Our friend Brian has posted our recent show at Chicago’s Kinetic Playground on Archive.org.

The set list:

1. Listen to the Mockingbird
2. South Australia
3. Angeline the Baker -> Soldier’s Joy
4. California
5. Short Life of Trouble
6. The Logjam
7. Takeup Reel -> Cold Frosty Morning -> Grey Eagle
8. Trishanku’s Heaven
9. High On A Mountain
10. British Army
11. Little Sadie
12. With a Bottle in My Hand
13. Ginseng Blues
14. Dead Flowers
15. Orange Blossom Special

Download the show here:
http://www.archive.org/details/tweed2008-05-01.cemc6.flac16

It wasn’t a great show — we were plagued by a very bad stage mix and didn’t play or sing particularly well that night. Also, for reasons unknown to me, we wound up sitting around the venue for a few hours until the staff deigned to do a soundcheck, and I hit the stage more than a little annoyed and at a low energy ebb. That said, the venue has a decent sounding (almost acoustically dead) room, and it’s a good-sounding recording. The energy and performance quality started to pick up by the end of the set.

See my previous post for more about the Blue Ridge Highballers. This is another side from their March 23, 1926, session for the Columbia label in New York. The personnel is the same as the previous track:

• Charlie La Prade, fiddle
• Arthur Wells, banjo
• Lonnie Griffith, guitar

Fourteen Days in Georgia (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

The Blue Ridge Highballers were a Virginia string band led by fiddler Charley La Prade. They recorded seventeen sides for Columbia and Paramount (and their respective affiliate labels) in 1926 and 1927, and an additional three sides accompanying vocalist Luther B. Clarke.

Flop-Eared Mule is an old warhorse that’s unusual among fiddle tunes in that the strains are in different keys, and the order of the strains is often reversed. I’ve long annoyed our banjo player by insisting that this tune is in ‘D’, with a second strain in ‘A’. Like many banjo players, he prefers to play in ‘G’, and learned this tune with the first strain in ‘G’ and the second in ‘D’. To his credit, here’s a 1926 recording with the first strain in ‘G’ and the second in ‘D’. Except that the second strain is first.

This was recorded in March, 1926, in New York for the Columbia company. The personnel:

• Charlie La Prade, fiddle
• Arthur Wells, banjo
• Lonnie Griffith, guitar

Flop-Eared Mule (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

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

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.

Kentuckian Doc Roberts was one of the great fiddlers in early recorded country music. He recorded fairly extensively for two of the most revered prewar record labels: Gennett Records, based in nearby Richmond, Indiana, and Paramount Records, of Grafton, Wisconsin. This track, recorded in New York in 1934 during the depths of the depression, was for a battery of cut-price labels: Banner, Melotone, Oriole, Perfect, Romeo, and Conqueror.

The tune bears significant similarity to ‘Deep Elem Blues’ and ‘Ginseng Blues’. The latter was first recorded in 1929, the former, to the best of my knowledge, received its first country recording in 1933 by the Lone Star Cowboys.

Coal Tipple Blues (MP3)

Asa Martin and James Roberts are credited with the guitar accompaniment.

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

A few days ago, I posted an MP3 of an old 78rpm record by a group called Mike Shaw’s Alabama Entertainers, about whom I know nothing. Fortunately, my copy of Tony Russell’s masterful Country Music Records: A Discography, the Rosetta Stone for fans and scholars alike, arrived in the mail this week.

Here’s what I learned:

• Unknown fiddle
• Unknown guitar
• Unknown kazoo on 1

Glad I could clear that up for you.

Actually, I did learn a few useful things: the record was recorded on the 10th of December, 1930, in Atlanta, GA. This would place it over a year after the Narmour and Smith recording of Carroll County Blues. It was issued as part of OKeh’s seminal 45000 country music series, with a catalog number of 45518.

If anyone knows more about the group, please drop me a line. Their entire recorded output seems to consist of four sides for OKeh cut at the December 10, 1930 session.