Mama Tain’t Long ‘Fore Day (Revisited)

Happy Monday, folks!  Of course it’s time for some blues again to get your day started right.  I had to think about a blues song that wouldn’t be too “dissonant” with Valentine’s Day, & I settled on “Mama Tain’t Long ‘Fore Day” because Eberle likes my take on it.  What better reason can there be than that?

“Mama Tain’t Long ‘Fore Day” as played by yours truly has appeared on Robert Frost’s Banjo before.  About a year ago, I did a performance video of this song using a cigar box resonator guitar.  I enjoyed the cigar box guitar, & it’s a really well-made & good sounding instrument (made by Big Daddy of Back Porch Mojo), but in the long run I found it limiting—I just couldn’t get used to only having four strings & really couldn’t get the sound I wanted.  My guitar style relies heavily on using the two bass strings for a foundation & I guess I was a bit lost without them.  But have no fear: the cigar box resonator guitar is still with us.  I passed it along to Eberle who is thinking up all sorts of fun & unusual uses for it!

Anyway, my earlier version of the song was in the key of D, but I think E really is a better match for my voice, so I’m playing the Gold Tone resonator guitar tuned to open D but capoed up to E.  At one time, open E was a fairly common tuning, but since it involves taking a few strings above standard pitch I’m leery of it both in terms of potential for string breakage & also strain on the guitar neck.  But then, caution has often been my undoing!

“Mama Tain’t Long ‘Fore Day” is by Blind Willie McTell, a great guitarist from Georgia who made close to 150 recordings between 1927 & 1956—the majority of these were made in the late 20s thru mid 30s.  McTell played a 12-string guitar & was one of the major exponents of what is called “Piedmont picking,” a form of fingerstyle playing that was prevalent along the East Coast.  He played some songs with a slide too, & “Mama Tain’t Long ‘Fore Day” was one of those.  In fact, this song comes from his very first recording session in October 1927.  I believe that McTell played this song in G.

Hope you enjoy my humble version!

“Moon Goin’ Down”

Happy Monday, folks!  Hope your weekend went swimmingly & that you return to the week full of renewed vim & vigor.  But if you need a little extra something to get you going, here’s the Monday Morning Blues for your enjoyment.

These days the Monday Morning Blues is an easy post for me because I’ve been recording a lot & have somewhere close to two dozen songs at my disposal, with more on the way.  In case you missed the earlier post about this, I’ll be happy to have at least one CD & quite probably two for sale at gigs this summer.  I don’t expect this to bring in anything more than mad money, but every little bit helps.

Today’s selection is by one of my favorite Delta blues musicians, Charlie Patton.  Patton was one of the first wave of recorded Delta blues players, & he waxed 57 songs at four sessions between 1929 & 1934, including a memorable 1930 session in Grafton, WI where Son House, Willie Brown & Louise Johnson were also present.  In fact, Patton maintained friendships with House & Brown, & the latter duetted with Patton on several of his records, including Patton’s recording of today’s song, “Moon  Goin' Down.” There’s an excellent concise online biography of Patton by Elijah Wald here.  I’m quite intrigued by Wald’s take on the old-time blues scene as evinced in this article & in his excellent book, Escaping the Delta, but for a different view, you can check out Robert Palmer’s seminal work, Deep Blues.

Obviously, my arrangement of “Moon Goin’ Down” is different than the original—for one thing, it’s not a duet!  Patton played the song in open G tuning, while I’m playing it on my Regal resonator in drop D tuning capoed up so that the actual key is E.  This tune has been in my repertoire for a while, & I always enjoy playing it.   

Hope you like it too!

"I Know You Rider"

When I first started the Monday Morning Blues series—at its inception, a series of video performances, not mp3s—the last thing I expected was to get a song request.  But sure enough, on Friday I received a message from the redoubtable Citizen K, a longtime, staunch follower of this blog, saying that he & Roy (of the wonderful blog Roy’s World) would like my take on the old blues song, “I Know You Rider.”  Citizen K. wrote about the song on his eponymous blog that day—which you can check out here.

I knew the song, & I’d casually considered it for my repertoire, but had never really sat down to figure out an arrangment of it.  Based on a comment Roy made, I decided to look up Hot Tuna’s version—which, I admit, I didn’t know, but was able to find (of course) on the interweb.  I’d known the Grateful Dead’s version since high school days, & more recently I’d become familiar with another version of similar vintage, namely a recording by Judy Henske.  This is available on the box set Big Judy put out by Rhino Records & produced by our friend Cheryl Pawelski.  Henske does a powerhouse version of the song that I like a lot. 

