John & Alan Lomax Meet Huddie Ledbetter, Part 2

Posted on July 19, 2010 by sixstrstories

In July of 1933, when John and Alan Lomax left Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, LA, Huddie Lebetter stayed behind. He would be continuing his 6 – 10 year prison sentence for “assault with intent to murder” that he had begun serving on February 25, 1930.

(Again, all quotes and information in this post are from the book; The Life & Legend of Lead Belly by Charles Wolfe & Kip Lornell.)

In July of 1934, the Lomaxes were back in Angola and on July 1, they recorded Lead Belly again. This time they cut 15 performances: 6 songs that were repeats from the first session (including 2 more takes of “Irene”) and 8 new songs, including “Governor O.K. Allen.” This song was written by Lead Belly as a plea to the Louisiana governor to commute his sentence. At Lead Belly’s request, the Lomaxes delivered the disc recording of the song to the governor’s office in Baton Rouge, LA, in the days after their visit.

On August 1, 1934, Huddie Lebetter was released from jail. According to a letter written by Warden L.A. Jones in 1939: “He received no clemency, and his discharge was a routine matter under the good time law which applies to all first and second offenders.”

On September 22, 1934, Huddie started working for John Lomax as his driver and assistant, travelling with him through Arkansas on another song collecting and recording trip.

On December 28, 1934, Huddie Ledbetter gave his first public performance in the North at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in the Crystal Ballroom of the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Philadelphia, PA. The performance was listed on the program as: “Negro Folksongs and Ballads, presented by John Lomax and Alan Lomax with the assistance of a Negro minstrel from Louisiana.”

Over three days in January of 1935, the 23rd, 24th and 25th, Lead Belly had his first commercial recording sessions. He was under contract with the American Recording Corporation also known as ARC Records. He cut 10 songs a day, each day, using the same 12-string Stella guitar that he still had from his days in prison.

Posted in Random Topics | 1 Comment

On This Day In Music History: John & Alan Lomax Meet Huddie Ledbetter

Posted on July 17, 2010 by sixstrstories

In early June, 1933, Texas-based Folk song collector John Lomax and his 18-year-old son, Alan, drove out of Dallas on a mission. They were going on “the first major trip in the United States to capture black folk music in the field.” (All quotes, unless otherwise noted, are from: The Life & Legend of Lead Belly by Charles Wolfe & Kip Lornell.)

The elder Lomax was no stranger to song collecting. In 1910, he had published the results of many years of work in the book: Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. Through subsequent research in the published and unpublished folk song collections of the Library of Congress, several Ivy League colleges and elsewhere, he found that there was “a dearth of black folk song material.”

John Lomax wanted to rectify this deficiency and came up with the idea for a new book to be called: American Ballads and Folk Songs. He envisioned that this book would “especially focus on the neglected genre of the black work song.” To collect such music, he decided to visit “sections of the South with a high percentage of blacks.” Specifically, his journey would pinpoint “labouring camps, lumber camps… and eventually, prisons and penitentiaries.”

He convinced the Macmillan Company to give him a contract and a small advance and the Library of Congress to provide research funds and a new disc-based recording machine.

Unlike the pen-and-paper way that John collected songs at the turn of the century, the technology existed in 1933 to first “capture” the songs in recordings. This became known as making “field recordings” and was something that commercial recording companies had been doing for a while. The Lomaxes started their trip with what they had: a dictaphone machine that recorded onto metal-coated cylinders and made “scratchy and squeaky sounds” at best. The state-of-the-art disc-cutting machine with it’s 12-inch annealed aluminum discs that the Library of Congress had promised did not catch up with the travelers until they reached Baton Rouge, LA in early-July.

But it was just in time.

On or about the 12th of July, the Lomaxes arrived at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, LA. After four days of listening to and recording both male and female inmates, Captain Andrew Reaux of Camp A introduced them to inmate Huddie Ledbetter on Sunday, July 16. John later wrote that “we found a Negro convict so skillful with his guitar and his strong, baritone voice that he had been made a ‘trusty’ and kept around Camp A headquarters as laundryman, so as to be near at hand to sing and play for visitors. Huddie Ledbetter…was unique in knowing a very large number of songs, all of which he sang effectively while he twanged his twelve-string guitar.”

The Lomaxes recorded Huddie, also known as Lead Belly, playing and singing eight different songs, recording “Irene,” a piece they’d never heard before, three times.

