November 22, 2012
comments 2

Stackolee

Lee Shelton lived from March 16, 1865 – March 11, 1912 in St. Louis Missouri. Who was Lee Shelton and why should we care? Well, Mr. Shelton shot William Lyons on Christmas night 1895. Shelton, was sent to the big house where he eventually died of tuberculosis. The murder was immortalized in song and legend. Shelton was destined to become a folk figure known as Stagger Lee or Stackolee or even Stagolee, He was a black outlaw, tough, nasty, defiant. The song written about him has taken many forms but at it’s heart the story was that Stackolee killed Billy about a $5 Stetson hat.

Wikipedia offers the following as a quote from the St. Louis Globe Democrat in 1895:

William Lyons, 25, a levee hand, was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o’clock in the saloon of Bill Curtis, at Eleventh and Morgan Streets, by Lee Sheldon, a carriage driver. Lyons and Sheldon were friends and were talking together. Both parties, it seems, had been drinking and were feeling in exuberant spirits. The discussion drifted to politics, and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched Sheldon’s hat from his head. The latter indignantly demanded its return. Lyons refused, and Sheldon withdrew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen. When his victim fell to the floor Sheldon took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away. He was subsequently arrested and locked up at the Chestnut Street Station. Lyons was taken to the Dispensary, where his wounds were pronounced serious. Lee Sheldon is also known as ‘Stag’ Lee.

The first version of the Stagger Lee song I ever heard was the popular Lloyd Price tune. Here’s Mr. Price singing it live…

Perhaps the meanest, nastiest, baddest incarnation of the legend was recorded by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on his 1996 record, Murder Ballads. Here they are performing it live. If you are sensitive to nasty language, just skip this video please.

Now let’s go back a bit and listen to Woody Guthrie’s 1944 version…

And even further back…. Frank Hutchison’s version can be found on the Harry Smith anthology I mentioned the other night. Bob Dylan recorded the song on World Gone Wrong that owes a lot to Hutchison’s version. Both are excellent.

There are so many versions of the song it’s difficult to choose. I’ll leave you with one more – recorded by Mississippi John Hurt in 1964.

I’ll leave you to explore Stagger Lee as performed by others if you are so inclined. When I say this song has been well recorded, here is a partial list of performers who took a stab at it:

Sydney Bechet
Beck
Pat Boone
David Bromberg
James Brown
Neil Diamond
Fats Domino
Bob Dylan
Dr. John
Duke Ellington
John Fahey
Woody Guthrie
Bill Haley and his Comets
Wilbert Harrison
The Isley Brothers
Furry Lewis
Taj Mahal
Wilson Pickett
Professor Longhair
Johnny Rivers
Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs
Pete Seeger
Southside Johnny
Ike and Tina Turner
Dave van Ronk
Doc Watson
…there are many more. Back in my university days, I once collected enough versions to fill both sides of a cassette tape (remember those?).

November 21, 2012
comments 2

Charles Guiteau

I’m sure my American friends are familiar with Charles Guiteau as the preacher/lawyer/writer who assassinated President Garfield, a crime for which he was hanged. He did the deed on July 2, 1881, but Garfield didn’t perish untiil 11 weeks later on September 19. Anything else I might know about the whole business is as a result of the folk song written in Guiteau’s voice. Was Garfield a good president? Beats me. I’m trying to think of where I first heard the song. It may have been on that old folk radio show on CKLN here in Toronto, years ago when it was hosted by Joe Lewis.  Mr. Lewis began hosting Folk Music and Folk Ways in 1966 and kept at it for over 30 years. I listened to it on Saturday aftenoons for many years and through that show I learned a lot about folk music. Through the same period I also listened to Ted O’Reilly’s fantastic jazz show that I think was called The Jazz Scene. Later, I had at least one version of Charles Guiteau on vinyl. I think it must have been on the Harry Smith anthology. That would have been the 1927 Kelly Harrell version. By the way, if you’re interested in American Folk Music and you don’t have the Harry Smith Anthology, do not pass go, get it immediately. Harry Smith was a very interesting character as well. Not only was he an ethnomusicologist and archivist, he was also an experimental film-maker of the first order.  He lived for years in the Chelsea Hotel in New York and finally died in his room. You can read a little about Harry Smith in Patty Smith’s wonderful book, Just Kids.

I checked the YouTube machine to see if I could find some performances of this murder ballad.

Here’s Lew Dite

Sometimes it seems that YouTube has everything. Here’s Kelly Harrell and the Virginia Stringband. Fantastic!

Here’s one more version with a much different flavour by Clay Riness.

November 21, 2012
comment 0

Delia

Delia was a gamblin’ girl. She only had eyes for rounders, card players who knew all the angles. Cutty or Cooney, depending on the version, loved poor Delia but she didn’t love him back. Bad news.

Here’s Martin Grosswendt…

Now Cutty’s going to be in jail until Delia comes back.

Let’s take it back to 1949 in Atlanta with Blind Willie McTell…

The song may have originated after an actual murder, of 15 year old Delia Green by Moses “Cooney” Houston.