But I don’t have Judy Henske’s voice & I don’t have a bunch of folks singing harmony (plus the high lonesome sound is really not my strong suit!), so I had to come up with a solo arrangement that suited what I can do.  I actually tried a few different options: banjo; slide style guitar—but finally settled on playing it on guitar in standard tuning.  So this is the Regal resonator played straight up. 

The chord progression of “I Know You Rider” is quite interesting—very different from any standard blues. I’m playing it in the key of E, & the progression goes E/D/A/E for the two repeating lines, then G/D/G/D/E for the third line.  This bears no relationship to any other tune I know & it’s fun to play. 

So, thanks to Citizen K & Roy for the request—hope you all enjoy my version of “I Know You Rider.”

“Poor Lazarus”

Hope you’re ready for the Monday Morning Blues—yes, the new week is upon us already.  After a weekend off, I’m hoping to come back to Robert Frost’s Banjo rejuvanted & ready to go.

Today’s song is something a bit different—“Poor Lazarus” is sometimes described as a “spiritual,” but is more likely a “field song” or a work song that was sung by groups a capella in the midst of their daily tasks.  In fact, in 1959 Alan Lomax made a recording of the song by one James Carter & other prisoners at the Mississippi State Peniteniary; this recording was later used in the 2000 film, O Brother, Where Art Thou.  Various versions of the song have been covered by Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, the Carolina Chocolate Drops (an a capella version featuring Rhiannon Giddens) & others.

Given the title, you might expect “Poor Lazarus” to be Biblical, but the song doesn’t refer to either of the Gospel stories involving a character named Lazarus.  In fact, the story comes from Alabama:

Another "bad man" was an Alabama turpentine worker named Lazarus. According to the legends he worked and lived in the piney wood mountains of northern Alabama working in the turpentine mills. Some dispute over pay caused Lazarus to tear up the place and "walk the table," a practice of jumping upon the dinner table at the factory and walking it's length placing one's foot in every plate. He then broke into the commissary and stole the payroll. This would, of course, cause a riot, and for this action the "High Sheriff" was called in the arrest "Poor Lazarus." The sheriff sent out his deputies and they cornered Lazarus "up between two mountains" where they gunned him down. They hauled his remains back to the commissary where they laid him out and sent for his family but he apparently died before they could get there.

from the page James "Sparky" Rucker: BULLIES, BADMEN, and the BLUES

My version is accompanied by guitar—my Regal resonator tuned to Drop D but capoed at the third fret to make the sounding key F—however, as I typically do with the drop D tuning, I tend to play the D chord as neither fully major nor minor (but definitely shaded toward the latter).  There’s also a quick jump to the A chord (again, neither major nor minor).  I had a lot of fun doing this one, but it’s a workout in some ways.  Hope you like it!

“Black Snake Moan”

It’s the Monday Morning Blues!  & yes, if you have any knowledge of US roots music, you’re saying, “What gives?  This is supposed to be Jimmie Rodgers month, & he sure didn’t sing 'Black Snake Moan.'"

& you’d be right, of course.  But I claim the bloggers’ prerogative to change horses in midstream, as it were.  Fact is, while being a bit on the housebound side due to the weather conditions here in Idaho, I’ve tried to put the time to good use by concentrating on that recording project I’ve been putting off for ages.  In a way, the Monday Morning Blues songs for November & December really jump-started the project, even tho I’ll probably be using only a few of those tunes at most on the finished CD.  But the fact is, even in a full-on Idaho January, I have only so much time to record, & the Jimmie Rodgers’ songs I’d been thinking of really didn’t fit with the overall plan—I probably will use “T.B. Blues,” however.  So far, I have at least a dozen songs that I’m satisfied with in terms of performance.  I’m still working on mastering the tracks.

Today’s selection, “Black Snake Moan” is a tune by Blind Lemon Jefferson, one of the biggest blues stars of the 1920s.  He came up as a street singer, but became quite popular on the strength of 79 singles recorded between 1925 & 1929 (the year he died, aged only 35 or 36).  It’s recorded using my Goldtone resonator tuned in open D (of course) & capoed up to the key of E; no slide—just fingerstyle.

Hope you enjoy it!

“Blue Yodel #5"

A happy Monday to you.  The Monday Morning Blues is a trifle late this morning thanks to technical glitches, but as is so often the case, a combination of re-booting & dogged persistance have paid off.  I chalk much of this up to January, which always seems to be a cursed month!

Anyway, our month of Jimmie Rodgers covers continues with my take on “Blue Yodel #5.”  As Rodgers fans know, the Singing Brakeman composed & recorded 13 “Blue Yodels, starting with the song also known as “T for Texas,” which Rodgers recorded in 1927 & which became a huge hit upon its release.  The final song was titled, appropriately enough, “Jimmie Rodgers Last Blue Yodel”; this was recorded in May 1933 just over a week before his death & was released posthumously.

