Jug Free America

Hello Irate Pirate,

I saw that you had posted something from the Dough Rollers. They're friends of mine and great musicians and I'm also a big fan of your blog. Based on their music, I thought you might be interested in my old jug band called Jug Free America. I did a post about that band on my blog, DownHomeRadioShow.com where I posted our album. That's at http://www.downhomeradioshow.com/2008/03/jug-free-america-a-notable-21st-century-jug-band/ . I thought you might enjoy our music, and if you want to post it up on your site that would be really cool.

Many thanks for all the awesome music!

Bests,

Eli

p.s. I have a new band, with one of the same guys as is in the Dough Rollers. We're called The Dust Busters: http://www.myspace.com/dustbustersmusic


Really awesome music, guys! Inventive, eclectic, and solid. Some of the best jug-band music I've heard in a long time! You really understand how to mix the unlikely tones of your instruments into a sound that is both raw and clear, fully lives up to the tradition of our great jug-bearing forerunners. Jug Free America!!!

To all my readers: download their album!

PS, nice blog/radio show

Jim Kweskin - 4 Albums

"The Manson Family preached
peace and love and went around killing people.
We don't preach peace and love..."
-Jim Kweskin

By request, we have here some more Jim Kweskin albums from the 60s. Freaturing more prominently than on the Jug Band albums is banjo/harmonica player and acid fascist Mel Lyman - 'The American Avatar' who caused Kweskin to break up the Jug Band and join Mel's God cult in LA, losing a moustache, a heap of common sense, and all of his hipster-dignity in the process. Sigh... another hippy-trippy-cult-god-maniac-fallout of the 60s... But what else could you expect from someone who became a folk singer after a brick-mugging ended his pot-dealing carreer? This post chronicles Kweskin's slow descent into Lymanism, after which he kept out of the spotlight for several decades (excepting a children's album) until he re-emerged in 2003 with the Jim Kweskin Band featuring (and introducing) Samoa Wilson, a great young singer. Their music is like his old jug band but more refined and not quite as wild or fun. The albums in this post get steadily worse as the years progress - Relax Your Mind is a great album, America is well, a curiosity and is at least different, if not particularly gripping. And yes, the Mayne Smith featured on America is the same L. Mayne Smith who played on Fahey's Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death. None of the albums are as good as the jug band albums he did (several of which you can find on this blog), so if you haven't heard those, go listen.

There was an extensive article published by Rolling Stone and Mindfucker called The Lyman Family's Holy Siege of America, which also featured a portion called Whatever Happened to Jim Kweskin?. You can read it here. For those of you unaware of Mel's particular strain of notoriety, he can be easily summed up in one word: Acid Fascist. He would give people LSD and then when they were tripping he would tell them he was GOD. He called himself the American Avatar and he gathered a cult around himself and amassed a small fortune and twisted a lot of people's ideas around to his own ends and then misteriously disappeared sometime in the late 70s. Of course, like any guru, his combination of charisma and out-there ideas actually helped a lot of people to change something in their life, get a different perspective or whathaveyou. He was also a fantastic, one-of-a-kind harmonica player and a mediocre banjoist, and at one Newport Folk Festival he jumped on stage after the last act and played a 10-minute version of Rock of Ages on harmonica, and then broke into the Vanguard vaults, stole their master tapes for Newport 65 and spliced his performance onto the end, and then sent it to get pressed. Can you say... egomaniac? But great harmonica, really. He makes kweskin's version of the Cuckoo perhaps the most haunting one I've ever heard.

I am going to burn down the world
I am going to tear down everything that cannot stand alone
I am going to shove hope up your ass
I am going to turn ideals to shit

I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble
and then I am going to burn the rubble
and then I am going to scatter the ashes
and then maybe someone will be able to see something as it really is
Watch Out

- Mel Lyman

Mel Lyman
Biography by Bryan Thomas

Mel Lyman was a folk musician, filmmaker, and cult leader in the '60s and '70s. Born in Northern California, he drifted across the country in the early '60s before ending up in the hills of North Carolina, where he discovered old timey music. By the time he had drifted into the folk music communities of Greenwich Village and Cambridge, MA, Lyman had developed his own style on the harp (holding a series of long, lingering, vibrato-heavy notes) and he was proficient on banjo as well. In 1963, Lyman joined the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and was a featured player on a handful of the group's early recordings for Vanguard. Shortly after the group appeared on the nationally-televised Steve Allen Show Lyman left the group (he was replaced by banjoist Bill Keith, who had just left Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys). Lyman focused, for a time, on his filmmaking and writing interests, authoring a rambling, incoherent book called The Autobiography of a World Savior.

At age 27, Lyman made an impromptu appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he performed an unaccompanied ten-minute version of "Rock of Ages" for the audience (most of whom had already angrily left for their cars after Bob Dylan's famous electric set). After Newport, Lyman's Wednesday-night sessions at a Boston coffeehouse called The Orleans soon found him taking on the role of leading a commune-like cult who apparently hung on his every word. Lyman -- some say he was an "East Coast Charles Manson" (an unfortunate comparison but one that every commune faced in Manson's wake) -- and his "family" of 30 or 40 artists lived in Boston's mostly black ghetto community. Rock scribe Paul Williams, of Crawdaddy magazine, lived with them for a time. In his writings for the Avatar (a controversial underground bi-weekly newspaper distributed on the streets by Boston's hippie youth), Lyman claimed that music was a gift from God that had to be preserved and nurtured. Lyman eventually cut out the middleman and claimed that he himself was God.

In 1969, Kweskin and Lyman reunited in San Francisco to record Lyman's only solo album, American Avatar. American Avatar reportedly only sold 1,764 copies (1,000 of which were reportedly bought by Kweskin). Lyman apparently never recorded as a solo artist again, but one of his musical highlights is his slow version of "Old Black Joe," featuring cello accompaniment, which appears on 1971's Jim Kweskin's America (Featuring Mel Lyman). In 1978, it was reported that Lyman had passed away at age 40, though his followers claimed that he was, in fact, still "orbiting the earth."

oh and see virtually everything there is to know about Mel Lyman here.

