith anthology in 1952, that featured a couple of his tunes, including "Fishin' Blues". In the 60's, great old-time music lovers like Dylan ("Honey Aloow Me One More Chance"), Canned Heat ("Bull Doze Blues" becoming "Goin' Up The Country"), Grateful Dead or Taj Mahal covered his songs.

And most of all, Ragtime Texas sang about the itinerant life of the hobo-musician like nobody else, especially in the following song :

Henry Thomas - Railroadin' Some (buy) (1928)

I leave you with this beautiful tribute made by Norman Blake 70 years after Henry Thomas recorded.

Norman Blake - Ragtime Texas (buy) (1998)

Before country part 1 (1891-1909)

Edison Male Quartet - A Flower From Home Sweet Home (1907)

Edison Male Quartet - My Old Kentucky Home (1902)

Byron Harlan - Hello Central Give Me Heaven (1904)

Billy Murray - Casey Jones (1909)

It is admitted that the first documented country recording was Eck Robertson's Victor session in june 1922.

But what was there before ?

In the first years of the phonograph industry, before World War I, record companies only focused on an urban audience. They had not realized yet the importance of the rural population, at least as a specific audience.
As Bill C. Malone writes in Country Music USA (the main source for this post),

"Rustic types were staples of American entertainment, but these were usually sophisticated entertainers, such as John Denman or Cal Stewart(hear his "Uncle Josh In A Barber Shop"), who merely acted the parts of hayseed and rubes. Folk and rural songs likewise were not absent (...) but they were generally done by urbane song-and-dance men like Billy Golden (hear his "Turkey In The Straw" from 1891) or the Edison Male Quartet (see songs above)".

Out of curiosity for these unknown names, I went to archive.org and picked a couple of Edison Male Quartet tunes. These guys are really exciting to hear. Weird to hear music from cylinders more than a century old ! What I like the most is the man barking his announcements in a great sergeant-major style...

I listened to a few songs, then other ones, then others, and tried a little research on the Web. With the help of this page at bluegrassmessengers.com, I found so many great songs that I decided to make a little compilation you can download, in addition to the tracks posted above, featuring songs I think influenced country music. I only included tracks from the turn of the century (1891-1909). Of course, there will be (at least) a volume two.

Although, like Malone says, the instrumentation and performing style have nothing to do with hillbilly music, you'll find folk or Southern ballads ("My Old Kentucky Home", a great version of "Casey Jones") and many sentimental ballads, some of which were covered by country and hillbilly singers ("Silver Threads Among the Gold", with a melody that reminds me of "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain", "Hello Central Give Me Heaven", later sung by the Carter Family), more satirical comedy sketches about hillbillies ("Arkansas Traveler"), and a lot of vaudeville and minstrel shows artists like Byron G. Harlan. There also were tons of terrible "coon songs", but i didn't include them; I didn't know they were SO popular in 1900 !!

The sentimental "pop" ballads, along with the old folk traditions, were an undeniable influence on country music too.

Here's what you'll find :

Before country vol. 1 (1891-1909)

Billy Golden - Turkey in The Straw (1891)
Cal Stewart - Uncle Josh In A Barber Shop (1896)
JJ Fisher -The Girl I Loved In Sunny Tennesse (1899)
Joseph Natus - A Bird In A Guilded Cage (1900)
Edison Male Quartet _ My Old Kentucky Home (1902)
Arthur Collins - Oh Didn't He Rambled (1902)
Richard Jose - Silver Threads Among the Gold (1904)
Byron Harlan - Hello Central Give Me Heaven (1904)
Len Spencer -Arkansaw Traveller (1904)
Haydn Quartet - My Grandfather's Clock (1905)
Edison Male Quartet - A Flower From Home Sweet Home (1907)
Ada jones & Bill Murray - Rainbow (1908)
Will Oakland - The longest Way 'Round Is the Sweetest Way Home (1909)
Bill Murray - Casey Jones (1909)
Arthur Clough - Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet (1909)

DOWNLOAD BEFORE COUNTRY (vol.1) HERE

Growling Tiger : Knockdown Calypsos

Growling Tiger - Money Is King (1979) (buy)


Growling Tiger - The Train Blow (1979) (buy)

First of all, I am deeply sorry for not posting those past weeks, I was too much busy with the Acclaimed music poll, which is now over.

