If your favorite local karaoke bar doesn’t let you croon along to Split Myself in Two, you can use these tracks to sing along to the Meat Puppets seminal second LP. Drummer Derrick Bostrom has been running MeatPuppets.com as a blog, and helping disseminate rare outtakes, live recordings, alternate mixes, and all kinds of other cool stuff. These are the backing tracks from the Meat Puppets II sessions, rough mixes made before Curt added his vocals.

Bostrom’s description of the atmosphere surrounding the making of that record is surprising. The band’s growth between their debut LP and this record is absolutely remarkable. While Kirkwood’s vocals on the first record sound like a gopher caught in a woodchipper (I mean that as a compliment), his vocals on the second record are much more delicate and nuanced. Despite the obvious growth, Bostrom writes that, “Curt agonized over whether to go back into the studio and attempt to redo the vocals, leave them as they were, or just scrap the whole project. Fortunately, he got comfortable with the takes over time, and we moved on to bigger concerns (like convincing SST to let us actually finish the album).”

Equally surprising was the lack of interest their label at the time, SST, seemed to show in completing and releasing the album, which fed an increasingly acrimonious relationship with the label.

Unfortunately, there were those who viewed our efforts as a betrayal of “the form.” Coincidentally or not, “Meat Puppets II” languished unfinished for six months. [SST staff engineer] SPOT became “unavailable,” and no one seemed to be able to locate him or the tapes. We seethed resentment over the delays, and began to imagine conspiracies and ulterior motives at the label, especially after we discovered that Husker Du, the Minutmen and even Black Flag had “post-hardcore” albums in the works. “Meat Puppets II” wasn’t released until the spring of 1984. Even after the album got a glowing four-star review in Rolling Stone magazine, our disatisfaction with SST hardened, and the relationship settled into a stifling atmosphere of mutual suspicion.

You can read all of Derrick’s comments and download the full recordings at MeatPuppets.com.

Watts was a singer and multi-instrumentalist from Tabor City, North Carolina. This song has circulated widely as Duncan and Brady, performed by folks from Leadbelly to Dylan. The Leadbelly and Dylan versions lack the ‘Been on the Job Too Long’ refrain, which, for me, makes the song. It transforms the song from being just another ‘killed him just to watch him die’ song to a song about a disgruntled worker going postal when he loses his job. Duncan is a sheriff, and he informs Brady that his services will no longer be required:

Brady was a worker on the telephone wire
Along comes Duncan with a shining star
Looked old Brady right through the specs
Said ‘no use talking, Brady, just get your check’

The rolling banjo style is a hallmark of North Carolina players, distinctly different from the frailing style of other old-timey banjo players. I don’t know much about the recording, which means it’s time for me to shell out for Tony Russell’s pre-war country music discography. The surface noise makes me think it’s a Paramont.

Been on the Job Too Long (MP3) http://juneberry78s.com/sounds/ma6003-10.mp3
Courtesy of Juneberry78s.com. Please consider purchasing one of their CD-R or DVD-R compilations of old-time 78s and radio shows.

In the Pines has long been a standard in Bluegrass and Old-Time country music, and has been performed and recorded by countless performers over the years, perhaps most notably by the Louvin Brothers on their seminal LP Tragic Songs of Life. This recording by Doc Walsh is among the earliest recordings I’ve heard of it. While it lacks the over the top pathos that makes the Louvin Brothers performance so powerful, it’s not without its appeal.

The song is a fairly straightforward waltz, and generally uses commonplace interchangeable verses. The chorus and the most famous verses (”the longest train I ever saw”) are there, albeit in slightly different form.

In the Pines (MP3)

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

More prewar goodness from the folks at Juneberry78s.com… Ted Hawkins was one of the great mandolin stylists in early country music. His playing adorns some of the late Skillet Lickers recordings, but his most exciting recording may well be this pairing with Skillet Lickers guitarist Riley Puckett.

Puckett is, of course, the gold standard of old-timey guitarists. He sounds freer on this than on perhaps any recording I’ve heard of his. There are some very impressive bass runs and some nice chromaticism in his accompaniment. (There is also what appears to be an uncharacteristic flub from Puckett at the start of the fourth repetition.) And Hawkins was a worthy counterpart, an unusually dexterous old-timey mandolinist. His playing is fast, nimble, and energetic.

