Historical Image of the Day

Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys, sometime between 1939 and 1942.

Byrd

RIP, Robert Byrd, Senator and fiddler. 

And a pretty good fiddler in fact. The voice I can give or take, but he's certainly a solid mountain fiddler.

Album of the Week: Dry Branch Fire Squad "Hand Hewn"

Even though there have been a lot of good bluegrass artists around over the past few decades, the newgrass movement of the '70s and its continued influence has made it hard to determine what acts are worthwhile. The meandering jam bands with mandolins are the worst, but even the really traditional bluegrass groups are often frustrating to listen to on album when all they play are old Bill Monroe songs. Like another Wynton Marsalis album of Duke songs, why wouldn't I just listen to the real thing? Still, there's some great stuff out there and Dry Branch Fire Squad has been one of the best bands for both bluegrass and traditional music for thirty years. The lineup has changed slowly but steadily over the years, with founder and frontman Ron Thomason on mandolin being the one mainstay. Through all the changes and all the thirty years they've played, they've maintained the soul of traditional and bluegrass music while still managing, through song selection and harmonies, to stay fresh.

2001's Hand Hewn is the first Dry Branch album I heard and is still my favorite. The songs are all great, spanning Civil War ballads to religious songs to fantastical horse stories. But, what really sets this album apart from most is a devastating rendition of Hazel Dickens' own "Black Lung," sung a capella with Thomason and Dickens herself. The power of her voice is unparalleled, the words are bone chilling, and the song is absolutely amazing. There are a few songs with mixed gender harmonies, a great but relatively rare aspect, and they really set the album off, but "Black Lung" is truly one of the great tracks I've heard. Above is a version of the song by Thomason alone. It doesn't do justice to the power of the recording on Hand Hewn but it's still a great song.

Erik's Random 10

I guess this means I am back on the blog full time. It's like meth. I just can't break the habit.

I can't say enough about the awesomeness of Hazel Dickens. This West Virginia bluegrass singer was not only a pioneering female in this most misogynist music form, but she also has sung some of the most heart-wrenching political songs ever. She left West Virginia for Washington DC as a young girl. She joined a band with the folk singer Alice Gerard and they produced some fantastic albums (I'd recommend the collection Pioneering Women of Bluegrass, one of the 5 best bluegrass albums ever produced). In the late 1970s and 1980s, Dickens then put out a series of fantastic solo albums that combined political songs about coal mining ("Little Lenaldo," "Coal Tattoo") and women's rights ("Don't Put Her Down, You Put Her There") with more traditional bluegrass topics about heartbreak and loss. "Don't Bother to Cry" is one of those more traditional numbers. I also recommend the collection from her solo work on Rounder, A Few Old Memories. Those are 20 great songs on that album, let me tell you.

Some of you might remember her from the John Sayles film Matewan, where she sang at the funeral. She was singing in the old-time style which some have trouble listening to, but it's definitely from the heart. Her recorded work has a much more contemporary style though.

Dickens is older now and doesn't perform much. It has been several years since she put out an album. I suppose that I probably won't ever get the chance to see her. But she is absolutely amazing.

1. Hazel Dickens, Don't Bother to Cry
2. John Hartford, Gum Tree Canoe
3. Frank Sinatra, When Your Lover Has Gone
4. Tom Russell, La Frontera
5. Larry Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time, Heartbreak Hurricane
6. The Kevins, Soft Words
7. The Magnetic Fields, Parades Go By
9. IIIrd Tyme Out, Dim Lights, Thick Smoke
10. Waylon Jennings, It's Not Supposed to Be That Way

Lyrad's Random 10

There's no doubt about the greatness of Earl Scruggs. His banjo is legendary and his work making "mountain music" with Lester Flatt after both left Bill Monroe's tyrannical band was, to me, better than the music's inventor. In any event, scores of praise have been laid on Flatt & Scruggs over the years and there's no good reason to lay it on thicker. The recording (one of 50 billion) of "Orange Blossom Special" was done at the Newport Folk Festival sometime between 1959 and 1966, the discs are not clear when the individual recordings were made, and is released on Vanguard's "Best of Bluegrass" 3-disc set. This set, along with it's companion "Best of Blues," is highly recommeded and an essential set in my collections. These years were right at the heart of the folk revival and, while there was a lot of cheese that came out, there was a lot of real respect for the tradition at that point that really hasn't been seen since.

