"IN THE PINES - TAR HEEL FOLK SONGS & FIDDLE TUNES"

I wrote approvingly last month of the OLD HAT recording label in the course of reviewing their excellent "Gastonia Gallop" collection; now it's time to take a look-see at its predecessor, another winning compilation from North Carolina called "In The Pines - Tar Heel Folks Songs & Fiddle Tunes". It's subtitled "Old-Time Music of North Carolina 1926-1936". There, whew, we've set the scene. Now for the particulars. This 2008 comp has no real unfying theme outside of the era, the state and the quality of the recordings, but man, it's a good'un. There are at least a half-dozen on here I've heard before on other collections, but the most part they are unearthed and very rare examples of mountain music, old-time fiddle and banjo tunes, folk songs and murder ballads. It's a hard collection to find even a single bit of fault with, unlike "Gastonia Gallop".

What you get here are terrific stemwinding rave-ups like "Richmond Square" by THE HIGHLANDERS (featuirng the great Charlie Poole) and "Banjo Sam" by WILMER WATTS & THE LONELY EAGLES, along with material that sounds like it was fished straight from the cracker barrel. I mean, the BLANKENSHIP FAMILY's "Working on the Railroad" is the kiddie classic, and it sounds like it's from another land and another dimension (I suppose it was, right?). Likewise DOC WALSH's "In The Pines", which is really well-recorded and/or remastered. Walsh exists so far from the world we currently live in, just in vocal intonation alone, that it's truly like stepping into a folklore museum. That's the overriding feeling I get listening to this collection, which really never flags nor tires. It may not have the highest of high points but it's just as good as any other Old Hat collection and better than a few. I guess I have all of 'em now - this was my last to procure - and I recommend you do the same if you've got a hankering for the best music the Carolinas ever created.

ON DOCK BOGGS

In the late 90s I was a devout purchaser of every CD the Revenant Records label put out, regardless of whether or not I'd heard of the artist, and there was none better than the DOCK BOGGS "Country Blues" package they put together in 1998 and released to much acclaim. Remember when The Atlantic Monthly even wrote a piece on it? I do; that's when I knew this release was a bigger part of the cultural zeitgeist than I'd have ever imagined. (I also loved it because it slammed Greil Marcus' horribly overwrought essay in the booklet, the one that floridly and ridiculously ascribed mystical & otherworldly qualities to Boggs' banjo pickin'). For me it was revelatory because I'd never even heard of Boggs when the CD came out; I was then in thrall to African-American blues singers of his era (late 1920s) - as well as to my beloved garage punk music - and hadn't gotten around to figuring out what white bluesmen were up to way back then.

DOCK BOGGS, on the incredible "Country Blues" set, is much more than a pedestrian bluesman. He's most obviously one of the most complex, de-tuned, creative banjo musicans of all time, and hey, if it just ended there, that'd be well enough. But listen to that voice - a caterwauling, ultra-Deep-South set of vocal chords that sounds like someone startled Grandpa out of bed and pulled him over to a microphone, only to discover that he had presence and a set of pipes to beat the band. It's sometime hard to tell in these 12 songs if Dock Boggs plays the traditional "comical banjo" - if he's having fun and stomping his feet in glee if he plays - or if these songs are cries from a dark, anguished place. To me they sound like they reflect both a hard-drinking & partying rural South, and conversely or perhaps complimentarily, a time filled with short lives, scandalous affairs and hard work. At the end it all comes back to Boggs' incredible banjo work, strange tempos and sense of time, and that crazy-ass voice of his. I've still never heard anything like it, and it's easily one of the best pre-WWII collections of songs ever assembled.