Relax Your Mind - Liner notes by Mel Lyman

One night in New York last summer I came driving up to my Bowery loft and who should be parked out in front in his Volkswagen Bus but Jim Kweskin, with Marilyn Kweskin and Agatha. Jim had come up from Florida and we hadn't seen each other for months and for us that's a long time cause we play in the same band together and in fact we even live in the same house (I live in his attic) and so we were bubbling over with things to tell each other. The band had broken up for awhile to give us all a chance to kick around and see who we were and now we had found out a little more about that and it was so beautiful to be together again and we talked all night and jumped up and down and laughed and slapped each other on the backs m'goodness it was so rich to be sharing ourselves with each other like, "Hey man, dig what I found out about myself" and "Too much! Hey, listen to this, you won't believe it" and we had piled up so damn much good feeling to share that just gushing all over each other wasn't enough and Marilyn didn't need it cause she just squats on her chair and smiles and Agatha didn't need it cause she's a dog and everybody knows that dogs are happy so we decided we had to pour it on somebody to keep from busting and so hey man let's trot on down to Vanguard and get it on a record so it doesn't go to waste and so we got in touch with Fritz who plays the washtub bass, beautiful red topped striped shirt Fritz O'Rooney and called up all our friends and down we go the whole bunch of us to the horror of the recording industry but that doesn't matter cause we all feel so groovy that pretty soon everybody feels groovy can you believe it that even the engineers felt groovy hell engineers are people too and there were no studios available so we picked out a friendly little room at least it was friendly after we doused the lights and opened the windows and brought in all our friends and broke out the beer and wine and started playing music, yep, it became a real friendly little room. So we made this record. I think it might have been done unofficially but somehow (it's all in the stars) we got away with it. We threw a party at Vanguard Recording Society Industry in the middle of the night under the guise of conducting a recording session and not only did we create an LP amidst all the joy, we even got paid for it! When they handed me a check I almost laughed out loud but I didn't lose my cool. I simply gasped, checked myself and snapped into the yoga parakarya pretzel position for suppressing mirth, controlling excessive laughter and avoiding undue hysteria, dropped to the floor like a slushy snowball and groaned. Ain't life a gas!

So what I'm trying to say is that we made this record under very loose conditions and it was a real joy to have that kind of freedom in a recording studio, to be able to play music just like you play music instead of like this whole fantastic, schematic, methatic, preconceived and just a little too stern serious and safe scene called "Standard Recording Procedure" wants you to play music. It's not that they dictate what or how but the WHERE is so dreadful, a nightmare of sterility, white soundproof rooms big as barns and red lights flashing on and off and wires, everywhere there's WIRES, all over the floor, hanging from the ceiling, twined around your arms and legs and microphones and ear phones and head phones and telephones and rules and efficiency and a bunch of straight looking cats behind big plate glass windows surrounded by so many kinds of intricate machines that each one must require a specialist to operate it and hurriedly shouting orders and frantically twisting dials and jabbing buttons and a thunderous voice comes booming out of a big loudspeaker that takes up a whole wall and it commands, "Take One" and m'God you hardly know where you're at at all anymore, you can't be sure you're not one of those machines yourself and believe me that's a pretty uninspiring scene to try and make a little music out of, at least for me, and that's why making this album was such a joy, at least for me. Notice I say at least for me because even though I believe that what is true for me is true for everybody Jim has cautioned me that I must practice humility when dealing with the public, at least for me.

Goodbye now, we love you.

---Mel Lyman

Jim Kweskin - Relax Your Mind

Year: 1966
Label: Vanguard

Review by Ronnie D. Lankford Jr.

Released in 1966, Relax Your Mind finds Jim Kweskin taking a break from his jug band for a mellow solo effort. He's joined by harp player Mel Lyman and washtub bassist Fritz Richmond for what amounts to a stripped-down jug band on a dozen tracks. Two of the tracks, "I Got Mine" and a long version of "Buffalo Skinners," were recorded live at Club 47 in Cambridge. Even stripped down, the arrangements of traditional songs like "The Cuckoo" are quite lively when placed side by side with the one-singer/one-guitar approach preferred by some revivalists. Kweskin's guitar and Richmond's bass keep time and fill in the background while Lyman adds asides and flourishes to Mississippi John Hurt's "My Creole Belle" and Grandpa Jones' "Eight More Miles to Louisville." Richmond helps out on the vocal of "Guabi Guabi," an African folk song recorded a couple years earlier by Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Marilyn Kweskin sings a fine lead on "I Ain't Never Been Satisfied." Overall, Relax Your Mind is a subdued recording, and lacks the irresponsible hijinks fans had come to expect from the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. Compared to other more traditional folk with barebones arrangements, however, Relax Your Mind is a lively affair. The album also shows that good folk recordings continued to be made after Dylan supposedly pulled the plug on the folk revival in 1965. The packaging of the 2003 reissue by Universe reprints the original liner notes and looks great.

Tracks
1 Three Songs - A Look at the Ragtime Era (Sister Kate's Night Out) - Atkins, Jaxon, Piron - 3:22
2 Hannah - Bouchillion - 4:08
3 Bye and Bye - Traditional - 3:39
4 The Cuckoo - Traditional - 4:04
5 I Ain't Never Been Satisfied - Kweskin, Kweskin, Traditional- 2:38
6 Eight More Miles to Louisville - Grandpa Jones - 3:01
7 I Got Mine - Traditional - 3:38
8 Buffalo Skinners - Traditional - 5:28
9 Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor - Traditional - 3:10
10 Guabi Guabi - Traditional - 3:12
11 My Creole Belle - Hurt - 4:41
12 Relax Your Mind - Leadbelly - 3:58

warble as you fly.
m4a (aac) 256kbps | w/ cover | 87mb

full liner notes & song notes (but not musical notes...) here


Jim Kweskin - Jump for Joy

Year: 1967
Label: Vanguard

Review by Richard Foss
Though Jim Kweskin stays with his beloved repertoire of material from the early 20th century, on this album his accompaniment is very different from the string and jug bands he is best known for. The Neo-Passé Jazz Band is self-consciously true to turn-of-the-century styles, with the saxes and clarinet prominent in the mix. On some tracks, like the sentimental version of "Melancholy Baby," the band plays with commendable subtlety and Kweskin delivers a straight jazz vocal that is surprisingly heartfelt. Elsewhere, the sound is upbeat and flavored with a distinct Dixieland swing. Kweskin and band sound great here, and nobody got this kind of mileage out of this material again until Robert Crumb formed the Cheap Suit Serenaders.

Tracks
1 Moving Day - Kweskin, Sterling ... - 3:22
2 Memphis Blues - Handy, Norton - 2:58
3 Kickin' the Gong Around - Arlen, Koehler - 3:19
4 You're Not the Only Oyster in the Stew - Burke, Spina - 2:57
5 He's in the Jailhouse Now - Anderson - 4:33
6 Melancholy Baby - Burnett, Norton - 3:20
7 There'll Be Some Changes Made - Higgins, Overstreet - 3:26
8 Medley: O Miss Hannah/That's My Weakness Now - Deppen, Green, Hollingsworth ... - 3:52
9 Jazzbo Brown - Gershwin, Gershwin, Heyward - 3:46
10 Staggerlee - 3:40
11 I Can't Give You Anything But Love - Fields, McHugh - 3:27
12 Louisiana - Johnson, Razaf, Schafer - 3:05

the other kind of banjo.
from vinyl | mp3 >192kbps | w/ cover | 70mb


Jim Kweskin - What Ever Happened to Those Good Old Days at Club 47

Year: 1968
Label: Vanguard

Review by Richard Foss

Jim Kweskin may not have been a groundbreaking instrumentalist or a spectacularly gifted singer, but he certainly was an entertainer who knew how to get every bit out of his repertoire of American traditional music. On this live album, the complete title of which is What Ever Happened to Those Good Old Days at Club 47 in Cambridge Mass. With Jim Kweskin & His Friends, Kweskin is backed only by his faithful sideman Fritz Richmond and by Maria Muldaur on one track. His autoharp may be slightly out of tune and his piano playing a bit shaky, but Kweskin grabs the audience's heart on the very first track and keeps it until the end of the album. The sound quality has its off moments too, but that doesn't matter either, because as long as Kweskin is bashing away on that old-time music, all's right with the world. If there was any doubt that Jim Kweskin was a great showman even with minimal accompaniment, this album would dispel it.

