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TweedBlog: the Tangleweed blog
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The blog was started by the Chicago-based acoustic Americana group Tangleweed to document their activities as working musicians. It has since expanded its mission to help engender greater interest and understanding of American vernacular music. The blog i
Recent Posts Tagged With '78rpm'
Hot 78rpm action with the Sons of the Pioneers
There’s a fellow on YouTube by the name of 78Man, who has posted over 800 videos of 78rpm records playing. The result is strangely compelling — like the yule log, but with better music. One of the more appealing sides offered is the Sons ...
Fiddlin’ Frank Nelson playing And the Cat Came Back
I listened to this expecting to hear the song Riley Puckett sang so well, and was surprised to hear this very nice fiddle instrumental instead. Surprised, especially, in that I had never heard of Fiddlin’ Frank Nelson. A quick check of Tony Rus...
Fiddlin’ Powers playing Cluck Old Hen
Fiddlin’ Powers was a John Cowan Powers, from Russell County, Virginia. His recording career encompasses 33 sides for the Victor, Edison, and OKeh labels, though 14 of those seem to be unissued. This is a 1925 Edison recording, and he is backed...
TweedRadio IV: new MP3 stream
Here’s another handy condensed stream of some of the MP3 files that’ve been posted to this site over the past few months. They should play in the Flash dealie below. If you want to know more about the songs or find download links, visit the links...
TweedRadio III: new MP3 stream
Here’s another handy condensed stream of some of the MP3 files that’ve been posted to this site over the past few months. They should play in the Flash dealie below. If you want to know more about the songs or find download links, visit t...
Bo Carter singing Corrine Corrina
This is, as far as I know, the first recording of this tune, which would become a standard. It’s been recorded by Milton Brown, Bob Wills, Tampa Red, Cab Calloway, Bob Dyan, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. There’s some nice mandolin on this tra...
The Down Home Boys singing Original Stack O’Lee Blues
…Of course, the word ‘Original’ in the title more or less ensures that it’s not the original, but what the heck. Originality notwithstanding, this is the rarest of the rare. There is only one known copy of this recording, and ...
Ernest Thompson singing Are You from Dixie
This 1924 session for Columbia is among the earlier examples of rural vernacular song on a commercial record. The song is not, as one might suspect, a minstrel song, but rather a Tin Pan Alley tune by George Cobb and Jack Yellen that passed into the ...
The Sweet Brothers and Ernest Stoneman singing I Got a Bulldog
This appealing side was cut on July 10, 1928 in Richmond, Indiana, for the Gennett label. It was paired with a tune from a session five days earlier (’Somebody’s Waiting for Me’) on Gennett 6620. The personnel: Herbert Sweet: fiddl...
Weems String Band playing Greenback Dollar
This side, recorded in Memphis in December, 1927, represents one half of the total recorded output of Weems String Band. It’s a pity, too, because it’s a rather extraordinary record. With more weemses than one could shake a stick at. The ...
Gene Autry singing Atlanta Bound
Before he was a singing cowboy, Gene Autry was a Jimmie Rodgers imitator, and a good one. His earliest recordings include several titles from the Rodgers canon, as well as new songs in Rodgers’ style, delivered in a vocal style remarkably simil...
1924 recording of Lonesome Road Blues
Thomas Edison was, apparently, almost completely deaf. This would help to explain the quality of music on his record label, as it was almost uniformly dreadful. There’s not a lot of interest for conisseurs of early jazz or blues. There are, ho...
Are you ready, Hezzie? The Hoosier Hot Shots playing San
I’ve written of my admiration for former Chicago radio stars the Hoosier Hot Shots in previous posts. While much of their recorded repertoire consisted of novelty ephemera, they could whip out a convincing hot instrumental on occasion to remind...
Ernest Thompson playing Weeping Willow Tree
Ernest Thompson cut this side for Columbia (and their cut-price Harmony label) on September 9th, 1924, in New York. The Harmony release is under a pseudonym (as was the convention for cut-price labels), the label credits the performance to ‘Ern...
TweedRadio: try our new MP3 stream
The embedded doohickey below has a playlist with the last ten sound files we’ve posted to the site. If folks like this, I’ll do another one in a few weeks. Wreck of the Southern Old 97 Sandy River Belle Sally Goodin Ragtime Annie Coo Coo...
