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

More music from the North Albany Archive of Recorded Sound…

There’s not much I can add to Riley Puckett’s story. His guitar playing and singing anchored the Skillet Lickers, one of the greatest string bands ever. He’s the gold standard of old-time guitarists, with a strong and surprisingly versatile voice. I learned ‘Ragged But Right’ from a Riley Puckett/ Ted Hawkins recording, and Tangleweed recorded it as the penultimate track on our first CD.

This solo record is delicate and stately when compared to the heterophonic frenzy of the Skillet Lickers. I played it for a friend, who declared it the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. To the best of my knowledge, it’s never been reissued on CD.

Take Me Back to My Carolina Home (MP3)

Previous Skillet Lickers posts:
The Skillet Lickers singing Pass Around the Bottle
Old time listening room with the Skillet Lickers

More music from the North Albany Archive of Recorded Sound… The Hoosier Hotshots were a virtuoso hokum band who rose to fame on Chicago’s WLS National Barn Dance. The bulk of their repertoire consisted of likable novelties like this one, but even their lightest fare was distinguished by their first rate musicianship. The unison playing of the clarinet and slide whistle here is quite good — Paul ‘Hezzie’ Trietsch’s intonation on the slide whistle is the best I’ve heard.

Hoosier Hotshots: Look on the Bright Side (MP3)

Previous Hoosier Hotshots posts in this blog:
The Hoosier Hotshots play Limehouse Blues
Hoosier Hotshots listening room
The Hoosier Hotshots playing Virginia Blues
The Hoosier Hotshots

More music from the archive… The Hoosier Hotshots were a virtuoso hokum band who rose to fame on Chicago’s WLS National Barn Dance. Most of their material was comprised of likeable novelty tunes, but every once in a while they’d show what they could do with more serious material. This is my favorite Hotshots track ever, and, to the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t ever been reissued on CD. It’s a rock solid performance of the early jazz standard Limehouse Blues.

Hoosier Hotshots: Limehouse Blues (MP3)

Previous Hoosier Hotshots posts in this blog:

Hoosier Hotshots listening room
The Hoosier Hotshots playing Virginia Blues
The Hoosier Hotshots

More music from the Archive… See my previous post for more information on Bob Skyles and his Skyrockets.

Bob Skyles and his Skyrockets: You Picked Number Four (MP3)

Courtesy of the North Albany Archive of Recorded Sound.

More music from the Archive… Bob Skyles and his Skyrockets were a family band from Pecos, Texas, that split the difference between the Western Swing dance bands like the Texas Playboys and novelty groups like the Hoosier Hotshots. They recorded for Bluebird in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Like many bands of the day (see my previous Luke Wills entry, for example), the band’s recorded output differed from what they played at their dance gigs. Jim Lowe’s informative page on the band reprints portions of a 1995 interview band member Cliff Kendrick did with researcher Duncan McLean. Kendrick’s sentiments about the material were unambiguous:

We thought all that stuff was terrible. Corny as hell. The record company, they wanted a comedy band, see, like Bluebird’s answer to the Hoosier Hotshots. We hated it. But we went along with it - fooled around, played that stupid whoopie-whistle. Bob came up with all those dumb songs - we never played them in the clubs, you know; we played straight dance stuff, and jazz, then. But hell, who were we to complain? Those records sold well, earned us a bit of money. And that’s what it was all about.

I suppose you never imagined anyone would be listening to them sixty years later?

Hell, I wouldn’t've imagined anyone listening to them sixty days later. We sure never did.

Despite the band’s reservations, the material has aged surprisingly well, largely due to the solid musicianship of the Skyrockets and some very likeable vocals.

Bob Skyles and his Skyrockets: All Night Long (MP3)

Courtesy of the North Albany Archive of Recorded Sound.

By the 1940s, Texas Playboy Bob Wills was such a hot property that his brothers and his father were also leading their own western swing groups. Some historians (notably Wills biographer Charles Townsend) dismiss these groups out of hand as being little more than minor league farm teams for Wills’ big league club. This is an unfair characterization. Johnnie Lee Wills had a band that held down a regular gig at Cain’s in Tulsa after Wills left for the west coast, and they were a rock solid group. In the years after the war, kid brother Billy Jack Wills led an astonishingly hot band that featured former Texas playboy and electric mandolin pioneer Tiny Moore as well as the brilliant steel guitarist Vance Terry. Frequently overlooked, though, are the sides recorded by Luke Wills.

Wills cut some sides for RCA that are painful listening. Backing vocalist Johnny Tyler, the tunes are irritating novelty throwaways, and Tyler’s singing is as enjoyable as a painful bowel movement. In Wills’ defense,the band chose neither the singer nor the songs for that session — both were chosen by the RCA Victor A&R man. On the sides the band cut for the Cincinnatti-based King label, they get a chance to show what they could do.

Bring it on Down to My House was a blues standard, with a variety of different versions on record by the end of the 1920s. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys cut an excellent version in a Chicago session for the Vocalion label back in 1936. This version by Luke Wills and his Rhythm Busters for King is one of the finest I’ve heard. The vocal harmony on the refrain is pretty hot, and there are some solid solos, including one by Texas Playboy Joe Holly.

Bring it on Down (MP3)

For more information on the North Albany Archive of Recorded Sound, see this post.

Here’s a wartime ditty from the archives, recorded by western swing legend Ocie Stockard for Cincinnati-based King records. The song laments the ineffectiveness of the wartime Office of Price Administration, or OPA. The tune bears a striking resemblance to ‘Milk Cow Blues’. This is King 600B.

OPA Blues (MP3)