In his wonderful book, Delta Blues (2008), Ted Gioia writes: “Prisons are not supposed to play a role in the history of music.”

Good thing John and Alan Lomax didn’t know that.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | Leave a comment

On This Day In Music History: Woody Guthrie – Take 1

Posted on July 14, 2010 by sixstrstories

Woody Guthrie was born, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, on this day, July 14, in 1912. He was the third of five children of Charley and Nora Guthrie of Okemah, OK.

So: Woody Guthrie. Where do I start?

The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music called him: “Dean of American Folk artists.” Fellow Oklahoman Guy Logsdon wrote: “Woody’s creative contributions to our culture are legion. He remains an inspirational figure for folk songwriters, social protest and topical songwriters, and rock and folk rock songwriters.”

Bob Dylan called him: “The true voice of the American spirit.”

All of that is very nice, and true, but…

Woody Guthrie wrote songs.

So many songs! “Do Re Mi,” “Dusty Old Dust (So Long It’s Been Good To Know Yuh),” “Bling-Blang,” “Mail Myself To You” and, of course, “This Land Is Your Land,” to name but a very few. (These are just the ones that I play.)

Joe Klein, in his Woody Guthrie: A Life (1980), describes Woody’s lyric writing process in the late 1930’s: “Usually he’d start off with a general idea and then a key phrase would come to him and he’d find a snatch of an old tune to fit the phrase, and then set the rest of the words to that tune. The music usually was an afterthought. The words were the most important.”

In his musical autobiography, Where Have All The Flowers Gone (1997), Pete Seeger wrote: “When Woody Guthrie made up a song, more often than not he put new words to an old melody, often without thinking of what the old song was. He’d be thinking of his new words. In the back of his mind were a bunch of good old melodies floating around; he’d reach up, pull one down and try it out.”

Woody Guthrie played guitar.

During his set at George Wein’s Folk Festival 50 in Newport, RI on August 1, 2009, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, legendary Folk singer and close friend of Woody Guthrie’s said: “Woody loved the Carter Family and Maybelle Carter was his favorite guitar player.”

All you’ve got to do is listen to one of his recordings, and you hear that classic Carter style of strumming, especially in the introductions of songs like “Do Re Mi” and “Dusty Old Dust (So Long…).” He even does a Maybelle Carter-style guitar solo in the middle of “I Ain’t Got No Home” from Dust Bowl Ballads. He plays a pretty good harmonica, too!

Woody Guthrie sang.

In his Chronicles, Volume One (2004), Bob Dylan described Woody’s singing: “His voice was like a stiletto. He was like none of the other singers I ever heard. His mannerisms, the way everything just rolled off his tongue, it all just about knocked me down. He had a perfected style of singing that it seemed like no one else had ever thought about. He would throw in the sound of the last letter of a word whenever he felt like it and it would come like a punch.”

Woody Guthrie made records.

So many records! He not only recorded his own songs, but dozens of traditional Folk songs, some of his versions proving to be the definitive versions of the song.

He was first recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress archives in March of 1940. His first commercial recordings were made, thanks again to Alan Lomax, for Victor Records on May 3, 1940. They were released as a two-album, twelve-(78 rpm)-record  set entitled: Dust Bowl Ballads. Woody went on to record hundreds of songs for Moses Asch and his Folkways Records. His last session was for Decca Records in January, 1952.

Again from Chronicles, Dylan describes the first time he really listened to a Woody Guthrie record: “When the needle dropped, I was stunned – didn’t know if I was stoned or straight… It made me want to gasp. It was like the land parted… It was like the record player itself had just picked me up and flung me across the room…It was like I had been in the dark and someone had turned on the main switch of a lightning conductor.”

Woody’s recordings are readily available. The Dust Bowl Ballads and the Library of Congress Recordings are on CD on Rounder Records. Smithsonian Folkways released a four-volume CD set of The Asch Recordings. There are many others.

If you’ve never listened to Woody Guthrie, you should. If you haven’t listened to him recently, you should listen to him again, soon. Maybe today.

What better way to celebrate his birthday?!

Woody Guthrie passed away on October 3, 1967 in Greystone Park Hospital, Queens, New York.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | Tagged | Leave a comment

On This Day In Music History: ?

Posted on July 12, 2010 by sixstrstories

OK, readers, here’s a little quiz for you.

What British, Muddy-Waters-inspired, Rock & Roll/Rhythm & Blues band had their first gig at the Marquee Club in London on this day, July 12, in 1962? Band members at the time included an Ian, a Keith, a Brian, a Dick and two Micks.