Tracks
1 Mississippi Mud - Barris, Cavanaugh - 2:53
2 Buddy Bolden's Blues - Morton - 3:15
3 Bioll Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home - Cannon, Traditional - 3:18
4 Ain't She Sweet - Ager, Yellen - 4:29
5 La Bomba - Traditional - 2:52
6 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl - Williamson - 4:09
7 I Had a Dream Last Night - Rodgers - 3:29
8 Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue - Henderson, Lewis, Young - 3:16
9 Ella Speed - Traditional - 2:36
10 Blues - Traditional - 2:45
11 The Sheik of Araby - Smith, Snyder, Wheeler - 2:49

your love belongs to me.
from vinyl | mp3 >256kbps vbr | 49mb



Richard D. Herbruck presents
Jim Kweskin's America
co-starring Mel Lyman and the Lyman Family

Year: 1971
Label: Reprise
Reissue: 2005
Label: Collectibles

liner notes:

When Jim first called me in New York to come out to San Francisco and help him produce an album of "American" music I was more than a little hesitant as I was currently engaged in trying to start the second "American" Revolution and didn't quite know if the two projects were reconcilable. Having just recently closed my now defunct "History of Rhythm and Blues" series with KPFK in Los Angeles I was more than a little wary of entering upon a new musical enterprise but he assured me that there would be no outside interference and I was free to follow my own whims and impulses as time and space allowed and so I dismissed any further creeping uncertainties and cast my fate to the wind. I embarked upon my new adventure by air and can even now recall how with great confidence and bravado I impressed upon Captain Pettigrew the importance of this record. We stood in the lounge of the 747 Jet excitedly discussing the merits of this or that kind of music and when I told him people were flying in from all over the country to participate in this album he was duly amazed. By this time I was quite overtaken by the spirit of this record we were about to create and I even ventured so far as to guarantee him it would be a success. I don't know who was flying the plane.

Jim's Road Manager, O.D. Long, met me at the airport and accompanied me to my Suite and early the next morning I entered Mr. Weston's studio for the first time. All the musicians had already arrived. Mel Lyman had flown in from Boston. Reed Wasson, the renowned Jazz Bassist, had left his job as legal advisor to the Tehachapee Indians in upper New Mexico and flown in by private plane. Etta Green had abandoned her post with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra to come out and attempt to imitate country fiddle on her cello. Mayne Smith had come down from Alaska to play the dobro. Many more were assembled and as we milled around making small talk and getting acquainted we somehow felt we were on the verge of some great historic gathering. I, myself, was almost in tears when Jim asked me to play the tuba on "Stealing" as there are so few who really can comprehend the virtues of that great instrument. But that was only the beginning.

From the very opening moments there was an aura of excitement in the air, this was no ordinary recording session, the Muses were with us! The music flowed easily and the studio reverberated with a sound that we knew we were only partly responsible for. When I delivered the stirring testimonial in "Okie from Muskogee" the words seemed to enter and pass through me from some far off distant place, I scarcely knew what I said. Mel crouched over his harmonica and seemed to shake all over, Reed towered and swayed as though on the strings of some gigantic puppeteer. The women drifted in and out like remnants of a celestial choir and Jim was clearly in another world. Etta later testified she had never reached more inspiring heights and even Phil, the recording engineer, could not restrain himself from occasionally bursting into song. All in all it was a magnificent experience, one to never be duplicated. As the last day of the session drew to a close all the musicians magically left their instruments and gathered around a microphone to join voices in a glowing tribute to the beloved Stephen Foster.

And then we were done. the spirit of this once great country of ours had come and left its mark as minute little tracings in a plastic disc and the second American Revolution was underway.
sincerely, Richard Herbruck

The Band
Jim Kweskin (Cancer) - Guitar, Vocals
Mel Lyman (Aries) - Harmonica, Vocals
Etta Green (Pisces) - Cello, Vocals
Mayne Smith (Pisces) - Dobro, Guitar, Percussion, Vocals
Reed Wasson (Gemini) - Guitar (Bass)
Richard Herbruck (Gemini) - Narrator, Producer
Marilyn Kweskin (Gemini) - Vocals

Tracks
1. Back in the Saddle (Ray Whitley - Gene Autry) (2:46)
2. Sugar Babe (Mance Lipscomb) (3:00)
3. Okie from Muskogee (Merle Haggard - Roy Burris) (3:50)
4. 99 Year Blues (Julius Daniels (Arr. by The Lyman Family)) (3:43)
5. Ramblin' Round Your City (Woody Guthrie - Huddie Ledbetter) (5:42)
6. Amelia Earhart's Last Flight (David D. McEnery) (4:57)
7. Stealin' (The Memphis Jug Band) (4:27)
8. Old Rugged Cross (Rev. George Bennard) (7:50)
9. Dark as a Dungeon (Merle Travis) (6:33)
10. Old Black Joe (Stephen Foster (Arr. by The Lyman Family)) (6:59)

he likes living right and being free...
mp3 >256kbps vbr | w/o cover | 85mb

My soul was born in Cancer and it was born into the great river of the American Soul, still flowing in deep strains of hope and conquest. That soul was the Freedom that the earliest Americans dreamed and fought for which was the freedom to find God in themselves and follow Him, and it was finally born on earth as the spirit of a nation which would live in men, in Cancer . . . the sign of the birth of God in Man.

Throughout the life of this country that soul has been shared and carried by great men who lived to bring it to the PEOPLE. It has appeared in all ways but it has been most greatly loved and rejoiced in through its music. Those who sang it best sprang right from that soul and spent their lives singing it out. At every turning point in the life of America a Cancer has stood up to sing new soul as it flowed into the old and transformed it. Stephen Foster, George M. Cohan, Louis Armstrong, Woody Guthrie, Jessie Benton were all born as America was reborn and each was a prophet who did not speak of history but sung purely from the heart that creates it . . . and people who could truely hear them have felt history before it happened.
I am here once again to sing that song for you. And as this album was born in a burst of spirit and recorded simply in three days as it was sung . . . a new life for the world is bursting forth from the Heart of America.
The soul that is born in Cancer must always find its completion in Aries, when God and man become one. You can read the story of it in Mirror at the End of the Road by Mel Lyman. It is the story of his life from the moment it doubts itself and receives its first intimations of immortality to the time it becomes God as it grows from Cancer to Aries. You can hear that story on this album if you will step aside and let your soul listen.

I am singing America to you and it is Mel Lyman. He is the new soul of the world.