Play Dock Boggs, "Sugar Baby"


Download DOCK BOGGS - "Sugar Baby"

"TOO LATE, TOO LATE" VOLUME 10 - COLLECTOR NERDVANA

DOCUMENT RECORDS have this CD series called "TOO LATE, TOO LATE" that collects newly-discovered alternate takes and even the odd unearthed 78rpm blues recording, and then sorta lumps them in together haphazardly on a CD as soon as they hit the requisite amount of tracks needed to fill 78 minutes. Little thought is given to continuity nor context - recordings are slapped one after the other, with a 1942 blues recording following a 1929 ragtime recording following a spoken-word/solo washboard act from 1932. It's not really about you and me with these CDs - it's all about the collector, the guy who'll sh*t a brick when he finds out that a fourth take exists of a BLIND BLAKE track. Truth be told, I have some affinity with that guy, so I broke out a 5-spot when stacks of these were on sale at my local record store for $4.99, and picked up Volume 10 of "TOO LATE, TOO LATE".

As might be expected, there are a few duds, a bunch of middling material and a couple of jewels. BLIND BLAKE himself contributes one of these, an excellent third take ("you mean there was actually a third take???") of "West Coast Blues" from 1926, which I'm posting for you here. He's also got a mean version of "Diddie Wa Diddie" on here as well. The set starts off with a great cornball Tin Pan Alley commercial for pistons or O-rings or something from the THREE BAD HABITS called "Three Bad Habits Blues". There's a few killer washboard/banjo breakdowns by the NASHVILLE WASHBOARD BAND as well, who get five tracks out of the 25 on here. Their stuff is marred by bad fidelity and a sub-par singer with a gravel voice, but you can tell these guys must've been total barnburners down at the juke joint back in 1942.

Other tracks are just comic. There's a cool version of "John Henry" by someone named BIG BOY, but he's joined by a second singer who's hacking and coughing throughout the whole song and who sings like he just downed three pints of bootlegger 'shine. Others are so poorly recorded that they're completely unlistenable. Nevertheless, somewhere there's a vinyl hound making goo-goo faces whilst listening to them, secure in his inner sanctum. That's who this CD is for - but if you can pick it up for the price I did, there are certainly a few goodies to be had.

Play Blind Blake, "West Coast Blues (third take)"

Download BLIND BLAKE - "West Coast Blues (third take)"

"GASTONIA GALLOP" - 1927-31 TEXTILE HOLLERS

I've been a big fan of the achival releases from OLD HAT RECORDS ever since their first few from about a decade ago, including the amazing "Folks, He Sure Do Pull Some Bow"and "Music From The Lost Provinces". These guys do the Carolinas like nobody's business, especially the poor, hard-working Appalachian/Western North Carolina of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Everything they've put out is nothing short of outstanding, and it was high time I got on board with their 2009 release, "GASTONIA GALLOP", which is subtitled "Cotton Mill Songs and Hillbilly Blues - Piedmont Textile Workers on Record, Gaston County, North Carolina 1927 - 1931". It's a fun, often revelatory collection from a handful of artists, and collects 78rpm sides from actual folks who worked in the cotton mills of the Piedmont region during this era, and who were semi-professional musicians in their exceedingly rare spare time.

"GASTONIA GALLOP" heavies up on early rural, bluegrass-tinged acts who used harmonica, banjo and guitar as their method for blowing off steam. There are a number of standouts to go with a generally medium-to-high level of quality, most notably anything featuring WILMER WATTS. Wilmer Watts & The Lonely Eagles get 6 sides here, comprising three different 78s, and they're all excellent hoedowns & ballads with Watts' rough-edged, untrained and barked voice, a voice that totally grabs you around the lapels and sucks you in no matter how intense he's shouting or "crooning". "She's A Hard-Boiled Rose" and "Been On The Job Too Long" are my top tracks in this collection, and now I understand why I've been seeing this guy mentioned in R. Crumb comics and various record-collector rantings all these years. If I've ever heard his stuff before it somehow didn't make a dent, but now I'll be on the lookout for all & all Watts material.