Just after submitting my list of favorite albums, I found this gem, that I would heve included if I could. I knew one track already, the first one I posted, the delicious "Money Is King", on a great box set called Musica Negra In the Americas.

The album is a great surprise, even if "Money Is King" remains, IMO, the highlight of the lot. Neville Marcano, aka The Growling Tiger (1915-1993) was a calypsonian from Trinidad, an ex-boxer who became a star in the 1930s, when calypsonians started exporting their music overseas, and big names emerged like Lord Kitchener, Lord Invader or Roaring Lion (I don't know which one of Roaring Lion or Growling Tiger earnt his nickname first).

Check ou his bio here (Wikipedia) and here (Acousticmusic.com)

After a semi retirement, Growling Tiger was recorded by Alan Lomax in Trinidad in 1962 with an acoustic band, playing a traditional form of Calypso and even older styles. You can find these recordings on the Alan Lomax Series under the name The Growling Tiger Of Calypso.
Then 15 years later American enthousiast Steve Shapiro rediscovered a 64 year-old Tiger and recorded him again, this time with a more "modern" band featuring horns. These sessions gave birth to Knock Down Calypsos.

It is difficult to resist the Tiger's charms. His music, a sum of various influences from French, Spanish, English and African traditions, ranges from old-school minor-key calypso ("Money Is king") to derivations from more ancient styles like kalinda (a stick-fighting dance popular in Trinidad carnivals) or songs with a strong African heritage like "Youruba Shango".

A common trait in calypso, the lyrics and the singer's personality are very important. The singer must forge himself a strong identity in order to outshine the competition. Growling Tiger, with his deep barytone voice, was famous for his political and social lyrics, and never ceased to mock the rulers and the system, in pure carnaval tradition.

"Money Is King", both funny and serious, is a great example of his consciousness. The album also features bawdy songs like "The Train Blow". I couldn't understand the whole thing but it looks like the story of a romance on a passenger train. If somebody could help me with the lyrics exact meaning, that would be great (same goes for "Money is King") !

As Robert Leaver says, "A master of improvisation (extempo) and the competitive Calypsonian duel, Tiger could rhyme on diverse subjects with intelligence and wit. Rappers take heed -- Growling Tiger could school you".

Favorite roots albums : Blind Gary Davis - Harlem Street Singer

Blind Gary Davis - Death Don't Have No Mercy (buy) (1960)

Blind Gary Davis - Lo, I Be With You Always (buy) (1960)

Sorry folks for the late post, I have few free time these days due to the Top 200 AMF album poll I'm running. This is another of my favorite albums.

This beautiful LP was part of my father's collection when I discovered it. It features a great vocalist and guitar picker in 12 gospel-blues songs as he sang them in the streets of New York City. The album was recorded in a 3 hour session on August 24, 1960.

This is pure top notch acoustic blues and one of the very first masterpieces of the folk/blues revival of the sixties.

I'll discuss the man Gary Davis later but you can check out his bio here.

Favorite roots albums : Georges Brassens Edition

Georges Brassens - Le Gorille (buy) (1953)

Georges Brassens - Le Bistrot (buy) (1960)

Sorry guys i haven't got much time these days due to my work with Acclaimed Music's album poll, in which you can still take part (more details here. )

While I'm knee-deep (and soon chest-deep) into lists of favorite albums, here's an artist who will have at least 3 or 4 albums in my top 200.

Brassens is the first thing I remember, musically speaking.
My grandfather used to play these 10-inch (25 cm) LPs, I was 3 or 4 years old and soon I knew some songs by heart and sang them in my grandparents' garden.

My father played these records too, singing along. I listened to them with my sisters and grew up with this music. That's probably why I love folk music today.



And Brassens still rules : he's folky, and sometimes jazzy à la Django (most of the time just a double bass and two accoustic guitars), he's the hell of a songwriter, he's an exquisite poet (much better than Brel to me, much more literate), he's fun, go to his biography on wiki or AMG if you don't know him.

