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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 'old-time'
Jimmie Rodgers singing Sleep Baby Sleep
This is the track that launched a career, and a career that helped launch an industry. It was recorded in Bristol, Tennessee, on August 4, 1927 for the Victor label. Though it was only a modest success, it marked the beginning of one of the most illu...
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 ...
John Hardy was a desperate little man
The song John Hardy has long been a staple of the bluegrass canon. Tony Russell’s Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942; lists seven prewar recordings by five different performers: Eva Davis: April, 1924 Ernest Stoneman: August, 1925...
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 ...
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...
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...
Picture of me with Howard Armstrong
I came across this photo, circa August 1997, when I was cleaning out some old files. Howard (’Louie Bluie’) Armstrong was a mandolinist I admired enormously, from his early recordings with the unfortunately named Tennessee Chocolate Drops...
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...
Video of Clarence Ashley playing the Coo Coo Bird
Here’s some wonderful footage of Clarence Ashley playing his best-known tune, the Coo Coo Bird, some time in the 1960s. Ashley’s skills don’t seem have diminished a bit in the 30+ years since his landmark recording of the tune....
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...
