Here’s some wonderful footage of Clarence Ashley playing his best-known tune, the Coo Coo Bird, some time in the 1960s. Ashley’s skills don’t seem have diminished a bit in the 30+ years since his landmark recording of the tune.

This 1927 recording, the flip side to Ashley’s Dark Holler Blues, is a wonderful example of a modal banjo melody. Ashley executes the descending line between the verses beautifully. The text is mostly a non-narrative assemblage of commonplace verses, but they’re made profound by Ashley’s delivery and the occasional wordless vocal interlude.

Ashley’s recording is included in Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, which helped engender new interest in Ashley’s work in the 1960s folk revival. Folklorist Ralph Rinzler recorded Ashley for Folkways Records, and Ashley resumed a fairly active recording and performing career with his friend and neighbor Doc Watson. His recordings with Watson are uniformly excellent.

Watson’s 1967 LP, Ballads From Deep Gap, features a fairly faithful performance of Ashley’s arrangement.

The Coo Coo Bird (MP3)
Courtesy of Archive.org

Thomas C. (’Clarence’) Ashley recorded extensively in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and again in the postwar folk revival with his friend and neighbor Doc Watson. This side comes from his second session, in Johnson City, Tennessee, in October of 1929. Ashley accompanies his vocal with a very tasteful clawhammer banjo performance. The tune is a classic modal melody that appears frequently in the early country repertoire.

Variations of the lyrics appear in Sharp. While the song likely has roots in the British Isles, I’m not able to locate a variant in Child’s work.

Dark Holler Blues (MP3)
Courtesy of Archive.org

For a fairly comprehensive biography of Ashley, visit ClarenceAshley.com

Virginian Henry Whitter was one of the earliest country music performers to record extensively. While many of his solo recordings are unexceptional, his work with G.B. Grayson was often excellent. Rain Crow Bill was an old Minstrel harmonica solo that Whitter recorded at least twice: at his first recording session in December, 1923, as ‘Rain Crow Bill Blues’, and then in a later electrical recording in August, 1927.

Doc Watson recorded a very faithful interpretation of this recording on his great Home Again LP in 1967, and then an updated version on his Then and Now LP in 1973.

Rain Crow Bill (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

This recoding from June 30, 1922, is one of the earliest examples of American Vernacular fiddling on record. Alexander Campbell (’Eck’) Robertson was a skilled contest fiddler from Texas whose recording career extended into the folk revival of the 1960s. This recording was paired with Robertson’s seminal recording on Sallie Gooden on Victor 18956.

The recording is a duet with fiddler Henry Gilliland, and it is believed that Gilliland is playing the melody and Robertson the harmony. It lacks the extraordinary variations of Robertson’s Sallie Gooden, but it’s still an interesting performance.

Arkansaw Traveler (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

For Irish-Americans, this has become the standard to end all standards, even though it was written by an English lawyer who never set foot in Ireland. The tune is from the ‘Londonderry Aire’, Londonderry being a place that exists on British maps in the general proximity of Derry.

Theodore O’Nugent used to begin his performances of ‘Wang Dang Sweet Poteen’ by dedicating it to all that London Derriere.* Anyway, enjoy the melodious voices of the Swedish Chef, Beaker, and Animal. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

*Or not. I may have made this up.

via BoingBoing.net

Mississippians W.T. Narmour and S.W. Smith cut about 50 sides between 1928 and 1934. Their most enduring contribution to the country music canon is this unusual fiddle tune, Carroll County Blues. One can safely assume that the titular Carroll County is their home Carroll County, Mississippi. The tune is credited to Narmour. Whether it originated with him or was learned from other local players, I can’t say.

The tune is interesting in a number of repects: the languid pace, the conspicuous flat thirds and sevenths, the use of a melodic sequence in the ‘a’ strain, the occasional added beats, the backbeat rhythm of the ‘b’ strain, more. It’s a wonderful performance, and the tune has long since been a standard among old-time musicians. It was recorded in Atlanta in March, 1929, for the OKeh label.

Narmour plays the fiddle, Smith is the guitar accompanist.

Carroll County Blues (MP3)

The ‘A’ strain of Tangleweed’s Mississippi Trashboat is loosely derived from the ‘a’ strain of Carroll County Blues. It’ll be on Tangleweed’s as-of-yet-untitled-third-album, code named TAOYUTA.

Courtesy of Juneberry78s.com. Please consider purchasing one of their CD-R or DVD-R compilations of old-time 78s and radio shows.

I’ll be playing mandolin with the Golden Horse Ranch Square Dance Band for their annual square dance blowout. The dance is at 9pm at 2000 W. Fulton in Chicago. The GHRSDB are good folks. We shared a flatbed truck at the Hideout’s Day in the Country this past summer.

Annie Coleman from the GHRSDB is a third-generation square dance caller, and she’ll be calling the dances all night.

I believe there’ll be copies of this beautiful show poster available for purchase at the show.