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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 'archive'
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...
How can a poor man stand such times and live?
Blind Alfred Reed recorded this in New York City, just weeks after the 1929 stock market crash. His recording career began two years earlier in Bristol Tennessee, discovered in the same series of sessions that produced the first recordings by Jimmie ...
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...
California, live from Knoxville
Here’s a quick excerpt from our August 15th appearance on WDVX’s Blue Plate Special. The song is ‘California’, which will be on our next CD, Most Folk Heroes Started Out As Criminals. The picture at left is Paul and me with th...
The Takeup Medley live at the Abbey Pub
We played a show at the Abbey Pub a few months back, opening for Hot Buttered Rum (nice folks, they). Our friend Brian taped both band’s sets, and they’re available for download at Archive.org. Here’s a tune from midway through our ...
With a Bottle in My Hand, Live at the Ark
This popped up on my iPod this morning, a live recording from June, 2006, at the Ark in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was shortly before our second CD, Where You Been So Long, came out, and we were playing our first real out-of-town shows. The Ark was a g...
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...
Stagger Lee update: ‘Stag’ Lee’s house still stands
In the comments to yesterday’s post about the true story behind Stack O’Lee / Stagger Lee, Michael M. hipped me to a whole lot more information about the story, including some excellent posts on his blog. One of the most interesting chest...
1895 St. Louis newspaper article: William Lyons shot by ‘Stag’ Lee
We’ve posted several versions of Stack O’Lee/ Stagger Lee here on the TweedBlog, so I’d like to give a little information on the true story behind one of American music’s more enduring songs. Lyons and Lee were real people and...
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...
The Carter Family playing Wildwood Flower
The Carter Family first cut this tune in 1928 for the Victor label, and it remains one of their most-loved performances. Though the lyrics border on doggerel, the singing and playing are gorgeous. This has long been required learning for all aspiring...
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...
Frank Hutchison playing Last Scene on the Titanic
West Virginia guitarist and singer Frank Hutchison was one of the great instrumental stylists of early country music. Perhaps best-known for his song ‘The Train that Carried my Girl from Town’, his recorded legacy consists of 32 tracks re...
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...
Tangleweed’s Kinetic Playground show available for download
Our friend Brian has posted our recent show at Chicago’s Kinetic Playground on Archive.org. The set list: Listen to the Mockingbird South Australia Angeline the Baker -> Soldier’s Joy California Short Life of Trouble The Logjam Takeup...
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...
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 ...