- Jim Kweskin

oh, and hey - if any of you have the following albums, I'd love to hear them:
Mel Lyman & the Lyman Family - Birth
Jim Kweskin Lives Again (or any Kweskin album on the Mountain Railroad label)
Jim Kweskin - Relax Yourself

thanks!

The Dough Rollers

Hello Pirate, First off, let me just say what huge fans we are of your blog, Wrath of the Grapevine. You have a great taste in and knowledge of music and you do an incredible job sharing these things. I saw recently that you put up a post from a new blues band called the black oil brothers. Anyway that brings me to the point of this note. We wanted to send you a track from our album and see if you liked it and would maybe want to post it on your blog. We are three piece, sometimes 4 piece acoustic blues/gospel/ragtime/country whathaveyou band out of New York City, called The Dough Rollers, however we are all in Los Angeles playing a residency for the summer. If you like our music please let us know and maybe we could send you some more songs. This one we're sending you is Operator Blues. You can also hear more tunes at www.myspace.com/malcolmandjack. Like I said, if you're into it drop us a line back, if not, let us know anyway. Thanks for your time. Cheers and thanks for all the great music, Jack Byrne and Malcolm Ford

Thanks guys! New weird America, for sure. I like how comfortably you cross genres, from fingerpicking country blues to jugband to old-time to delta blues and back! And the raw, ragged quality of your delivery certainly suits the music and stays true to the old styles.

Here's some songs:
Drunkard's Hiccoughs
I Heard the Voice of a Porkchop
I Got A Letter from My Darlin
Cool Drink of Water

Red Clay Ramblers - Twisted Laurel

Joe from Dublin recently left a comment on the Mike Auldridge post:

Thank you very much for this. I have Dobro on vinyl, but no way of playing it any more (familiar story!) I also have the Mike Auldridge album on Flying Fish records from 1976 - does anyone have this album? In fact, thinking about it, wouldn't it be ideal if all the great but unavailable music on the Flying Fish label (Don Lange, The Red Clay Ramblers, Peter Rowan, Bryan Bowers, Mary McCaslin, Lorraine Duisit, Guy Carawan, Peter Alsop, Steve Lyon, Si Khan, Sweet Honey In The Rock, Anne Romaine, Norman Blake, Freeman and Lange, all in my own collection) was available somewhere as good quality downloads.

Well, as it happens, you're in luck Joe! IncaRoads, another blogreader who has been diligently keeping us stocked with Flying Fish titles uploaded a Red Clay Ramblers album a while back, but I never got around to posting it. And I've already posted his contribution of Sweet Honey in the Rock. Most of the other names I haven't heard of there (excepting Peter Rowan, Norman Blake, & Si Khan). So any other blog readers are more than welcome to educate me!

Personally, I'm kind of ambivalent about what I've heard of the Red Clay Ramblers. They're not bad at all, just not completely to my taste. Sometimes I listen and enjoy it, sometimes it grates on my ears, I suppose it depends on my mood. I just re-listened and actually liked it quite a bit, so maybe it's growing on me. Kind of a Kweskin-style treatment of hillbilly music. The review below pretty much sums it up, both my ambivalence and all the good points to their music.


"I've often found it puzzling why so many folks who consider themselves bluegrass fans tend to hold the ever-versatile Red Clay Ramblers at arm's length. True, the Ramblers, with that confounded piano and occasional kazoo, don't stick strictly to the banjo-fiddle-mandolin template of Bill Monroe and his acolytes, but their mastery of Antebellum and Gilded Age pop places them squarely in the same sentimentalist traditions as the truegrass forefathers. But where many 'grass fans see the Carter Family, say, as the wellspring of the style, on the Ramblers timeline, they are just one more great band in a legacy that spans back well before the 20th Century. Twisted Laurel ably showcases their diverse strengths: they pick and plunk along with the best of them, veer into vaudevillian vocal ditties, traditional tunes with a Stephen Foster lilt, as well as goofy original novelty tunes like "The Ace," which have a distinct air of Cheap Suit Seranaders zaniness. And, of course, a Carter Family tune or two, along with Jimmie Rodgers' "Mississippi Delta Blues," which is completely in line with their old-timely leanings. Fun stuff, though certainly not your standard-issue stringband material."



A review of the album Twisted Laurel from 1976 in The Unicorn Times
By Terence Winch
The Red Clay Ramblers’ last album, Stolen Love, was one of the best recordings in years by a string band. Their versions of “Kingdom Coming,” “Staten Island Hornpipe,” and “Keep the Home Fires Burning” are a joy to listen to. But their newest LP Twisted Laurel, on Flying Fish, one of the best independent labels in the country, outdoes any of their previous work. The Ramblers are more and more becoming a band in a class by itself, setting a standard of excellence that is inspirational.

They are a “traditional” group insofar as the instrumentation and material for their music follows in the tradition of such performers as Charlie Pool, The Carter Family, and Jimmie Rodgers. But this is not to say that they are not an innovative band. Their arrangements are complex and tight without being pretentious. The blend of sound, vocal and instrumental, that the Ramblers can produce is distinctive. It does what the best music must do: it delights the ear. On this recording they’ve expanded the range and variety of their sound to include trumpet, trombone, tenor guitar, kazoo and organ along with their usual combination of fiddle, banjo, bass, piano and mandolin. They make a kind of music that’s been around for a long time sound newly exciting by stretching its form in experimental ways.

There’s a sense of humor in the spirit of their work that is one of the many pleasures of listening to this band. But the quality most appealing in their music is its intelligence. This is music that sounds bright, not just sonically, but in the attitude the musicians take to their repertoire; they never condescend to the sources of their music.

The Ramblers are from North Carolina, but this new LP was recorded in the D.C. area at Bias Studios by Bill McElroy, one of the most respected engineers in this part of the world. And he deserves his share of credit for the impressive precision and quality of this recording. It takes a gifted pair of ears and some very solid techinical skill for a sound engineer to come up with a recording that is as exact and sensitive as this. All the elements of this band’s music are there, just right. Nothing is mangled or missed.

The original music on the LP is an index to the Ramblers’ range of talent. “Twisted Laurel” by Tommy Thompson, one of the most genial men in the South, may make him the Wordsworth of old-time music. The song is not so much a narrative as an “atmosphere song.” Without sentimentality, it evokes a melancholy place and mood. The language is tight, the images sharp, the melody beautiful. “The Ace” (co-authored by Mike Craver) and “The Corrugated Lady” (written with Johnny Black), also Thompson songs, reveal the comic side of his music. The Ace's hard-luck romantic adventures make him more of a deuce, sometimes even a joker. The music sounds funny too—plenty of kazoo, trumpet and trombone. Jack Herrick, the newest Red Clay Rambler, is the man who blows the horns on this record, providing the band with new musical possibilities that it exploits skillfully. “The Corrugated Lady,” another song in the ridiculous-romance genre, features a countermelody of The Mills Brothers’ “Paper Doll,” produced by McElroy with the metallic sound of an antique recording.