I’m sure many listeners are familiar with this next one. This is Johnny Cash performing live the same arrangement recorded on the brilliant 1994 American Recordings…this one gives me the shivers

And one last version…here’s Bob Dylan from another recording I’m very fond of, World Gone Wrong.

I should mention that I have a cat named Delia. She’s over 20 years old now, tiny and frail but she still has a lot of spirit.

November 20, 2012
comments 4

The Murder Ballad

Those visitors who have been hanging out at 27th Street for a while know that from time to time the Daily Dose gets all thematic. I posted a long series of songs about drink and a longer series of songs about trains a while back. Now I have another little series up my sleeve. This is one is a little macabre though, so I’ve been reluctant to get it started. Murder ballads have been a significant part of the American songbook from early on. There exists every kind of murder ballad you want to think of, sung from every possible point of view. There are assassinations, crimes of passion, and there are passionate pleas that the listener not fall into the evil ways of the murderer. Macabre or not, I think it will be fun to listen to a bunch of these tunes.

Many of the murder ballads we know in North America can be traced back in some way or another to tunes from the “old country” somewhere in the UK or Europe. Sometimes the melody has stayed the same but the details of the crime have changed or the name of the victim. In some cases a particular tune has kept the same storyline more or less but the melody or treatment of the song changed from performer to performer. In other cases, as we’ll see today, the melody gets recycled along the way and becomes some other kind of song.

If you know some murder ballads you’d like me to post here, please leave a comment. I’ve started with a little list of them, just off the tip of my brain, and I’d appreciate the input. I think you might be surprised at how many well known murder ballads we can come up with together.

Let’s start things off with Pretty Polly. Here’s Mike Ginsberg

Pretty Polly has also been recorded as the Gosport Tragedy and the Cruel Ship’s Carpenter. Bob Dylan re-used the melody as Hollis Brown. Woody Guthrie, never one to waste a good melody either, adapted it for Pastures of Plenty. In the pop music world, people get all bent out of shape when a tune appears that has a melody strongly reminiscent of something recorded or performed by somebody else. But in folk music it’s no problem because we own those songs together and we give ourselves permission to borrow at will.  To digress for another moment, if Woody didn’t borrow the melody from Wabash Cannonball and turn it into Grand Coulee Dam, we never would have had one of my favourite verses in any genre of music – in the misty crystal glitter of the wide and windward spray, men have fought the pounding waters and met a watery grave….though she tore their boats to splinters, she gave men dreams to dream of the day the Coulee Dam would cross that wild and wasted stream.

Let’s get to another tune. Here’s Nina Simone performing Hollis Brown

Finally, let’s hear what happened once old Woody got hold of the tune. Here’s Ramblin’ Jack Elliott performing Pastures of Plenty.

November 17, 2012
comments 7

Chestnut Soup

Tuffy P found a recipe for chestnut soup and suggested we have it tonight for dinner. I’ve never made chestnut soup before, but that didn’t stop me from more or less ignoring the recipe and making it up as I went along (my usual approach). Here’s how I did it.

The recipe suggested that if I cut two slits in an X shape in each chestnut then put them in a pot with cold water, then brought the water to a boil, the shells and skins would peel off no problem. That plan didn’t work very well at all. Maybe if I kept them in the boiling water a little longer it would have been more successful. Alternatively, maybe if I roasted the chestnuts for a while, I would be able to get them prepped easier. Suffice it to say that it was a time consuming task to get the chestnuts cleaned up, but I got the job done.

OK let’s see, what other prep did I do? I had some dried Italian porcini so I dropped a small handful into a bowl of water to reconstitute. Then I chopped a red onion, a big carrot, some garlic, a zucchini and quite a few cremini mushrooms. I poured a little really good olive oil into a heavy bottom pot and heated it up. The rest is easy….

I added the onions to the pot first, added a little salt, and after a minute added the garlic and then the carrots, and after another couple minutes, the chestnuts and the rest of the veggies. I had planned to add some fennel seeds, but I couldn’t find them in the pantry so instead, I used a little dried basil, and also a tiny amount of dried hot chile flakes. I let it all cook together for a few more minutes, then added about 1.5 litres of stock. By this time, the porcinis were soft so I tossed them in too. Then I bound together some sprigs of thyme with kitchen twine and tossed it in, put the lid on and let it simmer.  I cooked it until the carrots were done, then used an immersion blender to puree the whole business.

We served the soup with some fresh chives chopped in and some insanely fresh pumpernickel we bought this afternoon. We added some fresh ground pepper at the table. This soup is astonishingly good.

November 17, 2012
comments 2

Basketeers

Tuffy P supports an organization called Basketeers each year by making up a big basket of good stuff to help out abused women in new beginnings. She delivered her basket this afternoon.

Tuffy puts a lot of care into preparing her basket each year, as do all of the individuals who participate in the program. Have a look at the roomful of baskets at the drop-off centre.