Here’s the second installment of TweedRadio, a bite sized sample of music from this site: old-timey and trad recordings from the archives, as well as contemporary takes on the tradition. You can learn more about the tracks by clicking the links below. Enjoy.

1. Ernest Thompson playing Weeping Willow Tree
2. Preview of the new Tangleweed CD
3. Are you ready, Hezzie? The Hoosier Hot Shots playing San
4. The Viper and His Famous Orchestra playing Winnebago Bay
5. Frank Hutchison playing Last Scene on the Titanic
6. Fields Ward playing Ain’t That Trouble in Mind
7. The Carter Family playing Wildwood Flower
8. Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas playing Pick Poor Robin Clean
9. Geeshie Wiley playing Last Kind Words
10. Doc Walsh playing in the Pines
11. 1924 recording of Lonesome Road Blues

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Way back in the wondrous days of yore, or, more precisely, the mid-to-late 1990s, I was fortunate to cross paths with a jive-talking, ukulele-playing, yodeling hipster who called himself The Viper. He led a Spirits Of Rhythm-inspired combo called The Famous Orchestra, who recorded two CDs before The Viper left the corn belt to teach Jive in Turkey.

I played steel guitar on the second disc, Everything for Everyone, on this ditty, a Hawaiian song about Wisconsin.

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Read more about the record on the Viper Blog

Buy the CD on CDBaby.com

The Carter Family first cut this tune in 1928 for the Victor label, and it remains one of their most-loved performances. Though the lyrics border on doggerel, the singing and playing are gorgeous. This has long been required learning for all aspiring old-timey guitarists. Guitar tablature for the piece is easily found with teh Google, nearly all of it wildly inaccurate. This tab, while it doesn’t match the Carter Family version exactly, is a good arrangement.

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Download (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

There’s not a lot of Delmore Brothers footage out there, but there are some good clips of other folks playing Delmore Brothers songs. Here’s Red Foley taking on one of their later songs: Freight Train Boogie. That’s Grady Martin playing the groovy Bigsby double-neck.

I’m playing a kid’s concert tomorrow (Saturday, June 7) in Millennium Park with the Golden Horse Ranch Square Dance Band. Annie Coleman, who called so well for us at Looptopia, will be leading the festivities. There’ll be shows at 12 and 2, so bring the little ones by and say ‘hi’. It’ll be way more fun than watching The Little Mermaid again. I promise.

This beautiful performance was recorded in Richmond, Indiana, for the Gennett label in March of 1929. Ward recorded 15 sides in two sessions. All were rejected. Fortunately for us, however, the recordings survived, and most have been reissued on LP and CD.

Fields Ward was a Virginian who had a long and varied career as a performer, which continued through the folk revival of the 1960s up to his death in 1987. He hailed from Buck Mountain in Grayson County, in the state’s Appalachian southwestern tip. Grayson County produced a remarkable number of outstanding old-time country musicians. The backing band on the track, the Grayson County Railsplitters, includes legendary old-time country musician (and prolific procreator) Ernest Stoneman on harmonica and Eck Dunford on fiddle.

This song (albeit the Frank Blevins version) was the musical inspiration for the Tangleweed song Hard Times, from our second CD.

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Download (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

Thomas Edison was, apparently, almost completely deaf. This would help to explain the quality of music on his record label, as it was almost uniformly dreadful. There’s not a lot of interest for conisseurs of early jazz or blues. There are, however, a few old-time country chestnuts in the Edison catalog.

Case in point: this 1924 recording of Lonesome Road Blues (aka Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad) by the Blue Ridge Duo. The Duo were George Reneau and Gene Austin. Reneau recorded nearly sixty sides in 1924 and 1925, and he had already recorded this tune for Vocalion a few months earlier.

Henry Whitter appears to have made the first recording of this tune, which has since become an old-time and bluegrass standard, when he cut it in December, 1923, for the OKeh label.

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Courtesy of Archive.org

West Virginia guitarist and singer Frank Hutchison was one of the great instrumental stylists of early country music. Perhaps best-known for his song ‘The Train that Carried my Girl from Town’, his recorded legacy consists of 32 tracks recorded for the Okeh label between 1926 and 1929. Like many other pioneering country artists, his recording career didn’t survive the depression and subsequent collapse of the record industry. Hutchison was a pioneering ‘white bluesman’, an excellent slide guitarist with a widely varied repertoire that included old-time country tunes, rags, and blues.

This track was recorded in St. Louis on April 29th, 1929, for the OKeh label. It was paired with Hutchison’s Worried Blues on OKeh 45114.

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Courtesy of Archive.org