Rodgers was a great singer & songwriter, & his yodeling ability was top-notch.  Bob Dylan has described Rodgers’ yodeling as follows: “that famous blue yodel that defies the rational and conjecturing mind.”  Rodgers himself described his yodeling in more mundane terms as “curlicues I can make with my throat.”  Tho he used this ability in a great number of his songs, the “Blue Yodel” series is a remarkable set of songs & one that had profound effects on the development of country music & probably had influence into other music as well—just as Rodgers himself learned from the African-American stylings we call the blues, there’s every reason to believe that Rodgers’ songs had an impact on contemporary blues performers.  His songs were major hits, & it’s known that blues artists such as Muddy Waters & Howlin’ Wolf admired his work.  I’ve also seen conjecture that Rodgers may have influenced Tommy Johnson’s singing.

The yodeling is a stretch for me, but I had fun with it.  I’m playing my Gold Tone resonator tuned to an open D but capoed so that the actual key is E.  I originally intended to play this one slide style, but at the last minute I chose to go with straight fingerpicking.  Hope you enjoy it!

“T.B. Blues”

Monday is upon us once again, & after the holiday weekend, there may indeed be a few of you with the Monday Morning Blues—so I’m hear to put a musical spin on things.

I was really pleased with how the Dylan songs went last month, & was gratified by the response.  As a result, I thought I’d continue along these lines with cover versions of a new feature artist this month.  After a fair amount of deliberation, I decided to turn my attention to Jimmie Rodgers, “the Singing Brakeman,” also called “the Father of Country Music.”

Jimmie Rodgers was a phenomenon, a hit maker in his day & someone with an enduring legacy—a member of both the Country Music & Rock & Roll halls of fame—a musician who was comfortable in diverse settings & with diverse material.  Rodgers recorded with jazz greats like Louis Armstrong & Lil Hardin, yet he also laid a lot of the musical foundation for the “country sound.”  His admirers have included Merle Haggard, Gene Autry, Bob Dylan & both Howlin’ Wolf & Muddy Waters.  It may seem odd to think of hardcore bluesmen admiring Rodgers, but one thing I’d like to underline in my versions—Rodgers' blues roots ran deep.  While he ventured into sentimental material & pop stylings, Rodgers wrote a lot of songs based on good old-fashioned 12-bar blues, complete with “floating lyrics” taken from the blues tradition.

“T.B. Blues” was an autobiographical song for Jimmie Rodgers—he contracted tuberculosis at age 27 in 1924.  For a few years, he went back & forth between railroad work & entertaining—he really was a brakeman—but in 1927 his illness had progressed to a point that he could no longer work on the railroad & he became a full-time musician.  From then until his death in 1933, he made 110 recordings in the course of a brief but successful career.

Hope you enjoy my take on “T.B. Blues.”  It’s recorded slide style on my Gold Tone dobro—tuned as always to open D.   

"I Shall Be Released"

Happy Monday, folks.  Today is the wrap up of our Bob Dylan month here on Robert Frost’s Banjo, & I saved my biggest stretch for the last.

The song I’m covering, “I Shall Be Released,” dates from Dylan’s Basement Tapes days, & the original version to reach the public was not by Dylan at all, but the great cover version by The Band, with vocal by Richard Manuel from their 1968 album, Music from Big Pink.  Of course, one hesitates to mention Manuel’s cover in a post featuring my own very humble version!  Dylan himself released the song on his 1971 Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. II; as Dylan fans know, despite the title this double album contained some previously unreleased material, including this song.

I played the song in G clawhammer style on my old Windsor banjo—the arrangement is extemporaneous & basic.  Hope you enjoy it!

From a Buick 6

A happy Monday to you all.  The Monday Morning Blues continues today with the third selection in our Bob Dylan December.

Today, I’m posting a cover of “From a Buick 6,” again from the great Highway 61 Revisited album.  This song certainly has appeal to a blues musician—I think it’s one of Dylan’s most succesful transformations of the old time blues feel into an updated lyrical presentation & (in his case) electric sound.  Because I wanted a bit of that raw sound in my version, I used the Regal resonator guitar—the metal body can be easily coaxed into a natural distortion that seems just the ticket for this song.  The guitar is tuned to drop D—for those non-guitarists out there, that means the lowest sounding string is tuned down to a D rather than an E as in in standard tuning.  The guitar is capoed, so the actual key is Eb.

