Newest Songs
Hell Bound Train
A cautionary tale of damnation and redemption
You know about the train that was "bound for glory". Well, this train was going the other way on the opposite track.
Jolly Roving Tar
A sea song from Newfoundland
I found this jolly sea song from Newfoundland on one of the old 'American Folksay' albums produced on Stinson records by Moses Asch, performed by Frank Warner.
No Peas No Rice
A Bahamian jazz song
A Bahamian song recorded in the 1930s by big band leaders such as Mart Brit and Count Basie and in the Bahamas by Blind Blake Alfonso Higgs.
Thorneymore Woods
A song of the noble poacher, and mean gamekeepers
An English poaching ballad as performed by Louis Killen.
La Bruja
Vampire story from Vera Cruz, Mexico. Boo!
La Bruja is a song and traditional dance in the Huapango tradition from the state of Vera Cruz. The dance usually involves a number of women with lighted candles on their heads.
The Devil and Bailiff McGlynn
The devil takes his due
What a fine old Irish tale. But it derives from a history that is not so jolly - the mass evictions and house levelings that took place during the Irish famine of the mid-nineteenth century. No wonder the mother in the story cries "May the devil take that awful Bailiff!".
Spotted Cow
A naughty little English folk song
Here is a traditional English song, at least I think so, I heard it from Steel Eye Span, that parcel of rogues who brought fuzz-tone electric guitar to English folk music.
Italian Carol
A christmas song from Italy
An Italian carol adapted by Pete Seeger from an old tradition in Naples in which shepherds come down from the Calabrian mountains for a festive stay in that city during the Christmas celebration.
Wild Women Don't Have No Blues
A blues for strong women
This song was recorded by Ida Cox in 1924, Ida was one of great, if lesser known, female blues singers in the era of Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Sippie Wallace.
Mean Old Bedbug Blues
A blues from Bessie Smith
Each of these are classic blues performance in their own right and provide an interesting contrast between country blues and early jazz band styles. I always favored Bessie's rendition. I think her slower tempo with piano and guitar accompaniment captured the true creepiness of bedbugs.
Uncle Joe Gimme Mo
Calypso from Trinidad
This great Trinidadian Calypso song comes from an early recording by Wilmuth Houdini. I love the way these Calypsonians took "uncle joe and his old ban-jo", a common stereotype in minstrel shows, and transformed him into a rock star.
Monsieur Banjo
A creole song for kids
This children's song in Louisiana Creole. My version is an adaptation of Pete Seeger's English language version on 'American Favorite Ballads' and a French language version from the Magnolia Sisters on their delightful children's album 'Lapin Lapin'
Featured Songs
Hopalong Peter
An old time banjo song
This was recorded by J.E. Mainer's Mountaineers in the 1930's. I learned it from the NLCR.
Two Hobo Songs
Hobo songs from Jimmy Rogers, Cisco Houston and Blind Boy Grunt
Two songs written on the same sad theme. The first by Jimmy Rogers. The second was recorded in the 1960's on Broadside Ballads. The singer was billed as Blind Boy Grunt and he sounded remarkably like Bob Dylan who was under contract at Columbia at the time.
The Hayseed
A farmer-labor song
This is a song from the American populst movement, possibly written by Arthur L. Kellogg. I learned it from the singing of Pete Seeger on the classic Folkways "American Industrial Ballads" album.
Sam Bass
A songs about our famous local outlaw
This was one of my daddy's favorite old songs. He was fond of it, I think, because it mentions so many places in Texas that were well known to us - Denton, Terrell, Round Rock.
Candy Man
A blues on the banjo
Everyone with finger picking guitar aspirations learns this tune from Reverend Gary Davis. Reverend Davis did not sing these words, at least not after his religious convictions moved him to abandon such sinful singing. I'm not sure where these verses came from.
Lewis Collins
A fine old guitar finger picking piece from Mississippi John Hurt
'The Death of Lewis Colins' was composed and recorded by Mississippi John Hurt in 1928 for Okeh Records and then recorded again in 1963 when he was 'rediscovered' in the folk revival. I heard it first from Tom Paley who learned it from the old recording.
Canción Mixteca
A sweet song was by José López Alavez of Oaxaca, Mexico, 1912.
This short and very sweet song was written by José López Alavez of Oaxaca, Mexico in 1912. Though by some accounts it has traditional origins. It has been a favorite of mine since I heard it from our local Tejano crooner Freddie Fender.
Dear Okie
A dustbowl song by a cowboy singer
From Texas radio songster Doye O'Dell with help fellow Cowboy actor Rudy Sooter. Doye grew up on a Texas cotton spread in the dustbowl era. He started a radio career with WDAG in Amarillo and then the famous Mexican border station XCPM. He finally landed his own NBC radio show produced in New York.
Tighten on the Backband
A song of plowing and country life
Sam Hinton put this song together from bits of mule and ox driver shouts and work songs. Sam was an East Texas songster who left home to become an aquatic biologist. As devoted to his academic career as he was, Sam kept on singing and recording throughout his life and left us some wonderful material.
Eight Hour Day
A labor anthem
The demand for the eight hour day was one of the earliest and most important achievements of the labor movement in Europe and North America. These verses, as sung by Pete Seeger on 'American Industrial Ballads', come from a song by John Hory of the Knights of Labor written in 1886.
Anjelik o!
Another Haitian folk song
Here's another Haitian song. It's quite old and well known in Haiti but I have only heard two recordings of it in Haitian Creole. One is from the Lolita Cuevas' "Haitian Folk Songs" the other is part of Jocelyne Dorisme's Choucoune, which is really a medley of Haitian songs. In the 1950's.
One Misty Moisty Morning
A jolly wedding song
This song comes from a seventeenth century broadside "The Wiltshire Wedding betwixt Daniel Doo well and Doll the Dairy Maid, with the Consent of her Old Father Leather-Coat, and her dear and tender Mother Plod-well." The tune is shared with another mischievous ditty , "The Friar and the Nun."