If you lived in Champaign Urbana in the early 1990s, you likely remember Driver Has No Cash, a trio featuring amplified ukulele, toy drums, and the melodious vocals of Frank Gill. If you feel like spending a few moments wallowing in the gloriousness of that time and place, you’re in luck. Driver Has No Cash are reuniting this weekend.

From Bill’s blog, the Williwaw Endeavor:

driver has no cash – francis bradley gill, robert rising & the artist somewhat rarely known as williwaw – have, like the Great Phoenix, risen from the ashes.

SUNDAY MAY 25 8 PM
THE HIGH DIVE
51 MAIN STREET
CHAMPAIGN USA

there will be much roaring, much whimpering, cowering even, from the mighty rock. can you handle such rock? no, you can’t. but you’ll try, oh how you’ll try, to carry on. there are tickets. there will be no t-shirts. no, don’t cry, there will be other trinkets. there will be other bands. so many bands. so much rock. you, you really should stay away. you, you’re just not ready. stay home. yes, the sofa. that’s the place for you…

I’ve written of my admiration for former Chicago radio stars the Hoosier Hot Shots in previous posts. While much of their recorded repertoire consisted of novelty ephemera, they could whip out a convincing hot instrumental on occasion to remind folks that the folks playing this ridiculous music were serious musicians.

In this case, it’s the McPhail/ Michels song ‘San’, with some of the finest slide whistle playing you’ll ever hear.

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Courtesy of Archive.org

The most comprehensive readily available compilation of Hoosier Hot Shots sides is Everybody Stomp, still in print, and well worth picking up.

The good Reverend tears it up with a tune that bears more than a superficial resemblance to Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. He makes it look so easy…

This is from a newly released compilation of Reverend Gary Davis performances. You can learn more about it here: http://guitarvideos.com/dvd/13111dvd.htm

Ernest Thompson cut this side for Columbia (and their cut-price Harmony label) on September 9th, 1924, in New York. The Harmony release is under a pseudonym (as was the convention for cut-price labels), the label credits the performance to ‘Ernest Johnson’.

The song is often credited to A.P. Carter, though this recording and others (Ernest Stoneman and Henry Whitter’s versions, for example) predate the Carter’s recording by several years. It has become one of the more widely-recorded tunes in the old-timer repertoire, with versions recorded by the aforementioned artists, as well as:

• Asa Martin
• The Light Crust Doughboys
• The Delmore Brothers
• Riley Puckett
• The Shelton Brothers
• Claude Davis
• Richard Burnett
• Daphne Burns
• McFarland & Gardner
• The Monroe Brothers
• Holland Puckett
• The Red Fox Chasers
• George Reneau
• Billy Vest

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Courtesy of Archive.org

The embedded doohickey below has a playlist with the last ten sound files we’ve posted to the site. If folks like this, I’ll do another one in a few weeks.

1. Wreck of the Southern Old 97
2. Sandy River Belle
3. Sally Goodin
4. Ragtime Annie
5. Coo Coo Bird
6. Dark Holler
7. Rain Crow Bill
8. Arkansaw Traveler
9. Fourteen Days in Georgia
10. Flop-Eared Mule

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I came across this photo, circa August 1997, when I was cleaning out some old files. Howard (‘Louie Bluie’) Armstrong was a mandolinist I admired enormously, from his early recordings with the unfortunately named Tennessee Chocolate Drops to his later work with Martin, Bogan, and Armstrong, and as a solo artist. His recording of State Street Rag should be required listening for every mandolinist.

Terry Zwigoff (of Crumb, Ghost World, and Bad Santa fame) made his first foray into film making with a documentary of Armstrong called ‘Louie Bluie’. Sadly, it’s not in print on DVD in the US, and VHS copies can be hard to come by.

Courtesy of our local NBC affiliate, here’s a little peek at the Downtown Hoe-down Tangleweed put together for this year’s Looptopia celebration in downtown Chicago. Annie Coleman was our caller for the evening, and you can hear her leading the dancers through the Virginia Reel.

We’ve updated our music page, and added a handy embedded audio player doohickey that lets you stream the tracks with a single mouse click. Here it is, with a sample track from our forthcoming third CD, Most Folk Heroes Started Out As Criminals:

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If you prefer to download the tracks for your MP3 player, you can still do that, too.

Check it out:

Tangleweed’s music page