May Link Roundup
Hey there! In May, I finally learned to double knit and I completed my first project: a wavy cowboy figure designed by John Elliot. Now that I understand the technique, I’m working on my own design that I hope to finish in June.
In other news, I found this very sweet photo taken by Arthur Dubinsky of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and a bearded Woody Guthrie playing in Washington Square Park in New York City in 1954 and needed to share.
Finally, just like last month, there’s a poll at the bottom of the roundup for you to help us decide what theme to cover next. We just put out our listener’s choice murder ballad-themed episode on May 30th, and we’re looking forward to putting out more themed shows in June, so lend us a hand!
Now, onto the links.
Videos
4 Old Performances
On May 23rd, we played a whole show of Bob Dylan covers in honour of his 83rd birthday. Here he is on a TV show in 1963 playing one of his best-known songs.
Harlan County USA is necessary viewing if you have even a passing interest in labour history. This is a clip of the labour activist and songwriter Florence Reece singing “Which Side Are You On?”; she wrote it in 1931 and it remains a popular union song. We played Oscar Brand’s version on May 16th.
Lee Cremo is a Canadian treasure and should be more widely known. He was a protégé of Jean Carignan and a world-class fiddler in his own right who combined Mi’kmaq and Celtic fiddle styles. This is a delightful video of him performing and being interviewed onstage.
Margaret Barry was an Irish Traveller musician who was an important member of the London folk scene of the 1950s, and later became a well-known musician in North America, where she performed at Carnegie Hall and the Rockefeller Center in the 1970s. You can hear her version of “It’s Better to be Single Than a Poor Man’s Wife” on our May 2nd show.
1 Pub Recording
We played Pete Seeger’s version of the Irish ballad “Kevin Barry” on May 16th. The song is set to the tune of “Rolling Home to Dear Old Ireland,” which I found this lovely pub version of on YouTube.
Albums
4 New Releases
The guitarist Shane Parish released his new album Repertoire on May 10th, which is a collection of songs from the 20th and early 21st centuries, including music by Fred Rogers, John Cage, and Charles Mingus. His version of Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14th” appears on the May 16th edition of Barking Dog.
Myriam Gendron is a favourite of ours. She released her third album Mayday on the 10th, and it combines traditional songs with contemporary compositions. We played “Look Down That Lonesome Road” on May 16th.
Bearing Witness is David Rovics’ new album of songs about the genocide that Israel is currently perpetrating against Palestine. It’s made up of new songs, songs from the last few years, and much older—but still relevant—songs about the situation.
Sonya Cohen Cramer was a musician and graphic designer from New York, and she was also the daughter of folk musicians John Cohen and Penny Seeger. Smithsonian Folkways released a collection of her music called You’ve Been a Friend to Me on May 17th, and we played the title track on May 2nd.
3 Albums of Poetry
We played a bunch of poetry in May, including a work in progress by William Carlos Williams from the album William Carlos Williams Reading His Poems on May 9th—see below for the poem it later became.
Tentative Description Of A Dinner To Promote The Impeachment Of President Eisenhower And Other Poems By Lawrence Ferlinghetti might be the longest album title we’ve ever encountered in Barking Dog history. You can hear “Pennycandyhorse” on our May 9th edition of the show.
In fact, we played many poems on May 9th, including Allen Ginsberg’s “In Back of the Real,” from his 1959 album Howl And Other Poems.
ruth weiss was a German Beat poet, artist, playwright, and performer who ended up in San Francisco after fleeing Nazism with her family as a child, and while there, she began holding poetry and jazz sessions at a nightclub and befriended other artists including the poets Jack Kerouac and Madeline Gleason. This is a recording that was made live in San Francisco at the Musician’s Union Hall in 2018.
1 Tribute Album
Connie Converse is one of my favourite musicians. She produced a huge catalogue of idiosyncratic compositions during her relatively short life, and this is a really nice album in tribute to her from 2017 that we’ve pulled from several times recently. It includes covers by artists like Sam Amidon, Martha Wainwright, and Laurie Anderson.
Articles
2 Pieces About People Memorialized in Folk Song
This is an interesting article about the lasting impact of the murder of Ellen Smith by Peter DeGraff in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1894. You can hear Rob N. Lackey’s version of the song on the May 16th edition of Barking Dog.
On May 9th we kicked off the show with several songs about the radical American abolitionist John Brown, who believed he was being used by God to finally end slavery in the country, first through pacifist resistance and later, after years of civil disobedience proved ineffective, through the organisation of violent revolts. This article from Smithsonian Magazine is a useful introduction to Brown for those previously unfamiliar with his role in the lead-up to the American Civil War.
3 Articles About Cultural Traditions
The charango is a neat South American guitar traditionally made from an armadillo shell. We played a song from an album of Andean music from Peru on May 9th that features the charango.
The chapei is another traditional instrument and chapei dang veng is a musical tradition practised in Cambodia, of which we’ve played several examples on the show, most recently on May 16th. This is its entry on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
This is another entry on UNESCO’s list. Junkanoo is a traditional Bahamian festival that’s been celebrated since the beginning of the nineteenth century—it’s also celebrated in parts of the southern United States with large West Indian populations. We played “We’re Gonna Tear Down the Iron Bed” from the 1964 album Junkanoo Band: Key West on May 9th.
1 Page About a Visual and Musical Folk Artist
Sometimes when I’m researching artists for the show, I look someone up to discover that they were also a renowned visual artist; such was the case with James “Son Ford” Thomas, whose version of “Baby Please Don’t Go” we played on May 9th. We’ve admired his skull sculptures for years, which he made from clay he dug up on the banks of the Yazoo River. This page has a long excerpt from an interview the folklorist William Ferris conducted with him as well as a gallery of high-quality images of some of his sculptures.
Miscellany
Criterion is rereleasing Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in July, which Bob Dylan wrote the soundtrack for. The director Sam Peckinpah had walked off the film before it was completed, and a heist was organised to save his final preview print. He was so paranoid that MGM would come after him that he relabeled the tapes with the title “The Racquet Club,” and as a result they were only located once the story of the heist came to light after his death. The rerelease will include a restored version of Peckinpah’s cut.
As mentioned, this poem, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” is the final version of the poem that William Carlos Williams was working on when he recorded the album I’ve linked above.
That’s all for the month of May, but please vote in the poll down below to help us pick our next themed episode! If you have any music or theme suggestions for the show, you can reach me in the comments, on my website, or at ckuwbarkingdog@gmail.com. See you next month!