Have fun! To answer, leave a comment.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | 2 Comments

On This Day In Music History: Suzanne Vega

Posted on July 11, 2010 by sixstrstories

Every year I make it a point to try to watch the Grammy Awards show on TV. As a music teacher, I feel the need to stay somewhat up to date on the popular music scene and at least be able to say: “Oh yes, I’ve heard of that band/singer/musician” when a student mentions one. Besides being educational, the show has proved to be entertaining, revealing and fun.

One of the most memorable performances I’ve seen was in March of 1988 on the 30th Annual Grammy Awards show, broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall in New York City. This was the year of U2’s Joshua Tree album and Paul Simon’s Graceland. Whitney Houston and Jodi Watley were high on the charts.

Suzanne Vega was having a pretty good year as well. She had released her second album, Solitude Standing, and had a major international hit with the song “Luka.” The song had garnered her Grammy nominations in the categories of Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance – Female. She was scheduled to perform on the show.

Now, I owned her new album as well as her first album, 1985’s Suzanne Vega, and had seen her in concert with her band at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom on July 3, 1987. I knew she was a fine fingerstyle guitarist as well as an excellent singer and songwriter. But “Luka” was a band song: keyboards, electric guitar, bass and drums. As they used to say: “It had a good beat and you could dance to it.” And, once upon a time, I’d been to Radio City Music Hall so I had some idea how huge of a room it was.

So, when I saw her stride out on that stage all by herself, no band in sight, I was amazed. She performed the song with just her acoustic guitar for accompaniment, giving it an entirely different and very effective sound and feel. She was simply dazzling. I was again reminded of what one person with a voice, a guitar and a song can do. She didn’t win a Grammy that night, but she made a strong and lasting impression on a very large audience.

Suzanne’s success that year opened the door for a string of  “female urban folksingers” that included Tracy Chapman, Michelle Shocked and Shawn Colvin. She, and her colleagues, rejuvinated widespread interest among young women in playing acoustic guitar and writing songs. As Suzanne proclaimed in the tour book to her World Tour ’87: “You could not only write a song any way you felt like, but you could also write about anything you felt like.”

Suzanne Nadine Vega was born on July 11, 1959 in Santa Monica, California.

Happy Birthday, Suzanne.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | Tagged | Leave a comment

On This Day In Music History: John Met Paul

Posted on July 6, 2010 by sixstrstories

Here’s how it happened.

John Lennon, 16-year-old singer/guitarist, had a band: the six-member Quarry Men Skiffle Group.

The band had a gig. They were scheduled to play 2, 1/2 hour sets (the first at 4:15 pm and then again at 5:45 pm) on Saturday, July 6, 1957, at the St. Peter’s Parish Church Garden Fete in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool, England. The Fete was held in the church field.

John had a friend, Ivan Vaughan, who occasionally played tea chest bass with the Quarry Men. He was not playing with the band at the Fete, but… 

Ivan had a friend, a classmate, 15-year-old singer/guitarist/piano player Paul McCartney.

Ivan invited Paul to the Fete to hear the band and meet John. (Paul did not have a band.)

Paul, riding his bicycle, guitar slung over his shoulder, arrived at the Fete about half-way through the Quarry Men’s first set.

He watched and listened intently, especially impressed by the band leader, Ivan’s friend, John.

When the Fete was over, at a little before 7:00 pm, in the nearby St. Peter’s Church  Hall, Ivan introduced Paul to John and the rest of the Quarry Men.

After a bit, to break the ice, Paul sat down at the church hall’s piano and played and sang bits of some Little Richard songs. Then he picked up his guitar and did the Eddie Cochran tune “Twenty Flight Rock” and… he knew all the words.

John watched and listened closely. He was very impressed.

On this day, July 6, in 1957, John met Paul.

P.S.: Most of the information for this post came from the 1996 book: “The Day John Met Paul” by Jim O’Donnell. Highly Recommended.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | Tagged | 1 Comment

On This Day In Music History: “That’s All Right (Mama)”

Posted on July 5, 2010 by sixstrstories

The first thing you hear is an acoustic guitar.

That’s Elvis Presley, fingering an open-position A Major chord and setting the tempo with a solid Carter scratch: boom–chuck–boom-pa-chuck-a. After 4 beats, Bill Black’s slapping upright bass comes in, doubling the guitar’s alternating bass notes. After 4 measures of that, Scotty Moore brings in his electric guitar and Elvis, his vocals drenched in reverb, starts to sing.