“The Hobo’s Last Letter,” written by fiddler Bill Hicks, is the only non-Thompson original on the album. It’s a frame song—a song within a song—put together with real know-how by Hicks and sung in two parts: a slow opener in Mike Craver’s fragile tenor, followed by Watson’s hard-nosed vocals. Their voices, so completely different, balance perfectly. The Ramblers know precisely how to use their voices. Craver’s solo interpretation of “Will You Miss Me?” and his lead vocal on “Fifty Miles of Elbow Room” are a tribute to The Carter Family that comes close to surpassing Mother Maybelle herself. And Watson’s lead vocal on a classic Charlie Poole tune, “The Beale Street Blues” (written by W. C. Handy), is right on target.

Besides fiddling with the speedy clarity of an American Jean Carrignan, Hicks’ sings in a voice so authentic it sounds like it belongs to some 63 year-old moonshiner hiding out in the Blue Ridge Mountains. His double-fiddling on “Ryestraw” is one of the many touches that make this LP so successful. Hicks kicks off “Flying Cloud Cotillion,” a tune that displays the band’s instrumental talents and its ability to play complex traditional music without getting tangled up in it. Herrick’s trumpet and trombone and Craver’s piano give this recording a jazz punctuation that only one other country-music-based band—a new York group called “The Central Park Sheiks” (who have also just released an album on Flying Fish)—uses as effectively. The rest of the material on this record—a medley of “Blue Jay” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me;” Jimmie Rodgers’ “Mississippi Delta Blues;” “Rockingham Cindy;” “The Telephone Girl;” and “I Was Only Teasing You”—is all terrific.

Unless the Ramblers are only teasing us, this album was not recorded, as the credits claim, in June of 1967.

Raymond Simone, who designed and illustrated the jacket, has put together a product that is on the same level of quality as the music it contains.

The Ramblers are accomplished entertainers. Tommy Thompson, for example, is one of the best on-stage storytellers around. They’re a working band that frequently plays jobs in this area: at The Red Fox in Bethesda, The Cellar Door, Charlie’s West Side (in Annapolis). But if you can’t get to see them, enjoy their music in the privacy of your own home by buying a copy of Twisted Laurel.


The Red Clay Ramblers - Twisted Laurel

Year: 1976
Label: Flying Fish

Review by Eugene Chadbourne

Standing at a crossroads of old-timey music and the kind of progressive thought patterns and creativity that emerge in college towns such as the band's home base of Chapel Hill, the Red Clay Ramblers created a discography that is as much about making records as it is making music. The two biggest influences on this project seem to be the culturally rich results of pioneer recording efforts in American music in the '20s and '30s and the much later explosion of musical creativity in the '60s, when every garage band got to make a big artistic statement. As much as Twisted Laurel would never have been possible without old-time hillbilly music, it also could not exist without the example of albums such as the Band's Music From Big Pink or the refined album efforts of John Prine. It is a meticulously crafted piece of work which, if anything, could use a bit more looseness and edge in its occasional stuffy moments. Sometimes the good-timey numbers will prompt a listener to turn the volume down; it can be just too much hyper energy, despite the brilliance of the recorded sound. Yet the band seems to know when to pull back, following up the overdone pseudo-swing of "The Corrugated Lady" with a marvelous solo vocal and fiddle tour de force by Bill Hicks. The instrumental numbers such as "Flying Cloud Cotillon" are masterful, the piano playing of Mike Craver an absolute delight. The recording date is listed as 1967 on some copies of the album; however, be assured that even the nervous Flying Fish label wouldn't have waited nearly a decade to release this.

Tracks
1 Blue Jay/The Girl I Left Behi - Traditional - 1:55
2 Twisted Laurel - Thompson - 2:55
3 The Hobo's Last Letter - Hicks - 3:10
4 Rockingham Cindy - Traditional - 2:15
5 Mississippi Delta Blues - Rodgers - 3:20
6 The Telephone Girl - Reed - 2:35
7 Will You Miss Me - Carter Family - 2:15
8 The Ace - Craver, Thompson - 3:10
9 The Corrugated Lady - Black, Thompson - 2:55
10 When Bacon Was Scarce/Ryestra - Parker, Summers - 2:15
11 I Was Only Teasing You - Traditional - 2:45
12 Fifty Miles of Elbow Room - Carter - 3:00
13 Flying Cloud Cotillion - Traditional - 2:30
14 Beale Street Blues - Handy - 2:40

ramble on.
mp3 320kbps | w/o cover | 72mb

thanks again, IncaRoads!

Harmonicas, Washboards, Fiddles & Jugs

It has been too long since we've had a jug band post here. Therefore, with thanks to the astounding collection of Lemmy Caution, I present the following, to remedy all your maladies. As Homer Simpson said, "Alcohol: the cause of and solution to all our problems." And of course, when the corn liquor is all gone, you can take out that jug by the light of a clear moon shining and blow, baby, blow! It'll cure what ails ya, and what's better, it'll oil what shakes your shimmy's brakes, if you know what I mean.

For jug band enthusiasts, there's an official society for the likes a' ya. And don't forget to drop by the Corner Jug Store and top up on supplies.


VA - Harmonicas, Washboards, Fiddles & Jugs
Label: Roots RL-311
Vinyl. Out of print.

01 Bobby Leecan's Need-More Band - Apaloosa blues.mp3
02 Memphis Jug Band - Peaches in the springtime.mp3
03 Memphis Jug Band - Feed your friend.mp3
04 Memphis Jug Band - I whipped my woman.mp3
05 Memphis Jug Band - I packed my suitcase.mp3
06 Jack Kelly's Jug Band - Believe I'll go back home.mp3
07 Jack Kelly's Jug Band - Ko-ko-mo blues.mp3
08 Banjo Joe (Cannon & Blake) - Jazz gypsy blues.mp3
09 Tommie Bradley - Nobody's business if I do.mp3
10 James Cole - Mistreated the only friend you had.mp3
11 King David's Jug Band - I can deal worry.mp3
12 King David's Jug Band - Sweet potato blues.mp3
13 Kansas City Blues Strummers - String band blues.mp3
14 Whistler's Jug Band - Pig meat blues.mp3
15 Leecan & Cooksey - Black cat bone blues.mp3
16 Leecan & Cooksey - Dirty guitar blues.mp3

washtubs and | kazoos too
320kbs mp3 | with cover | 2 parts: 100mb & 21mb

thanks Lemmy Caution!

It Came Upon a Midnight Queer...

Christmas time is usually marked by a frenzy of crazed consumers out trying to placate their gods of money, desire, and spiritual materialism. And this crazed frenzy is fueled by the incessantly jovial, nostalgic, and sentimental music that have come to be known as 'holiday standards'. Spurred on by this deceitfully toxic sound, people go nuts buying things they hope will appease some need, gratify some desire, and make themselves feel more generous. How's that for a 'Bah Humbug'? Well, they don't call me Irate for nuthin'...

Seriously though, so much Christmas music is like candy canes -- reminds us of snowballs, winter, and childhood, but it's so sweet it'll make us sick. And most of those familiar tunes have been played so many times that we no longer actually hear them, we just associate them with that familiar need to buy things. You can usually tell when an artist has run out of musical vision and/or income, because they release a Christmas album, the ultimate act of selling-out.