DAVID McCARN is sort of the linchpin of this 24-song set, appearing by himself & in duos throughout the set, as well as being featuring extensively throughout the liner notes (he basically drank himself to death - ouch). There are multiple versions (more like continuations) of his over-the-top working man's rant "Cotton Mill Colic", which the notes seem to indicate may have been less a true lament of working conditions and more a way to sell some vinyl to the truly P.O.ed working stiffs around him. I find his harmonica a little annoying - anytime harmonica has that trilling, upper-register screech that pops up throughout this CD I want to turn down the volume immediately - but he was a crackerjack songwriter and "Everyday Dirt" is one of the best tunes on here.

There's also a simple, tremendous instrumental on the set called "Red Rose Rag" by FLETCHER & FOSTER that's really just a basic Irish jig gone deep South, but I swear I just keep skipping forward on the disc so I can hear this guitar/harp duet again (track #12, so right down the middle). Everything else is "good enough", except when that du-tuned harmonica gets in the way. Apparently this set's full of organizing tunes that helped the cause of Labor back in the day, and though a bunch of the tunes are obviously novelties designed to get the working man laughing or offer some clownish succor for a hard day's work, there's also a sense of unforced, non self-aware history-making from these rural inventors of early country music. It's a really solid set of tunes and another fantastic release from Old Hat, who've taken the crown from Revenant and Yazoo for best (and most consistent) archival roots music label circa 2009/2010.

YOU ALL UP FOR A CD BURNIN' PARTY?

Remember CD burning? Boy, it was all the rage in the early part of the last decade, wasn't it? I swear I built a healthy chunk of my music collection by engaging in 10 CD-for-10 CD trades with friends and acquaintances across god's green earth - including a lot of rare blues and old-timey music I mightn't have otherwise been privy to. Great times, wiped out by file-sharing and a general lack of interest in compact discs. Well I for one am still interested.

I don't usually make shameless pleas on my blogs but there are a few box sets I've been dying to hear that I just don't have the scratch for. Like take the Yazoo Records "Kentucky Mountain Music" 7-CD box set. I lovingly caress that thing in the store every time I see it (OK, not really), but its $80+ price tag is too much for this man to stomach. Anyone got one? And while we're at it, anyone have "Goodbye, Babylon"? Or some of those JSP Records box sets that I probably can afford but just haven't gotten around to yet? I've got some good stuff I can roast up for you in return, so if you're game, drop me a line at jayhinman(at)hotmail dotcom.

THE CRAZY, LOPING 1929 "FREEZONE" TRACK

Years ago my pal Grady burned me a copy of one of those expansive Document Records collections of old 78s, solely so I could be exposed to the perplexing, loopy guitar and hot, overmodulated vocals of a bluesman pseudonymously named FREEZONE. It's one of my all-time favorites, and the only real reason to pull that CD out. One song, one recording, over and out - this guy was done. No one knows his real name, and all that we do know is that this wacked piece of blues was recorded in 1929 in Richmond, Indiana. "Indian Squaw Blues" served as one side of a split 78, with Raymond Barrow's "Walking Blues" on the other side. This track can be found on a few collections - Document's "Rare Country Blues", where I got mine - and also on the new-ish JSP Records box set "A Richer Tradition, 1928-1938". I've always wanted to believe that this cool photo on the Document CD was the mysterious FREEZONE himself, but I, uh, rather doubt it. See if you're as blown away with this song as I am by clicking the links below.

Play Freezone, "Indian Squaw Blues"


Download FREEZONE - "Indian Squaw Blues"

GEESHIE WILEY, AMERICAN MASTER

I'll admit, I don't know a whole lot about GEESHIE WILEY. It's apparent that no one does. No photographs exist of her, and the three two-sided 78rpm records that she made, while spread over a number of compilation LPs and CDs the last few decades, have not reached the point where they're part of the popular canon of deep blues songs reguarly referred to by non-scholars. Yet when you hear her 1930 debut, "Last Kind Words Blues/Skinny Leg Blues", it's clear you're in the hands of one of the masters. Her simple, pounded/plucked guitar style, her intense, mournful and even spiteful lyrics, and the general aching atmospherics of these two songs are in a class by themselves. Her three 78s are all excellent, but this one's among the top 10 blues records of all time, and deserves to be talked about with the same reverance as Skip James. And that's saying something.

