I was thinking about the old cowboy song, Diamond Joe so I searched around YouTube and found this performance by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, in which he talks about how he learned it from a cowboy at a rodeo in Brussels of all places. Jack struggles with a malfunctioning capo during this performance but nevertheless still manages to do a fine job on it. Jack Elliott has a way of squeezing all the goodness from a song.

We live in a world in which our popular music is dominated by corporations presenting young adults in their teens or twenties. They have to look the right way and dress the right way and the producers make them sound the right way to hit that mass-market demographic. One of the reasons I’m always listening to folk traditions and music that is perhaps less popular to mass audiences is that there is room for performers who don’t fit that cookie cutter, performers who aren’t so attractive, performers who are older, performers who play music that isn’t the same as most of the material you hear on the radio.

The performance I’m linking to is from 2012, back when Jack Elliott was about 80. He’s been playing music for a very very long time, mostly traveling around playing solo, telling the stories of his adventures along the way.

Here’s Diamond Joe

This tune has been around the block a few times. Here’s a bluegrass-infused version by Sam Bush.

Curiously, it isn’t the only tune called Diamond Joe. There is also an Old Time tune with the same title. Here’s Marc Nerenberg..

It’s not out of reach for a pop performer either. Bob Dylan took a stab at it in his terrible movie Masked and Anonymous…