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.

I don’t know much about Mike Shaw’s Alabama Entertainers. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that they may have been from Alabama, and that someone named Mike Shaw was involved. The tune is an interesting one, though. It sounds like a close relative of Carroll County Blues, one of the great early country blues fiddle tunes, first cut by Mississippians Narmour and Smith. The instrumentation, with the prominent kazoo, is interesting, as is the loose heterophony between it and the fiddle.

Tangleweed nicked part of Carroll County Blues for our instrumental Mississippi Trashboat, from our as-yet-untitled forthcoming third CD.

Tennessee River Bottom Blues (mp3)

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

P.S.: I finally broke down and purchased Tony Russell’s discography of pre-war country recordings, so I’ll be able to shed some additional light on recording dates, catalog numbers, and personnel when it arrives.

I just finished rereading Eward Berlin’s excellent Scott Joplin Biography, King of Ragtime. Only two of Joplin’s rags were recorded commercially during his lifetime, and the first piano recording of his most famous composition, Maple Leaf Rag, was not made until 1923, six years after his death.

More typical is this arrangement by banjo virtuoso Vess Ossman. The ubiquity of the banjo and relative scarcity of the piano in early recorded music has more to do with the limitations of early mechanical recording technology than with the popularity of the instruments. The volume and focused, directional sound of the banjo, combined with its lack of sustain, made it ideal for early mechanical recordings. Instruments like the piano and violin, however, tended to sound weak and warbly.

Maple Leaf Rag (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

Answer songs have a long, mostly inglorious history. There are some great answer songs, such as Kitty Wells’ ‘It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels’, (an answer to Hank Thompson’s ‘Wild Side of Life’, and a rare case where both the original and the answer are of exceptional quality), but most are dreadful and veer dangerously close to song-poem dreck.

My friend Ryan Jerving once said that the key to a successful answer song is to willfully misunderstand the original. Ryan has the distinction of being the only person in history to write an answer song to Freakwater, the Kennett Brothers’ ‘One Big Union’, answering the Freakwater tune of the same name.

I was very pleased to see WFMU’s Beware of the Blog post this beautiful answer song today: Rainbo’s John, You Went Too Far This Time (MP3). In it, a teenage fan expresses outrage at John Lennon’s ‘Two Virgins’ record sleeve, featuring the former Beatle wearing nothing but Yoko Ono.

Rainbo, not to be confused with pint-size metal maven Ronnie James Dio’s ‘Rainbow’, is a very young Sissy Spacek, and she gives an appealing performance here. The production values are higher than your average answer song, and it’s a well-written tune (if you can get past the cringe-worthy lyrics). The switch to 6/8 for the chorus is a nice touch. Ed Burch first played this tune for me a couple years ago, and I’m glad to be able to snag it in MP3 form.

John, You Went Too Far This Time (MP3)
Courtesy of WFMU’s most excellent Beware of the Blog

Give your podcasts the air of legitimacy with these old National Association of Broadcasters bumpers, ripped from a scratch-tastic clear blue LP buried in the darkest depths of my record collection. Side one is the bumper with a voice over, side two is the instrumental backing track, allowing you to create an authoritative-sounding bumper all your own. Enjoy.

NAB

This station is a subscriber to the Radio Code of Good Practices of the National Association of Broadcasters.

NAB

NAB Bumper (w/ voiceover) MP3
NAB Bumper (instrumental) MP3