"Last Kind Words Blues" is a desperate, haunted World War I lament, and was recorded with its flipside in 1930 in Grafton, Wisconsin for Paramount Records, as so many were. It has an unusual harmonic structure and those chiming guitars that takes it well into the realm of high art. Wiley is backed on second guitar by Elvie Thomas, another woman whom I don't know anything about - and again, whom no one else does either. No photos, no biographical info, nuthin'. It adds to the mystery already swirling in the grooves themselves. I figured I'd kick off the "real" posts for this blog with one of the all-time great ones, and I'm making the songs available for you to listen to and download as well.

Play Geeshie Wiley, "Last Kind Words Blues"

Play Geeshie Wiley, "Skinny Leg Blues"

Download GEESHIE WILEY - "Last Kind Word Blues"

Download GEESHIE WILEY - "Skinny Leg Blues"

TALKING INTRODUCTORY, EXPLANATORY BLOG POST BLUES

HIGH WATER EVERYWHERE is this blogger’s sixth blog in nearly seven years of blogging, and the third one centered wholly around music. Unlike my past music blogs Agony Shorthand and Detailed Twang, however, this one throws up a couple of litmus tests before my figurative pen hits the paper. First and foremost, High Water Everywhere will be attempting an immersive dive into the art, wisdom and transformative powers found on the 78rpm record, and only those 78rpm records recorded before the end of World War II. Me, I’ve been a sucker for pre-WWII blues for just about 20 years, and I have allowed myself on many occasions to be completely carried away by the music of Charley Patton, Dock Boggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Furry Lewis, Robert Wilkins and – towering mightily above all comers – the patron saint and sponsor of this blog, Mr. SKIP JAMES.

Litmus test #2 will ensure that only those forms of music that I personally love get digital ink, which is probably fairly obvious. It’s my thing, after all. For instance, I’ve got a real aversion to most electric blues (“Chicago blues” etc. - gross), but I’ll break litmus test #1 for some 1950s-era Gold Star label Lightning Hopkins, for instance – and maybe for a few others. We’ll see what happens here; I reserve the right to break my own code. High Water Everywhere will not be just about the blues, however. Expect this site to go deep into what the old-timers call “old-tyme” music – the early country & bluegrass music from Appalachia, the American South and beyond. I’ve been sinking a considerable wad of cash into CDs from 1920s-30s Kentucky, West Virginia and the Carolinas for a while now, and I intend to sink some more as this thing goes along. This is how it works: for me, a blog about any one of my numerous passions becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once I start writing about something, I then consume it all the more, and that’s just fine. Microbrewed craft beer, punk rock, libertarian politics – get me writing regularly about it, and I’ll go as deep into it as I can, just to keep the one-way dialogue going & the material fresh.

Hey, did I say one way? Jeez, I didn’t mean to. I’ve more or less enjoyed 78rpm music as a solo consumer of compact discs the past couple of decades, and I’d like to change that. I’ll never be a rabid, frothing collector of 78rpm records – hell, I barely have any records at all left anymore, after once amassing a pretty giant collection of (rock) vinyl – but I totally admire the folks that are, the ones who’ve been accumulating & archiving ancient American sounds for the past 50 years for the benefit of us all. I’d expect some ham-handed tributes on this blog to those guys (they’re always guys), and maybe even an interview or two with them and their ilk if I can scare some of them up. I’m hoping for loads of comments to sprout up on this site from day one, and for people out there (maybe you?) to share links, recommendations, contrary opinions, irrational rants and whatnot; so please – feel free to get started.

Oh, and here’s the thing – I wanna take this somewhat past the blues and country, uh, “idioms” as well. When the spirit moves me, the site will be talking about Hawaiian slack-key guitar records, old Greek Rembetica recordings, Bulgarian folk dances, Tejano, gospel, Cajun, you name it. Just no jazz. Jazz writing and poindexterish over-analysis has been done to death, and frankly, though I like a lot of the early New Orleans and big band stuff, I just don’t think I’ve got a single intelligent thing to say about it.

