This week’s show was a little bit eclectic. 7pm-8 was devoted to old-timey folk music, and the rest was for the golden age of rock and roll in the mid 1950′s. But I had fun.
The folk music I played in the first hour all came from The Anthology of American Folk Music, compiled by Harry Smith and released in 1952. The songs he chose were all from Smith’s personal collection, and were recorded by various artists between the years 1927 and 1932. 84 songs long and 6 LPs wide, the anthology is a history lesson and a snapshot of an America that seemed foreign (Greil Marcus calls it the “old, weird America”) to listeners in 1952 and especially to budding musicians like Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan, for whom Smith’s anthology became an inspiration, or a call to arms. Although the music of Smith’s anthology was distinctly non-political, the combination of its vision of a new (or just different) America, the folk protest songs of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and the obvious social tensions of the time led to an explosion of folk music in the 60′s. This is perhaps what Smith would have wanted, as it has been written that part of his reasoning for releasing the anthology was to create a new kind of public outlook and new sets of questions in an age when a future of America without a nuclear apocalypse seemed unlikely.
The songs on the anthology were representations of a different land. This was not only true for the pre-WW2 years the songs were recorded, when some of the most influential country blues musicians were active, but also for the fact that many of the songs on the anthology traced their origins as songs well back into the 19th century and before. A number of them were adapted English folk songs, brought overseas by colonists and then “Americanized”. The anthology was also fascinating because it included musical styles besides the usual country and blues. In the music of Rev. J.M Gates, listeners were presented with a vision of an End much more inevitable than nuclear holocaust. There was Cajun music on the “Social Music” section of the anthology, made up of songs to play at gatherings like Joseph Falcon’s Acadian One-Step. One of my favourite sounds on the anthology may also be one of the weirdest: the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers. Sacred Harp, which is a form of shape note singing, works by linking words, solfege syllables (do, re, mi…), notes on a staff, and notes of different shapes to create very distinctive harmonies. The songs, as it is on the anthology recordings, often start off with the singers simply singing the syllables, just to get the notes right, before switching to the words. In the case of the Alabama Sacred Harp singers, it seems that the power comes all from the performance, not the lyrics (if you can make them out).
Along with these musical styles that were and are so rarely heard, the anthology included selections from “well known” country/blues/folk artists such as Mississippi John Hurt, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Dock Boggs, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sleepy John Estes, and the Memphis Jug Band (Complete with a classic Youtube comment conversation. The wikipedia page for “rapping” includes the Memphis Jug Band as an example of a music tradition that “predated rapping”. Ergo, Youtube comments like “i cant belive that these are the founders of rap haha”.). In fact, the popularity of the anthology led to the “rediscovery” of several of the artists in the 60′s folk/blues revival, such as Dock Boggs, Furry Lewis, and Clarence Ashley (if you only click one of these links, make it this one).
All this old, weird music led us right up to 8 o’clock, when everything changed. The forgotten anthology songs generally remained forgotten, save for Elvis’ country and gospel influences, and the blues music that had slowly turned into rhythm and blues. At Sun Records Elvis sung in a voice and with an attitude seldom seen in pop music at the time. There is an argument that he lost his edge when he moved to RCA records and beyond, adding hokey love ballads and gospel tunes to his repertoire, and later over-the-top anthems like American Trilogy. Greil Marcus argues that the only time Elvis regained the vision and the commitment he had in 1954-56 was during his 1968 live music special on NBC. By that time, Elvis had been in the army, and returned home to focus on his movie career. In ’68 his singles were not selling well, and the performance on NBC was unofficially dubbed his “comeback special”. With his career possibly on the line, Elvis trotted out some old favourites, but also ripped through classic rock and roll and blues tunes with his band in a very informal setting. It would mark the resurgence of his career, whether or not that is a good thing, considering what he went on to become (specifically, a man who wore capes on stage).
I also want to present some of the lit’rature which has generally informed the tone of the show (and this blog post) so far: Two books by Greil Marcus, “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock’n'Roll Music”, and “Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes” (later released as “The Old, Weird America”), “Apocalypse Jukebox: The End of the World in American Popular Music” by David Janssen and Edward Whitelock, and “Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock’n'Roll” by Peter Guralnick.
Okay, a few more things that happened on Thursday: I offered some tips to stay ahead of the heat, including not leaving your records in the sun and drinking plenty of wine (spo-dee-o-dee).
In other news, I’ll be sitting in on the morning show from 10-11am Monday to Friday (minus Tuesday) next week and the week after. I’ll try to lay off the scratchy folk records for a while, too.
As you were,
Ian