“Well, that’s all right, Mama, that’s all right for you. That’s all right, Mama, just any way you do, that’s all right.”

This was not a new song. R&B musician Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup wrote and recorded it in 1946. But at Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service, home of Sun Records at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, TN, on Monday, July 5, 1954, the old song took on a new sound and popular music would never be the same. 

In those days, 1953, 1954, Sam Phillips had often told Marion Keisker, the secretary/receptionist at the recording studio: “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.”

Sam had found his man.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | Tagged | 1 Comment

On This Day In Music History: Mississippi John Hurt

Posted on July 3, 2010 by sixstrstories

In the August 2010 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine, interviewer Jeffery Pepper Rodgers asks singer/songwriter/guitarist Jakob Dylan about the Folk fingerpicking style he uses on his two solo albums, including his latest Women and Country. Dylan replies: “My favorite with that stuff has always been someone like Mississippi John Hurt.”

Mississippi John Hurt, guitarist, singer and songwriter, was born John Smith Hurt on July 3, 1893 in Teoc, Mississippi. (A few sources list his birthdate as March 8, 1892 or 1893.) He was one of ten children. He grew up and lived most of his life in the nearby town of Avalon.

At the age of 9, his mother bought him his first guitar, a “Black Annie” for $1.50. His method of teaching himself how to play was: “I just make it sound like I think it ought to.” By the age of twelve he knew enough songs to play on weekends at local house parties and to go late-night “serenadin.'” In his later years, Hurt worked many different jobs including tenant farming, picking cotton, cutting lumber and working the rails for the Illinois Central railroad.

In late 1927, two popular, local, white, country musicians, with whom Hurt occasionally played, recommended him to visiting OKeh Records recording director Tommy Rockwell. Rockwell auditioned Hurt at his home in Avalon and offered to bring him to Memphis, TN for a recording session.

On Feb. 14, 1928, Mississippi John Hurt recorded 8 songs or “sides” for OKeh, only two of them being released: “Frankie” and “Nobody’s Dirty Business.” He was paid $240.00 plus expenses for the session.

The record sold well enough for OKeh to invite him to New York City later that year. In two sessions on December 21 and 28, 1928, he cut 20 sides. Ten in all were released, including “Louis Collins,” “Candy Man Blues,” “Spike Driver Blues” and “Avalon Blues.” He returned to Avalon and that, except for playing locally almost every Saturday night, was that for his career as a professional musician.

Until…  In 1952, Folkways Records released The Anthology of American Folk Music, a six album, three volume set compiled by record collector Harry Smith. The collection contained two songs by Mississippi John Hurt: “Frankie” and “Spike Driver Blues.” According to David Brown from the 1976 article “From Avalon to Eternity:” “From those two songs Hurt aquired a circle of admirers who listened for the secret of the marvelous finger picking of a man they thought was dead.”

In early 1963, record collector Richard Spottswood gave two young Washington D.C. blues musicians, Tom Hoskins and Mike Stewart, a tape of Hurt’s “Avavlon Blues.” The musicians had been trying to learn Hurt’s guitar music from old 78 rpm records, but thought that the best way to learn would be to locate him and learn first hand. Inspired by the first line of the song: “Avalon my home town, always on my mind,” the two fans finally found the town of Avalon, MS in an atlas from 1878. In mid-1963, Hoskins drove to Mississippi.

Armed with a guitar and a tape recorder, Hoskins arrived in Avalon and pulled up around sunset in front of Stinson’s, the town’s general store/gas station/post office. Asking one of the men out in front of the store if they knew of a singer named Mississippi John Hurt, they gave him directions: “’bout a mile down that road, third mail box up the hill. Can’t miss it.”

When John Hurt answered the knock on his door, he was quite skeptical of this young white man from Washington D.C. His first thought was that he was from “the police or the FBI or something like that.” Hoskins, amazed by his good luck but not knowing what to expect, asked Hurt if he could still play. Hurt, having no guitar and muttering that he “hadn’t done anything wrong,” played the one Hoskins brought and soon proved that the legend was alive and well.

In the following years, the life of Mississippi John Hurt changed completely. Hoskins brought him to Washington, arranged performances and, in April 1963,  informal recording sessions. Hurt was featured in articles and reviews in Time, Newsweek and The New York Times. He performed at the Newport Folk Festival in the summer of 1963 and became the first performer to be invited back for two consecutive years. He travelled the country giving concerts at other festivals, in coffee houses and on college campuses. He made recordings for the library of Congress and commercial recordings for Vanguard Records.

