The Internet Archive has a lot of great music from the 78 rpm era in MP3 form. This tune is the House Carpenter,an old english ballad as performed by North Carolina musician Clarence Ashley in 1930. Some versions have the unfaithful lover being escorted to hell at the end of the song. This version just has her drowning in the ocean. There are a lot more verses to this song, likely excluded to accomodate the limited running time of a 10 inch 78rpm record.

http://ia300106.us.archive.org/3/items/Carpenter/HouseCarpenter.mp3

This tune was collected by Francis J Child in his landmark work of folklore research, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. For those of you scoring at home, this is Child ballad #243. You can find a more complete text, as well as a midi rendering of the tune, here.

Ashley resurfaced during the 1960s folk revival, and made some excellent recordings with Doc Watson, collected on CD as The Complete Folkways Recordings.

The Kentucky banjoist and guitarist Roscoe Holcomb was first recorded by New Lost City Rambler John Cohen on one of Cohen’s field trips to document the music of the eastern Kentucky mountains. Holcomb’s haunting high tenor voice and distinctive playing style won him a much wider audience in the 1960s folk revival. Here he is singing what is perhaps his most beautiful song, ‘Across the Rocky Mountains’:

Archive.org has a lot of great music from the 78rpm era available for download. Here is the seminal old-time country musician Uncle Dave Macon playing and singing Old Dan Tucker (listed here as ‘Old Dam Tucker’). The track was cut in New York City on April 13th, 1925.

UncleDaveMacon-OldDamTucker.mp3

There’s a good Wikipedia page on Old Dan Tucker, including information about its roots in 19th century minstrelsy and a variety of different versions of the tune here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Dan_Tucker.

This is one of the catchiest songs about infanticide you’ll ever hear. It’s from a 1973 appearance on Swedish television. Ronnie Drew takes the lead vocal.

The late Luke Kelly sings this tribute to Dublin’s red light district. Thanks to the Pogues, everyone knows what ‘pogue mahone’ means. The vulgarism that the Dubliners carefully avoid in the refrain by stomping their feet (stomp stomp to you) means ‘balls to you’. Waxies (as in ‘Waxies Dargle’) were candle makers. Educational.

Roscoe Holcomb was a much-admired banjo player and guitarist from Daisy, Kentucky. He was first recorded by New Lost City Ramblers member John Cohen for his ‘Mountain Music of Kentucky’. I assume that this footage was shot by Cohen.

Here’s Jonathan performing solo on the campus of UC Berkeley. The two songs are ‘I’m a Little Dinosaur’ and ‘I’ve Got a Crush on the New Teller’. After the dissolution of the Modern Lovers, Jonathan wanted to go a different direction: quieter, more intimate music.

Jello Biafra is the only person I’ve ever seen break a bone on stage. He finished the show, by the way. Here are the Dead Kennedys playing ‘Police Truck’:

East Bay Ray is an underrated guitarist. He has a unique melodic sensibility, and his lines are surprisingly dissonant without completely destroying the pop song form. There are some nice chromatic lines here, not least of which the descending line at the beginning of the song that spells out e minor seven, a c # ‘half diminished’ seven, a e minor sixth chord, and then a big e minor. That same descending line is echoed in the in his opening riff. Very nice.