The songs ? about God (the hilarious "Le Mécréant"), death and murder ("Le gorille"), love ("Je m'suis fait tout petit", two of his very best songs), and of course, booze ("Le Bistrot", about a bartender's wife).

"Le Gorille", one of his very first songs, was banned from airplay because of its lyrics. It even caused Brassens' mother, a devout Catholic to boycott his concerts.

You'll find English subtitles in this video to learn why. Brassens is old and sick in the video so the performance is not as good as in the record.

A to Z : The Allen Brothers

The Allen Brothers - Bow Wow Blues (buy) (1927)


The Allen Brothers - Jake Walk Blues (buy) (1930)

Ever since the beginnings of the country industry, singers and musicians were fascinated by the blues. Although the most famous of them was Jimmie Rodgers and his blue yodels, others like Darbie & Tarlton, Dick Justice recorded numerous blues songs, but the Allen Brothers' music was so rooted in the blues that Columbia catalogued their recordings as "race" performances, which caused them to leave the label.

Austin and Lee Allen were from a poor family of Chatanooga sawyers, and spent a part of their youth as itinerant musicians especially on miners camps in the moutains. There they probably met a lot of other songsters, black and white, and learnt a lot from them. The songs they recorded between 1927 and 1937 were mostly personal compositions (a rare fact at that time) inspired by blues standards and jug band numbers. They often wrote about current events : "Jake Walk Blues" is a commentary on the Jamaican ginger ("jake") food-poisoning episode that made headlines that year.

Although they were good singers and valuable banjo/guitar players, Lee's kazzo playing is the duo's trademark. As Bill C Malone says , "he took this child's toy of presumed limited range and converted it to a lead instrument of exceptional flexibility. On Allen Bros recordings the kazoo is used like a trumpet; the result is a sound not unlike that heard on Charlie Poole's string band recordings, a syncopated but structured swing."

Like a lot of musicians who recorded in the twenties, their onstage repertoire was wider than just the blues.

As a bonus, here is a good example of their uptempo, swinging songs.

The Allen Brothers - Ain't That Skippin' An' Flyin' (buy) (1928)

Check out their AMG bio

Here a post on Lonesome Lefty's Scratchy Attic

Favorite roots albums : Doc & Merle Watson : Ballads From Deep Gap

Doc & Merle Watson - My Rough and Rowdy Ways (buy) (1967)

Doc & Merle Watson - The Lawson Family Murder (buy) (1967)

I'm a list maniac. There is no cure for that. So I spend a lot of time hanging out on the Acclaimed Music forum with my list maniac (and music nerd) friends.
I'm running a poll this month called "list you 200 favorite albums of all time" (all genres) and if you're a list maniac don't hesitate and participate !

So this month I will post about my favorite roots albums and the first of all (#8 in my all-time list which contains a lot of "non-roots" material).

I doscovered this forgotten gem by chance at the library while looking for some Doc Watson stuff. To this day, no folk-country album (I'm not counting compilations) has had such an effect on me.
The 12 songs encompass some of the best styles in traditional American music : old Appalachian ballads (a great rendition of Clarence Ashley's "The Cuckoo"), hillbilly music (a cover of Jimmie Rodgers' "Rough and Rowdy Ways"), bluegrass (Lester Flatt's "Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms"), blues (a wonderful version of Mississippi John Hurt's "Stackolee") or murder ballads, with the "Lawson Family Murder", a terrible story sung in a gentle manner, which makes it even more stunning. The only other song on this subject that could pair it might be Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop", which tells the same story in a completely opposite manner.

And of course there is Doc and son's performance. Doc Watson is one of the best acoustic guitar players of the century, taking picking to unbelievable heights. Not only is he a technical virtuoso, but his playing is almost laid back and seems effortless. Everything is done at home, the sound is incredible, and the music is fast, fun and unpretentious.

I do hope I have convinced you to get that masterpiece. If you love the music I post here, you will love this album.

Track list :

1 Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms
2 My Rough and Rowdy Ways
3 The Wreck of the Old Number Nine
4 Gambler's Yodel
5 The Cuckoo
6 Stack-O-Lee
7 Willie Moore
8 Travelin' Man
9 The Tragic Romance
10 Texas Gales [instrumental]
11 The Lawson Family Murder
12 Alabama Bound