Well, this year I compiled a few tunes that will not be used to market products, by artists who didn't sell-out. Some of them are ironic, cynical, or otherwise hillariously blasphemous, others are driven by a desire to connect with the real musical beauty of those traditional tunes and present it in a pure, fresh context.

The music in this collection ranges from hipster jazz to guitar soli to progressive bluegrass to Tuuvan throat-singing to jug band music, so if you're a reader of this blog, chances are you'll enjoy it. And I don't think any of these tracks have been posted elsewhere in the blogosphere. Names like John Fahey, Dan Hicks, David Grisman, Béla Fleck, and Louis Armstrong are all represented. Some unknowns & surprises too, such as one of my favorite xmas-related songs ever, "Beatnik's Wish" by the otherwise unknown Patsy Raye.

From "Aye" to "Ewe", Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas, Cool Yule, Chappy Channukah, Krazy Kwanza, Rad Ramadan, & Cheerful Children's Day!


The Irate Pirate presents: It Came Upon a Midnight Queer...
A different sort of Christmas
better than coal in your stocking
but
not as good as a fat man in your chimney
2 parts - 65 & 61mb | w/ cover | assorted bit rates

Tracklist below:
If you like the music, support the artists - most of the guys here are alive and working, and they certainly deserve the money for not selling out come yule-time.

And check out The Christmas Jug Band myspace page, for more on that ingenious Dan Hicks yearly raucus.

Click this picture to enlarge and dig that crazy santa claus.

The Roots of John Fahey

So, about 9 months ago I started working on this compilation. Several months and nany hours of searching, listening, and sequencing later, I found out that someone had already done a more complete version of the same task. Until yesterday, however, I hadn't seen a tracklist from the mysterious 10-cd set called the VrootzBox, so this is not a derivative work, however similar it may be.

The inception of the project came when I heard Frank Hutchinson playing K.C. Blues on the A Lighter Shade of Blue: White Country Blues (1926-1938) compilation. I read the booklet to Return of the Repressed, and found all these mentions about musicians he had copped licks from. I looked at The Fahey Files, the crowning achievement of the International Fahey Commission. Then I found Old Time Mountain Guitar on El Diablo Tun Tun, and that propelled me further. Some trips to the library for Béla Bartók and Charles Ives cds proved pretty revealing too.

Some time back someone left a comment on my post of Fahey's God, Time & Causality saying something to the effect of "This version of I Am the Resurrection pales in comparison to the version on The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death". Well, while that's true, it's also true that I Am the Resurrection pales in comparison to Jesse Fuller's Hark from the Tomb, upon which it was based. In fact, a lot of these performances are more raw and idiosyncratic than Fahey's versions, though Fahey, to his credit, adds a harmonic complexity absent from the originals. And if you think Fahey was a bizarre visionary living on the fringes when he released Blind Joe Death in 1959, consider that Harry Partch created his own scales, built his own instruments, and crafted totally unique, beautiful, complex, difficult-listening music in the '40sm while living as a hobo. And, through a curious chain of personal connections, Fahey heard some of this music and was very inspired by it.

I should mention that not all of these songs are songs that he covered or copped licks from. Most of the music he has made mention to, though a few of the songs were recorded after his formative years and one or two he never would have heard. But they are presented to give an illustration of the styles he drew from (such as gamelan, which he grew up playing in his neighbor's back yard).

Originally I was going to write something about each song on the compilation, but as it swelled to 5 cds and I prepared to leave the country, I just settled on the daunting task of finishing the damn thing and posting it. So what you hear is what you get, though additional info can be found at the Vrootz! info page.

Many of the artists on here can be found on other "roots of" compilations (Roots of Rock, Roots of Robert Johnson, Early Blues Roots of Led Zeppelin, etc), underscoring the fact that, as Willie Dixon said, "The Blues is the roots. Everything else is the fruits." But as a record-collector, Fahey's roots were deeper and more obscure than those of the blues-rockers who got rich ripping off Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters (both of whom ripped off Son House & others).

I thought about grouping the music into styles (hillbilly music, country blues, modern classical music, etc), but decided that in Fahey's world and music, these genres were not so disparate and could in fact flow seamlessly into one another. Reading R. Anthony Lee (aka Flea)'s account of the early life of John Fahey confirms this, as even early on "he had developed his famous eclecticism, and would follow Sibelius’s Second symphony with the Stanley Brothers’ White doves will mourn in sorrow with no sense of disjunction." Plus, this way I could highlight certain connections, such as beautiful modal dissonances found in the music of both Son House and Bartók, the shimmering just intonality of Southeast Asian gamelan ensembles and the homemade microtonal music of Harry Partch. Also I've grouped songs to show how Fahey would pull from several disparate sources to form a new song, so you'll hear building block such as Walter "Buddy Boy" Hawkins' A-Rag, Carl Perkins' Matchbox and the flamenco of Sabicas, all of which can be heard in Fahey's Lion. And, in true Fahey-fashion, I ended each album with a hymn of a sort.

I've been collecting music and making eclectic and themed mix-cds since high school, but this is the first time I've put extensive research into it. I guess my hope is that other aspiring musicians and inactivists will hear this music and enter a new realm of musical enchantment, irresponsible unproductivity, and hapless record-collecting.

There are a few artists and songs that ought to be on here but aren't because I assume that everyone knows about them (e.g. Robert Johnson, Christmas music, California Dreamin', and The Beatles' Rain, Blueberry Hill, Hank Williams). Also, I didn't really trace his latter-day influences such as Einsturzende Neubaten, as that's not really my area of expertise (nor his, despite his self-aggrandizing claims). I didn't include the version of Railroad Bill on Pete Seeger's guitar-instruction album, which was the first song Fahey learned to play, though I do have it. I also left off songs that are only related by title (no copies of Charley Patton's Some Summer Day had surfaced when Fahey took the title, and Fahey's Wine and Roses and Night Train to Valhalla bear very little similarity to Henry Mancini's Days of Wine and Roses or Roy Acuff's Night Train to Memphis). Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Legend Of The Invisible City Of Kitezh was left off, though Stravinsky's Dance of the Infernal Subjects of Kaschei was included.

If you like this music and are interested in delving further, check out some of the blogs listed here. El Diablo Tun Tun is where I got a lot of this stuff. For serious blues lovers, check out Merlin in Rags and The Blues Club forum (registration required). For classical stuff, see Le Roi S'Amuse, or check out your local library. The Ravi Shankar piece upon which Fahey based On the Banks of the Owchita can be found at Singer Saints. The gamelan vinyl came from A Closet of Curiosities. A bunch of Fahey-related stuff can be found at grown so ugly and the usenet group alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.acoustic is excellent. A lot of related music is also posted on this blog; if you search the archives, you'll find some Harry Partch, some Jug Band music, some Son House, and others. Also check out the releases on Fahey's Revenant Records, for a stunning mix of arcane rural musics and raw avant-garde improvisation.

