I’ve continued to practice the oil can banjo like a mad thing and at the same time I’ve been listening to all the old time music I can. Tonight’s Daily Dose is Mississippi Sawyer.
Here’s Richard Hood, playing it two-finger style on a fretless banjo…
This tune was published as early as 1839 so it’s been around for a while. I find it interesting that some tunes have endured for all that time.
Somebody landed on this blog after searching, “where do lobster mushrooms grow in Ontario?” The answer is, in the Enchanted Mushroom Forest, that’s where. Curiously, I find more lobster mushrooms in the forests I forage than any other single species, and yet I some people never find any. The first season I foraged, I don’t think I found any, but once I started seeing them, I started finding loads of them.
Since I’ve started to learn to play my oil can banjo, I’ve been immersing myself in old time American folk music. Shady Grove is another old tune that has been recorded a squillion times and that has about as many verses. I’ve known this song for many years as sung by Doc Watson. Here he is with David Holt on banjo.
Here’s Dan Levenson on banjo
Here is David Beede playing Shady Grove on a cigar box banjo
Old Joe Clark is a tune that just about every banjo picker plays at some time or another. It was known to have been sung by soldiers from Kentucky in WWI. There are written versions of the tune going back to 1918. The Joe Clark this song refers to actually existed back in the 1800s. He was a mountaineer, the story goes, and he was murdered. This song has an endless number of verses to it and has been recorded countless times. Boy was I surprised when I started listening to different versions and stumbled into one featuring an accordion. Here are the Callahan Brothers from a 1945 Western called Springtime in Texas, performing Old Joe Clark, Western Swing style.
Here’s Aubrey Atwater talking about and performing the tune….
By the way, Aubrey Atwater is quite a versatile performer. Check her out in the Atwater-Donnelly Trio performing The Spanish Lady, singing and playing mountain dulcimer/..
Back to Old Joe Clark, here’s a nice version with a different feel featuring Vivian Williams and Phil Williams
This is a really hypnotic performance… featuring Johannes Bonefaas and Hendrik Holst Anderson. I stumbled upon this one on the YouTube machine and it stopped me in my tracks.
I just read at the Friends of Sam Smith Park blog that the Etobicoke Waterfront Stormwater Management study has been completed. I don’t know all the issues here yet, but the blog post is very critical of the study for ignoring community feedback.
I baked bread today. Actually I started my dough yesterday. Using James Lahey’s slow fermentation approach, I made a simple dough yesterday and let it do its thing overnight. This afternoon, I gave it a second rise for a couple hours and again using Lahey’s method, I preheated a Dutch oven to close to 500F then dropped the dough in, covered it, and let it bake for half an hour before finishing the process with the lid off.
The bread was seriously fantastic, with a really well-developed crust, and a nice open crumb with plenty of chew and character.
All this was to accompany dinner, which was a fish soup, made with potatoes, carrots, zucchini, celery, haddock, loads of fresh dill and parsley, a splash of Mad Tom’s IPA and fresh lemon juice squeezed in at the end.
Pigtown Fling is also Wild Horse, Stoney Point or Wild Horse at Stoney Point.
Featured on this version is the sound of crickets in Chuck Levy’s garden.
Here’s a nice string band version featuring Chance McCoy and The Saddle Horn Stringband (Matt Metz-Guitar, Ben Townsend-Banjo)
And how about a fife version?
27th Street 