So what’s greasing the proverbial skids for this site, you ask? Well, I flat-out enjoy dissecting music, particularly when I’m not a full-on expert – which I’m certainly not (yet) when it comes to pre-war sounds. Around 1992 I bought my first blues CD, a collection called “The Greatest in Country Blues”. Guess what the first song was on there. You’re right – it was “High Water Everywhere” by Charley Patton. Formative? Oh yes. Within a year I had, if not a complete collection of the 1920s and 30s blues masters, at least an excellent running start at trading in the delta blues vernacular, with a little bit of learned credibility. I was a mere 25 years of age, and was discovering a lot of amazing, non-punk or -garage music for the first time. Through voracious reading of liner notes and books by Robert Palmer, Stephen Calt and other blues writers, I felt like I was getting something of a handle on the genre.

Blues, and later pre-war country, spoke to me in new ways. I suppose I loved the messed-up fidelity of old records once newly unearthed, and the way the scratched & distant sounds spoke a dialect so incredibly far removed from my own comfortable experience. I worshipped the sounds of poor black men barely a generation or two removed from slavery who just happened to be absolute wizards on guitar, piano, fiddle & other instruments, taking the most simple of song structures and transcending them into mournful, playful or transcendent, otherworldly masterpieces. I loved the sparse packaging, the decades-old withered photos of the musicians, and cool old logos from labels like Yazoo, Document and Arhoolie. I loved, and still am transfixed by, the stories told by the earliest collectors and archivists, going door to door in the 1950s in search of these mythical 78s, and finding not only the records, but the actual, destitute, but still very much alive musicians such as Skip James himself.

One other thing I kinda dig about pre-WWII blues and country music is that, well, there’s really a finite amount of it to converse about. I mean, only so many records of this ilk were made, numbering in the many hundreds for sure, but real archivists & experts like Joe Bussard, Pete Whelan et al can honestly and without reservation say that they own the majority of all recorded work in those genres from the 1920s and 30s. It is actually possible, something that cannot even be contemplated with rock music or even jazz. Thus the litmus tests we throw up for this blog. It helps sharpen the focus and get us so deep into the subject matter we might actually feel like we’re scratching the surface together.

Yeah, I recognize very well that I personally run the risk of dilettantism in writing about the 78rpm record, particularly as a personal prod to even deeper learning about the form. I’m in my early forties now, which sometimes seems still too young by half, compared with the folks who are best at keeping alive American roots music from this era. I’m a veritable whippersnapper, learning about this stuff from CDs and decades-old magazine articles, when these guys are still scooping up & trading real 78s, for crissakes. I’ve never even owned a 78, just a 1970s-era record player with that as a setting. I’m also probably a walking cliché – the punk rock guy who grew somewhat bored of his rock & roll collection, and turned his attention to old-timey sounds in middle age. Well let me put it to you straight, folks – I’m going to make it worthwhile for you to come back here, and you can just get all your catcalling, bullyragging and badgering out now.

Here’s what I’ve got planned. High Water Everywhere will review the musical genres discussed thusfar, usually in record/CD-review format, sometimes with an mp3 or two thrown in to help suck you in. Said records or CDs don’t have to be brand new – in fact, rarely will they be. It’ll be somewhat unlike my former Detailed Twang blog, which was all about giving the people free music, and also somewhat unlike my former Agony Shorthand blog, which was solely about the written word. It will contain ruminations that I can’t begin to conjure up right now, along with interviews, links to other stuff to check out, cool old photos we found on the internet or scanned for you from magazines & CD inserts – that sort of thing. If something sucks, we’ll tell you. If there are opportunities to praise my record-collecting heroes, I’ll do it, and if I get the opportunity to mock their anti-social stodginess and/or anal tendencies, I’ll do that too. It’ll be a friggin' blast. And we’ll get to listen to and discuss some righteous tunes in the process. Come back early and often, and let's see what we do with this thing together.