There are 5 mix-cds in this set, plus a bonus disc which consists of Sibelius' 7th Symphony and Bartók's Miraculous Mandarin and Music for Percussion, Strings, and Celeste, all of which deserve to be heard in their entirety. I thought about including works by musicians working on parallel lines (Rahsaan Roland Kirk's fusion of Dvorak's Going Home and Stephen Foster's Old Folks at Home, or Brij Bhusan Kabra, the first musician to play ragas on a guitar). But these will have to come another time.

I also was going to type out the tracklist, but you'll have to settle for snapshots of my itunes playlists. An advantage, of course, is that you can see which albums I got the tunes from, and search out the ones that inspire you.

The Roots of John Fahey

The whole set:
http://www.mediafire.com/?gftc2kfeyyhr2

Disc 1 - Vampires in Valhalla
http://www.mediafire.com/?c94bw2bzm0x8wo4 *new link

Disc 2 - The Chthonic Blues
http://www.mediafire.com/?sj3qglkoi1t93gq *new link

Disc 3 - Duelling Kitheras
http://www.mediafire.com/?eyd1htha30h1h7a *new link

Disc 4 - Dance of the Subjects of the Great Koonaklaster
http://www.mediafire.com/?6nc8cybtssc1zh1 *new link

Disc 5 - The Turtle's Waters
http://www.mediafire.com/?18yfbx2158zmrid *new link

Disc 6 (bonus) - Requiem for Blind Joe
http://www.mediafire.com/?y54xvd7v1n7ua7u *new link

All have the bitrates at which I found them; those I converted from AAC and my cd rips are as always at >192vbr. No covers are included. What you hear is what you get.


for much of the information I used to build this compilation, see the Fahey Files.

for more fahey trivia, unreleased songs, record labels, etc, see the John Fahey blogspot

which includes R Anthony Lee "Flea"'s piece The Wolves are Gone Now, which recounts Fahey's early life from the eyes of a friend, organicist, and fellow musical miscreant.

and see VROOTz! : FAHEY SOurCEs AND INFLUENCES tracklist and notes in the Wall of Fahey (word document) or see it in html here. thanks to Paul Bryant, Andrew Stranglen and Mitchell Wittenberg, for their contributions to the project.

oh, and the photo used above is by Dick Waterman, manager of Son House and many other great blues artists of the '60s. Incidentally, it was largely his photos and stories, found within Between Midnight and Day: the Last Unpublished Blues Archive, which led me to artists like Son House and Skip James in the first place. the photo, like everything else here, used without permission.

enjoy!
and if you appreciate my endless unpaid toil, leave a comment!

Best of the Memphis Jug Band

The modern literary work is largely a work of reference. Therefore, I shan't waste my time and yours trying to say what has been said before and better.

Instead, here's a bio from a grateful dead site:
The Memphis Jug Band was the most recorded (over 100 sides between 1927 and 1934) and one of the most popular of the jug bands to spring up in Memphis in the 1920s (along with Cannon's Jug Stompers). The jug band craze started in Louisville, Kentucky around 1905. By 1910 there were a number of bands active in Louisville, including string bands and jazz groups that had added a jug player to cash in on the craze.

The central figure in the Memphis Jug Band was Will Shade (aka Son Brimmer, a knickname from his grandmother, Annie Brimmer, who raised him). Will Shade (Born Feburary 5, 1898 Memphis TN) first heard the records of a Louisville jug band called the Dixieland Jug Blowers in 1925. He convinced a local musician called "lionhouse" to switch from blowing an empty whiskey bottle to a gallon jug, added Tee Wee Blackman on guitar and Ben Ramey and the Memphis Jug Band was born. Shade played guitar, harmonica and "bullfiddle", a stand up bass made from a garbage can, a broom handle and a string.

The Memphis Jug Band was a loose knit outfit with a constantly changing membership. They played local events and were one of the main attractions when they played at Handy's Park in Memphis. By the late 1920s they were managed by Howard Yancey of Yancey Booking Agency at 326 Beale. He was able to get them well paying gigs at the Chickasaw Country Club, the Hunt Polo Club and at conventions at the Peabody Hotel. They were also hired regularly by Edward H Crump, the local political boss, for private parties and by food stands and restuarants to attract people. They played on the back of trucks advertising Colonial Bread and Schlitz.

By this time a number of jug bands had organized in Memphis, including Cannon's Jug Stompers, Jed Davenport's Beale St Jug Band, The Three Js and Jack Kelly's Jug Band (later known as The South Memphis Jug Band). The Memphis Jub Band was the most recorded of the local jug bands, recording over 60 sides for Victor between 1927 and 1930. The majority of these sessions were held in Memphis, with some recordings done in Chicago (1927) and Atlanta (1928). The final recordings of The Memphis Jug Band were made in Chicago in 1934 for Okeh/Vocalion and exhibited a more jazzy sound than their earlier recordings.

By the late 1930s Memphis was in decline, know as the "murder capital of the world" it was rife with corruption. Local politicians tried to combat the problems by closing down the gambling houses and brothels. This signaled the end of the jug band era in Memphis. Will Shade continued to put together jug bands in the 1940s, often with Charlie Burse. The two were rediscovered and recorded by blues researcher Samuel Charters in 1956. Will Shade died of pneumonia on September 18, 1966 at John Gaston Hospital and was buried in Shelby County Cemetery in Memphis.

and this expert review by from mustrad:
This band was the subject of my Opus 1; the first published piece that I’d wish to acknowledge. Memphis Shakedown, The Memphis Jug Band on Record (in Blues-Link issue 2, 1973), has the earnest pedantry and the naive enthusiasm of youth, and if the years have done no more than remove the adjectives from the nouns, that will be enough for me. On the other hand, I did pick a good subject. Don Kent and Bengt Olsson begin their notes with the sweeping assertion that ‘The Memphis Jug Band is not only the greatest jug band ever recorded, but is the greatest representative of traditional music of its time and place, crossing all boundaries.’ The first of these claims is marketing rather than scholarship; I wouldn’t argue the MJB’s greatness, but for me, relative positions on the ladder depend on what I’m looking for at any particular time. Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers found emotional depths in the blues that the MJB never quite plumbed; if there’s a more moving jug band performance than their Viola Lee Blues, I’ve yet to hear it. The Louisville bands led by Earl McDonald and Clifford Hayes achieve at their best an extraordinary blend of sophisticated jazz and pungent alley music. Among less extensively recorded outfits, the raucous Birmingham Jug Band, the crazily exuberant Jed Davenport’s Beale Street Jug Band, and Jack Kelly’s violin-led South Memphis Jug Band all have unique merits of their own, but I’m in danger of straying too far from the record at hand. What about ‘the greatest representative of traditional music of its time and place’? It depends, I suppose, on what you mean by greatness. Kent and Olsson base their view on the breadth of the MJB’s repertoire, and the assurance with which they handled it, and it’s actually rather hard to argue with that. If they never achieve the magnificent artistry of a Robert Johnson or a Blind Willie McTell, they certainly tackle blues, pop, rags, breakdowns, waltzes, blues-ballads and songster material with equal assurance.