Ernest Thompson playing Wreck of the Southern Old 97
Wreck of the Old 97 was country music’s first great hits when it was recorded by classically trained former light opera singer Vernon Dalhart (nee Marion Try Slaughter) in 1924. The song had already been recorded by Henry Whitter in 1923, and T...
Jawharp virtuoso Obed Pickard playing Sally Goodin
Here’s a remarkable display of jawharp virtuosity by Obed Pickard, one of the early performers on WSM radio’s Grand Ole Opry. His earliest commercial recordings were in 1927. This is from 1929, cut for Banner and affiliated cut-price labe...
Eck Robertson playing Ragtime Annie
This acoustical recording from 1922 is among the earliest examples of rural Southern vernacular fiddling we have on record. Alexander Campbell (’Eck’) Robertson was a skilled contest fiddler from Texas whose recording career extended into the fol...
The Blue Ridge Highballers playing Fourteen Days in Georgia
See my previous post for more about the Blue Ridge Highballers. This is another side from their March 23, 1926, session for the Columbia label in New York. The personnel is the same as the previous track: Charlie La Prade, fiddle Arthur Wells, banjo...
The Blue Ridge Highballers playing Flop-Eared Mule
The Blue Ridge Highballers were a Virginia string band led by fiddler Charley La Prade. They recorded seventeen sides for Columbia and Paramount (and their respective affiliate labels) in 1926 and 1927, and an additional three sides accompanying voca...
Clarence Ashley playing the Coo Coo Bird
This 1927 recording, the flip side to Ashley’s Dark Holler Blues, is a wonderful example of a modal banjo melody. Ashley executes the descending line between the verses beautifully. The text is mostly a non-narrative assemblage of commonplace v...
Clarence Ashley playing Dark Holler Blues
Thomas C. (’Clarence’) Ashley recorded extensively in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and again in the postwar folk revival with his friend and neighbor Doc Watson. This side comes from his second session, in Johnson City, Tennessee, in O...
Henry Whitter playing Rain Crow Bill
Virginian Henry Whitter was one of the earliest country music performers to record extensively. While many of his solo recordings are unexceptional, his work with G.B. Grayson was often excellent. Rain Crow Bill was an old Minstrel harmonica solo tha...
Narmour and Smith playing Carroll County Blues
Mississippians W.T. Narmour and S.W. Smith cut about 50 sides between 1928 and 1934. Their most enduring contribution to the country music canon is this unusual fiddle tune, Carroll County Blues. One can safely assume that the titular Carroll County ...
Doc Roberts playing Coal Tipple Blues
Kentuckian Doc Roberts was one of the great fiddlers in early recorded country music. He recorded fairly extensively for two of the most revered prewar record labels: Gennett Records, based in nearby Richmond, Indiana, and Paramount Records, of Graft...
Shedding new light on Mike Shaw’s Alabama Entertainers
A few days ago, I posted an MP3 of an old 78rpm record by a group called Mike Shaw’s Alabama Entertainers, about whom I know nothing. Fortunately, my copy of Tony Russell’s masterful Country Music Records: A Discography, the Rosetta Stone...
Mike Shaw’s Alabama Entertainers playing Tennessee River Bottom Blues
I don’t know much about Mike Shaw’s Alabama Entertainers. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that they may have been from Alabama, and that someone named Mike Shaw was involved. The tune is an interesting one, though. It sounds...
Vess Ossman playing Maple Leaf Rag
I just finished rereading Eward Berlin’s excellent Scott Joplin Biography, King of Ragtime. Only two of Joplin’s rags were recorded commercially during his lifetime, and the first piano recording of his most famous composition, Maple Leaf...
Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas playing Pick Poor Robin Clean
As far as I can tell, this raggy blues ditty is about abject poverty and hunger. It’s transcribed in my wildly unpopular book (albeit the more spare Luke Jordan version). Interestingly, the good folks at Mel Bay decided that portions of the so...
Geeshie Wiley playing Last Kind Words
This is a work of almost indescribable beauty, a vocal performance with a striking depth of feeling and guitar accompaniment that is equally remarkable. As far as I know, her entire recorded output consists of six sides for the Paramount label, and, ...