1. Earl Scruggs--Orange Blossom Special
2. Mose Allison--The Gettin' Paid Waltz
3. The Fugees--No Woman, No Cry
4. Artie Shaw and His Orchestra--Traffic Jam
5. Angelo Badalamenti--Montage (from the soundtrack to The Straight Story)
6. Mystery Girls--Brown Bag Blues
7. Miles Davis--Drad Dog
8. Oscar Benito--El Canelazo
9. Ramblin' Jack Elliot--Talking Fisherman Blues
10. Manitas de Plata--Mi Sentimento

Erik's Random 10

The Osborne Brothers are the kind of band that is the antidote to my frequent complaining about the bastardization of bluegrass. To recap my opinion on bluegrass, we've seen two negative phenomenon. First, hippies have taken it over and turned it into jam music. Second, people like Ricky Skaggs have tried to turn it corporate. The Osborne Brothers never went down either of those roads. They were open to change and kept their music contemporary and popular. They have the highest selling recording in bluegrass history, "Rocky Top," which became the unofficial University of Tennessee fight song. That's pretty annoying in its own right (see the techno versions of the song played in the UT Bookstore) but it's hardly the band's fault. Bluegrass is a great form of American music but it's essence is so often lost with the American public who claim to be fans.

1. The Osborne Brothers, We Could
2. Dry Branch Fire Squad, Midnight on the Stormy Deep
3. Orchestra Baobab, Foire Internationale
4. Derek Bailey, Saturday Dance, Part 5
5. Stevie Wonder, You and I
6. Mark Dresser/Fred Frith/Ikue Mori, Pocket
7. Mike Patton, Ford Mustang
8. BR 5-49, Play That Fast Thing (One More Time)
9. Beck, E-Pro
10. Edgar Varese, Octandre II, Orchestre National de France, Kent Nagano, cond.

Erik's Random 10

Ginny Hawker is one of American music's great unknown singers. From Kentucky, I believe, Hawker is a great bluegrass singer in the mold of Hazel Dickens. Bluegrass music has always had a huge problem with sexism, significantly more than Nashville country has. While today there is some room for female bluegrass singers, particularly crossover artists like Alison Krauss, women like Ginny Hawker continue to practice their art of singing the songs of the southern mountains in relative obscurity. This is too bad because she is really great.

1. Ginny Hawker, The Heart That Will Never Break Again
2. Chris Knight, Run From Your Memory
3. Ray Charles, Blues Waltz
4. Prokofiev, Violin Concerto, Op. 47 (With Simplicity and Warmth), San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Jacob Heifetz, violin
5. Johnny Cash, Reflections
6. Bonnie Prince Billy, At the Break of Day
7. The Gourds, Maria
8. Bill Frisell, Dogwood Acres
9. Tom Waits, Little Drop of Poison
10. Earl "Fatha" Hines, Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone

Erik's Random 10

John Hartford was one of the leaders of the bluegrass hippie movement of the 1970s. Unlike so many purveyors of this (David Grisman especially), Hartford avoided turning bluegrass into stoner jam music. Rather, he broad his weird sensibility to it, creating new sounds and very new lyrical topics. He was happy to sing a song about marijuana, something Bill Monroe never would have done. But he wasn't going to have a 4 minute mandolin solo in the middle of it. It might be a little banjo song. It might be a relatively traditional arrangement. He might sing it normally or he might sing it in a weird voice. However he did it, you knew it was a John Hartford song immediately.

"Way Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie" is originally off his fabulously strange Mark Twang album, but this is off a bootleg copy of a 1983 live show. It's classic Hartford. Odd topic, odd arrangement, but also in the universe of traditional bluegrass music.

Sadly, Hartford died well before his time from cancer. I was very sad when I heard the news. What a great artist.

1. John Hartford, Way Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie
2. Tom Waits, Long Way Home
3. Dodo Marmarosa, What is This Thing Called Love
4. Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon, Where Are We Gonna Work (When the Trees Are Gone)
5. Bob Wills, I Ain't Got Nobody
6. Eric Dolphy, Bee Vamp
7. Hacienda Brothers, No Time to Waste
8. LCD Soundsystem, Watch the Tapes
9. Billie Holliday, God Bless the Child
10. Drive-By Truckers, The Day John Henry Died

Historical Image of the Day

Bluegrass creator Bill Monroe

Historical Image of the Day

John Hartford, Merlefest, 2000