The tune is a fairly standard folk rag, with one strain starting on the tonic and sounding not unlike the Fiddler’s Reel (except for the ragtime turn), and the other starting on the dominant and sounding not unlike State Street Rag. It is distinguished, however, by the the quality of the performance, which is exceptional.

Hawkins Rag (MP3)
Courtesy of Juneberry78s.com. Please consider purchasing one of their CD-R or DVD-R compilations of old-time 78s and radio shows.

The excellent site Juneberry78s.com has an extensive listening room with a vast collection of prewar music from a wide variety of genres. The collection of old-time country music is impressive.

It includes a favorite track of mine that has seldom been reissued: The Roanoke Jug Band’s Johnny Lover. The tune is a simple fiddle tune in D with short 4-bar strains. The Jug Band seems to be throughly devoid of a juggist. Try as I may, I can’t hear any jug on the recording. There is, however, some very fine fiddling, rock solid Riley Puckett-esque guitar accompaniment, and some pretty nifty mandolin as well. The energy of the piece is fantastic–it could go on forever.

There’s a transcription of the tune in my now out-of-print, wildly unpopular book.

Johnny Lover (MP3)
Courtesy of Juneberry78s.com. Please consider purchasing a CD-R or DVD-R from them.

One of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Hurt sings even the most brutal subject matter with a voice that is gentle and reassuring. Hurt’s fingerpicked guitar on this song has become a standard for anyone learning fingerstyle guitar.

Recorded in New York City on December 21, 1928 for the OKeh label.

Louis Collins (MP3)
Courtesy of Archive.org

Previous Mississippi John Hurt Posts:
Mississippi John Hurt playing Frankie
Mississippi John Hurt playing Nobody’s Dirty Business
Mississippi John Hurt playing Stack O Lee Blues
Mississippi John Hurt playing Avalon Blues
Mississippi John Hurt plays Goodnight Irene
Mississippi John Hurt singing Spike Driver’s Blues

This was one of two tracks cut at Hurt’s first session, in Memphis, on Valentine’s Day, 1928. The song shifts in pitch over the course of the track. It starts in ‘B’, and drifts noticeably sharp. Likely the machine used to cut the recording was moving at an uneven speed. Permanent studios used systems such as a weight lowered slowly from a high place to get the platter to rotate at a constant speed (much as a grandfather clock works), but the mobile recording studios set up in hotels and warehouses on trips like this were likely hand-cranked. The same thing happens on Hurt’s recording of Ain’t Nobody’s Dirty Business, recorded on the same equipment at the same session.

Frankie is a variation on Frankie and Johnnie, one of the classic songs in American folk music, in which woman kills her cheating lover. Incidentally, if one were to adjust for inflation the $100 Frankie paid 1n 1928 for Albert’s suit of clothes, you would be looking at a $1124.36 suit of clothes. Not too shabby.

Frankie (MP3)
Courtesy of Archive.org

Previous Mississippi John Hurt Posts:
Mississippi John Hurt playing Nobody’s Dirty Business
Mississippi John Hurt playing Stack O Lee Blues
Mississippi John Hurt playing Avalon Blues
Mississippi John Hurt plays Goodnight Irene
Mississippi John Hurt singing Spike Driver’s Blues

Mississippi John Hurt recorded this on Valentine’s Day, 1928, for the OKeh label’s 8000 ‘Race’ series. Though he cut eight sides at this session, only two saw a commercial release: Nobody’s Dirty Business and Frankie. The strength of the material from this session earned Hurt an invitation to New York to record more sides later in the year.

Nobody’s Dirty Business is structurally interesting, comprised of seven-bar phrases. The short phrase length makes the beginning of each new phrase a bit of a surprise for the listener — the downbeat of the new phrase comes where one expects a measure of rest at the end of the previous phrase.

Nobody’s Dirty Business (MP3)
Courtesy of Archive.org

Previous Mississippi John Hurt Posts:
Mississippi John Hurt playing Stack O Lee Blues
Mississippi John Hurt playing Avalon Blues
Mississippi John Hurt plays Goodnight Irene
Mississippi John Hurt singing Spike Driver’s Blues