Here’s some wonderful footage of Clarence Ashley playing his best-known tune, the Coo Coo Bird, some time in the 1960s. Ashley’s skills don’t seem have diminished a bit in the 30+ years since his landmark recording of the tune.

Virginian Henry Whitter was one of the earliest country music performers to record extensively. While many of his solo recordings are unexceptional, his work with G.B. Grayson was often excellent. Rain Crow Bill was an old Minstrel harmonica solo that Whitter recorded at least twice: at his first recording session in December, 1923, as ‘Rain Crow Bill Blues’, and then in a later electrical recording in August, 1927.

Doc Watson recorded a very faithful interpretation of this recording on his great Home Again LP in 1967, and then an updated version on his Then and Now LP in 1973.

Rain Crow Bill (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

This recoding from June 30, 1922, is one of the earliest examples of American Vernacular fiddling on record. Alexander Campbell (’Eck’) Robertson was a skilled contest fiddler from Texas whose recording career extended into the folk revival of the 1960s. This recording was paired with Robertson’s seminal recording on Sallie Gooden on Victor 18956.

The recording is a duet with fiddler Henry Gilliland, and it is believed that Gilliland is playing the melody and Robertson the harmony. It lacks the extraordinary variations of Robertson’s Sallie Gooden, but it’s still an interesting performance.

Arkansaw Traveler (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

I’ve raved about Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s work several times before on this site. This is an early video clip of Lunsford’s fiddle playing. The tune is, for all intents and purposes, Cumberland Gap. His vocal performance in this ensemble piece is impressive, and displays a power not necessarily evident in his solo recordings.

The film speeds up and slows down over the course of the performance, causing the music to sound a little wobbly. Deal with it.

Here’s a fun little artifact from the Where You Been So Long sessions: a version of the Leaving of Liverpool (MP3) without vocals.

When we record our tunes, we usually do the instrumental tracks as a group, and then overdub vocals. We had done this song a few times at Irish gigs and in our usual loud bar environments, and I had gotten in the habit of belting out the lead vocal Clancy Brothers style. It worked fine then, but when it came time to record the vocal in the studio, though, I became acutely aware of just how horrible I sounded.

We did it in ‘A’ because that’s the key it was in on the Dubliners record I learned it from¹. But it’s below my range. And there were other problems beyond that. The big ‘F’ sound on the first word of the song (’Farewell’) was causing me to lose all my breath pressure. By the time I got to the second big ‘F’ (on ‘far away’), I was sounding like a bagpipe that had been run over by a semi truck.

I did about a dozen takes that day, each significantly worse than the one before, and then gave up. We contemplated redoing it in a different key, or having someone else do the lead. In the end, though, we had Mike do this Karaoke mix of the tune for me to practice to. You can still hear a faint remnant of my original guide vocal, but, otherwise, it’s just the instrumental backing tracks and some of the solos.

In our next session, I tried a completely different approach, doing the verses as quietly as I could muster. We did the choruses en masse, with Ryan, Billy, and me around a single mic, and then double-tracked it. The two tracks were panned hard to either side, giving a pleasant big vocal sound. We also lopped out part of the first solo section, as the song had gotten too long.

The result seems to have been acceptable. I will always be immensely proud of the fact that it was played on RTE. Anyway, grab a bottle of Jameson’s and sing along.

The Leaving of Liverpool (Karaoke mix) MP3

¹ Egads, that’s a lot of prepositions in one sentence… four counting the one that ends it. I am appalled.

Since their out-of-print LPs and CDs command staggering prices on eBay, YouTube clips may be as close as new fans can get to the Bothy Band these days. Their work has held up well, as this thirty-year-old clip will attest.

The Wild Rover has been my daughter’s favorite song for as long as I can remember. This is a great version performed by the Clancys and Tommy Makem on Pete Seeger’s old Rainbow Quest program. Beautiful.

This is some good 1960s footage of the good Reverend playing one of the tunes he first recorded much earlier in his career. I’m continually in awe at how well Davis moves around on the neck of the guitar. This is a man who knew his chord voicings. The one-handed guitar is also rather impressive.