Year: 2009

Frank Hovington: Lonesome Road Blues LP

5 Comments

Frank Hovingtong Lonesome Road Blues LP Flyright 522 by you.

Here’s an excellent LP by blues guitarist / banjoist / singer Frank Hovington (1919-1982).  Hovington was from Pennsylvania but lived in Delaware.  These recordings were made by Dick Spottswood & Bruce Bastin back in the summer of 1975 at Frank’s home, using a tape recorder on loan from the Library of Congress. It was released by the British Label Flyright Records in 1976.  I’ve really enjoyed listening to this one lately, Hovington is an excellent singer and has a great style, or range of styles on guitar and banjo.  This album was apparently reissued on CD by Rounder Records at some point, but as far as I know is now out of print.  Hovington was originally “discovered” by John Fahey while John was driving around looking for old records.  Mack McCormick brought him to the 1971 Smithsonian Folk Festival, but other than that Frank Hovington did not like to tour or try to play lots of gigs at that point in his life.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD ALBUM CUT UP INTO TRACKS

F R A N K   H O V I N G T O N; from back cover of Flyright FLYLP 522; photographer: Bengt Olsson

See below for track list:

Interview with Elizabeth Butters

2 Comments


On today’s show I speak with Cambridge folk singer Elizabeth Butters.  Elizabeth plays the guitar and dulcimer and is a wonderful singer of ballads and other types of songs, many of them having to do with death!  She was in New York last weekend for a show that we played together out in Bushwick and I caught up with her the next day at her sister’s house to tape this interview.  Elizabeth plays live on the air, talks about her influences and plays some records that she likes.  In the above picture she appears to be visiting some sort of pastoral Lama home.

Elizabeth Butters’ myspace

Passim Archives

Eck Robertson: Famous Cowboy Fiddler LP

9 Comments

Eck Robertson LP by you.

This is an awesome solo fiddle record of Texas fiddler Eck Robertson, recorded by Mike Seeger, John Cohen & Tracy Schwarz – The New Lost City Ramblers, at Eck’s home in 1963. Robertson was the first person to record and issue country music on vinyl record back in 1922, and as the notes to this late era LP (released in 1991) point out, he may also be the last!  This is really a fantastic record, put out by County Records and as far as I know has not been reissued anywhere.

CLICK HERE to download

See below for the notes to this record:

Pete Seeger Sings Guthrie’s Original “This Land Is Your Land” at Obama Concert

1 Comment


Bruce Springsteen got Pete Seeger invited to play at this Obamanation concert event at the Capitol yesterday.  Tao Rodriguez, the Boss and a large choir sang the song as Pete called out the lyrics to the crowd.  Pete called the song as originally written by Guthrie back when, complete with the verse about private property:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.

He also got in another lesser known verse:

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I’d seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

The choir kind of messes up on the private property verse.  Was it planned to sing that one?  He sings it instead of the chorus.  I guess it was planned since it seems like the thing was rehearsed with the choir somehow, but all the same I’m amazed they let him even say the words “private property.”  That’s awesome.  He gave people a dose of the real business.

Guthrie took the melody for “This Land Is Your Land” from the hymn “When the World’s On Fire.”  Guthrie loved the Carter Family so maybe he heard their version or he just learned the song from someone he knew.  Bryant’s Jubilee Quartet does a great version, you can find that on iTunes.

I also appreciated that Rev. Lowry referenced Big Bill Broonzy’s song “Black, Brown & White Blues” at the end of the benediction he gave at the inauguration.

“They says, “if you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, stick around,
But as you’s black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back”

Interview with Alan Lomax about Leadbelly

2 Comments


From the Yurchenco Archives: On today’s show I air an interview Henrietta Yurchenco did with Alan Lomax about Leadbelly.  I’m not sure when this interview was conducted (there was no date on the tape), but I think it was done in the mid 1960’s for one of her broadcasts on WNYC.  Alan Lomax gives a really excellent talk about Leadbelly, about his music and about when he and his father John Lomax first encountered Leadbelly at the Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana.  After the interview I play some of the very first field recordings that the Lomax’s made of Leadbelly when they met him that day in 1933, and when they returned to record him again in 1934.  Thanks go to Nathan Salsburg of the Alan Lomax Archive for supplying me with those recordings.

The film posted here is a mid 1930’s “March of Time” newsreel starring Leadbelly and John Lomax playing the parts of themselves in a stylized reenactment of their first meeting and early activities together.

In 1933 John & Alan Lomax were supplied with a portable disc recording machine, the first of its kind, and once they got the hang of using it they proceeded to the first stop on their field recording trip, the Angola State Pen, and the first person they encountered there was Leadbelly. Alan Lomax’s description of this series of events is vivid, and together with the early field recordings I play on the show and the “March of Time” film, you can get a startling connection with that moment in time and space.