During all of this, he lived in Washington D.C. But after two years of city life, he’d had enough. Having achieved financial security, he moved back to Mississippi and bought a small house. He did his last recording session for Vanguard in July of 1966. As his wife Jessie said at this time: “By rights, you know, John went into this when he ought’ve been coming out.”

Mississippi John Hurt passed away on Nov. 2, 1966 in Grenada, MS.

The music of Mississippi John Hurt can not really be described, but many people have tried. The words “gentle,” “unique,” “organic” and “graceful” occur often. Phrases like “deceptively simple,” “disciplined intensity,” “clear, rolling tone” and “engagingly interesting” come close. To say that he was influential in the world of guitar playing would be a huge understatement.

I will simply add that his music is a joy to listen to. I highly encourage you to take the time, seek out his recordings, watch the films, and hear and see for yourself.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | Tagged | 1 Comment

On This Day In Music History: “Arkansaw Traveler”

Posted on June 30, 2010 by sixstrstories

In the summer of 1922, 34-year-old Texas fiddler A.C. “Eck” Robertson and 74-year-old Oklahoma fiddler Henry C. Gilliland performed together at the Old Confederate Soldiers’ Reunion in Richmond, VA. When the festivities ended, they took the train to New York City to see if they could get an audition with Victor Records. They got the audition and, on June 30, entered the recording studio to make their first recording.

“Arkansaw Traveler” was the first of four fiddle duets they recorded that day and the first to be released by Victor Records. It stands as the first recording in the history of Country music.

Listen: http://www.archive.org/details/Gilliland_and_Robertson-Arkansaw_Traveler . (I don’t know why this says June 15, 1922.)

The next day, July 1, 1922, Eck went back to the studio alone and recorded six solo fiddle pieces including “Sallie Gooden”

On September 1, 1922, Victor released the first record from these sessions: “Sallie Gooden” backed with the duet “Arkansaw Traveler,” but did not really promote it until April, 1923. In an advertisement from then, “Sallie Gooden” is described as: “a medley of jigs and reels, in the very best style of the travelling cowboy fiddler.” In Country Music Originals (2007), Tony Russell writes: “”Sallie Gooden” is not just good for its time, it is great for all time, a small but perfect masterpiece of American music.”

Thanks again to the folks at Internet Archive, you can listen to “Sallie Gooden” (or “Sally Gooden”) and see for yourself.

Click on this link: http:www.archive.org/details/Sallygooden and enjoy.

Posted in On This Day In Music History, Posts with Audio | Tagged | 1 Comment

Old Friends

Posted on June 28, 2010 by sixstrstories

Getting together with an old friend is a wonderful thing. It is amazing how, in this age of instant communication, the complexities and congestion of life can cause years to go by between visits or even a phone conversation between once near-constant companions.

But once the initial contact is made, a reunion is scheduled and the old friend arrives on your doorstep, it only takes a big hug and and a few minutes of conversation for the time-since-the-last-time to melt away and the warmth and comfortableness to settle back in. And as glasses are raised and toasts are made and a meal is shared, the give and take and the laughter and the catching-up and the questions and answers and the reminiscing and the laughter make for a memorable and precious evening that begs those involved to make getting together again, soon, a real priority.

Resurrecting an old favorite recording, while not like the give-and-take of a reunion with a good friend, can be a rather wonderful and revealing experience as well.

The Turning Point by British Blues master John Mayall was one of my most frequently listened to albums in and around the early 1970’s. A live album, recorded on July 12, 1969 at Bill Graham’s Filmore East in New York City, it features a Blues quartet made up of  Mayall on vocals, harmonica and electric guitar; Jon Mark on acoustic finger-style guitar; Steve Thompson on bass guitar and Johnny Almond on saxophones and flute. No drums. That, for the day, was a big deal for a Blues band.

This “Blues without bashing” experiment proved to be hugely successful. With songs that made use of “the dramatic tension of near silence and subtle melodic interplay” (from the 2001 CD liner notes by John McDermott), Mayall and company created music that sounds as fresh and contemporary to my ears today as it was exciting and years ahead of its time back in 1970. Listening to it again the other day both brought me back and joyously reminded me that music this good does indeed never get old. 

The Turning Point by John Mayall. Highly recommended.

Posted in Random Topics | 1 Comment