But an extensive repertoire means nothing without an appealing delivery, both artistically and commercially. The Memphis Jug Band’s long association with RCA Victor (1927 to 1930) was largely down to the talent spotting, organising and rehearsing skills of the band’s leader and business manager, Will Shade. In Shade, Victor’s Ralph Peer clearly recognised a man who could be relied on to round up the available musicians and bring them along, usually to the temporary studios which Victor set up on their field trips to Memphis, but occasionally on the train ride to Atlanta or Chicago. Shade’s collaboration with Peer seems to have extended into general talent scouting, and even co-production ‘Mr Peer and Will Shade present,’ the Victor logs sometimes note, the presence and absence of an honorific neatly encapsulating the racial attitudes of the time.

The band’s personnel was semi-stable, but Shade seems to have tried to recruit the best musicians on hand at any given time. Himself apart, the most consistently present member up to 1930 was Ben Ramey. In Blues-Link, I described Ramey as ‘one of the best kazooists ever to record’ and, oxymoronic though it may appear, that was a good judgment; play Sound Cliphis buzzing, chugging rasp is a key ingredient in the band’s sound. This is no surprise on energetic, up-tempo numbers, but the way that Ramey enriches the texture on songs like the wistful Stealin’ Stealin’ is much less predictable. Harmonica, kazoo and jug (the great Jab Jones) are here playing versions of the same melody line, not quite in unison, and the unexpected beauty that results is reminiscent of Duke Ellington’s ability to create unusual textures and tone colours. This may seem like an absurd comparison, but the fact that Ellington’s instrumental and compositional resources were much more extensive than Shade’s does not in itself invalidate the point.)

The CD under review darts back and forth within the Memphis Jug Band’s recorded history, rather than going through it chronologically. The latter approach makes it easier to discern changes in the material the band favoured at different times, and to hear how their sound changed as members came and went; but the MJB’s combination of stylistic versatility and high musical standards makes them ideal candidates for a carefully compiled selection of highlights. Yazoo have certainly done the job well; there is a preponderance of Victor material, with only two titles from 1934, when the band went to OKeh, and radically reinvented itself, stressing manically extrovert breakdowns, with the fiddle of Charlie Pierce strongly featured. This may simply reflect the fact that the 1934 recordings are less common, thanks to the effect of the Depression on sales; play Sound Clipit’s a pity that there seems to be no clean copy of Mary Anna Cut Off, a feature for Jab Jones’s barrelhouse piano, but any disc which includes the disciplined insanity of Memphis Shakedown has got to be a good thing. There’s also plenty of the bubbling banjo-mandolin of Vol Stevens, and the ebullient singing of Charlie Nickerson; both of them are prominent on He’s In The Jailhouse Now, play Sound Clipwhich was credited on issue to the Memphis Sheiks. They cleverly updated the old song, with references to band member Benny Ramey, and to the political corruption that made Memphis a wide-open town in the days of Prohibition. (Local politician Edward ‘Boss’ Crump was among the Memphis Jug Band’s white patrons; in 1940, Crump took 1,000 Memphians to the races in Hot Springs, Arkansas by private train, with the MJB aboard to supply music for dancing. Life magazine published some remarkable pictures of the band, which are reprinted in Mr Crump and the Memphis Jug Band by Guido van Rijn (Blues & Rhythm 62, July 1991).

Other guest stars on Yazoo include Memphis Minnie, performing her grimly autobiographical Meningitis Blues (‘Then the nurses all began to stand around me, the doctors had done give me out; Every time I would have a potion, I would have a foaming at the mouth’). Four tracks feature the blowsy, erotic voice of Hattie Hart, of which the weakest is Ambulance Man; her voice and Shade’s don’t fit well together, fascinating though the song’s Freudian obscurities are (‘Can’t you see I’m cut in the stomach? That’s the reason I’ll mend your pain with ease’). Better is the languidly sensuous Memphis Yo Yo Blues (‘Bring yo’ yo yo, wind the string around my thumb, Mama knows just how to make the yo yo hum; play Sound ClipBring yo’ yo yo, daddy, and we will have lots of fun). Best of all is her masterpiece, Cocaine Habit Blues, a strutting anthem to psychotropics which harks back to the days before World War I, when cocaine was legal and endemic in Memphis, and Lehman’s drugstore on Union the main supplier.

The Best Of The Memphis Jug Band is, of course, really some of the best of the Memphis Jug Band; it would be perfectly possible to compile another CD, almost as good, with 23 different tracks - Sun Brimmers Blues, Jug Band Waltz, Lindbergh Hop - well, you get the idea. There is, indeed, a double CD currently available on Classic Blues, retailing for a tenner or so, and with good sound. It does not, however, have Yazoo’s quality annotation and discographical details. Equally, Frog’s three ‘complete in chrono’ discs are available for those who want to hear it all, and benefit from the remastering skills of John R T Davies. For those who must have everything, there are four volumes on Document (with notes by the present writer), and a collection of ‘associates and alternate takes ’ on Wolf, which is far from the barrel-scraping exercise you might expect. Spoilt for choice of Memphis Jug Band reissues - that can’t be bad! Yazoo’s collection is a very good one; my only complaint is that the cover photograph has been ineptly colorised, and thereby robbed of its historical context, and its artistic and iconic power. It appears to be nature’s law, however, that people will not buy records with black and white covers. Go figure!
Chris Smith - 2.9.01

Memphis Jug Band - Best of the Memphis Jug Band
Year: 2001
Label: Yazoo
steal it here.
(pretty momma don't you tell on me)
mp3 >192kbps vbr | w/ cover | 95mb

and while you're Stealin', get Memphis Jug Band - Double Album at Merlin in Rags

Clifford Hayes & The Dixieland Jug Blowers

The Dixieland Jug Blowers were the finest of the city jug bands.

~Sam Charters

More of the Same, only different.

Biography by Craig Harris:
The Louisville, Kentucky-based Dixieland Jug Blowers were one of the first jug bands to record. Led by violinist Clifford Hayes and jug player Earl McDonald, the Chicago-based group, which featured clarinetist Johnny Dodds, left a legacy of twenty-three tracks, including "Boodle Am Shake", "Memphis Shake" and "Skit, Skat, Doodle-Do", recorded between December 1926 and June 1927. Recording as the Louisville Jug Band, they cut such tunes as "She's In The Graveyard Now".

South Carolina-born McDonald moved to Louisville, at the age of two, in 1885. He formed the Louisville Jug Band while still in high school. The product of a musical family, Glasgow, Kentucky-born Hayes moved to Jeffersonville, Indiana in his teens. He joined McDonald's band in 1913.

Although McDonald and Hayes formally separated, over financial conflicts, by 1919, they continued to hire each other to play on recordings and live performances.

Clifford Hayes & The Dixieland Jug Blowers
Year: 1927-28 (rec); 1976 (comp); 1991 (reissue)
Label: Yazoo
boodle-am-boo. (re-post 11-08)
mp3 192kbps | w/ cover | 50mb