Please check in on Friday, Christmas Eve, for a seasonal tune from the Alice in Wonder Band archives.  & next Monday will wrap up our Dylan feature!

Hope you enjoy it!

“Visions of Johanna”

It’s time for another Musical Monday on Robert Frost’s Banjo, & that means another Bob Dylan cover—I’m featuring Dylan songs this month on Monday mornings.

I’ve always had the highest admiration for Dylan’s 1966 release, Blonde on Blonde.  Musically & lyrically, it’s a high achievement, & has been justifiably praised as one of the best rock albums ever released.  Dylan himself likes the album—according to journalist Jules Siegel, who was present when Dylan first listened to the initial pressing, Dylan exclaimed, "Now that is religious music! That is religious carnival music. I just got that real old-time religious carnival sound there, didn't I?" 

Obviously, Blonde on Blonde, like its precursor, Highway 61 Revisited, is of great interest to anyone who likes blues music, since Dylan performed a masterful transformation of the blues in the music on both albums.  But today’s song is one of the least blues-based numbers on Blonde on Blonde.  Interestingly, Dylan proclaimed it his favorite song on the album.  I’ve always loved “Visions of Johanna.”  There’s something stark & haunted & true about the song, even when the lyrics occasionally seem mean-spirited, as in parts of the “museum” verse.

I’m playing slide style on my Gold Tone dobro, tuned as always to an open D chord; I did capo this one, so the actual key is Eb.  Hope you enjoy it!

Highway 61 Revisited

Happy Wednesday!  Given that you’ve all made it to mid-week, you probably don’t want to return to Monday, do you?  But that’s just what we’re doing here today, as we have the Wednesday edition of the Monday Morning Blues!

I had intended for my musical outings this month to be quite different.  In the past I used to do some chord solos on the uke, both the tenor & the baritone. A “chord solo” for those who don’t know is a way of playing the song’s melody using chords, so there’s also harmony underneath the melodic line.  But things have been crazy at so many levels here at Robert Frost’s Banjo central, & when I sat down to record on Sunday, I found that my uke chops are really rusty.  Putting together the series I planned would have required extra practice time I just don’t have.

So, back to the guitar.  Since I’ve been on a performance sabbatical the last couple of months I’ve experimented with taking my music in some different directions (as witness the selections in November).  One direction is the music of Bob Dylan, & I’ll be featuring his songs on the Monday Morning Blues the rest of the month.

The song “Highway 61 Revisited" comes from from Dylan’s 1965 album of the same name—& of course, the “Highway 61” of the title is the “Blues Highway”—U.S. 61 that runs from New Orleans, Louisiana up thru the Mississippi Delta region, eventually coming to an end in Wyoming, Minnesota.   Dylan said of the Highway 61 Revisited album:

“I'm not gonna be able to make a record better than that one... Highway 61 is just too good. There's a lot of stuff on there that I would listen to."
(taken from Wikipedia)

Obviously, Bob Dylan songs aren’t going to be “seasonal,” but I suspect a fair number of people would like a break from the ubiquitous holiday soundtrack!  Hope you enjoy the song.

“Gun Street Girl”

Happy Monday!  I’m back with some Monday Morning Blues, tho using the word “blues” for today’s song is a bit of a stretch.  It’s Tom Waits’ great song “Gun Street Girl” from his amazing Rain Dogs album—for my money, definitely a “desert island” selection.

If by chance you haven’t heard the original—& for that matter, the entire Rain Dogs album—you really need to do so.  Waits’ whiskey-&-cigarettes-at-4:00 a.m. voice is backed by banjo & some very cool percussion.  Of course, to say that a Waits’ song has cool percussion is stating the obvious, especially on practically all of his work from the 80s & 90s.  But since the arrangement of “Gun Street Girl” is so spare, the percussion becomes a major voice on the song, even by Waits’ standards.

For those who are interested in musical minutiae: as was the case with last week’s song, “Country Blues,” I was tempted to record this using the banjo as backing.  I tried it in the standard G tuning, playing what amounted to a D “power chord” alternating with a D suspended chord, but the key of D didn’t seem to mesh with my voice.  I re-tuned the banjo to some odd tunings in the key of F, & that didn’t seem to work either, tho the banjo part sounded weird in all the best senses of the word—there were just too many dissonances in any tuning I tried.  So I decided to vocalize this in F, but using the Regal resonator guitar in drop D tuning, with a capo on fret 3.  I love the drop D tuning for modal songs.

Next month Mondays will be a bit different—between Hank Williams, Dock Boggs & Tom Waits, these last few weeks have been pretty dire!  No Christmas tunes, but something much more light-hearted—yours truly will be dusting off the ukuleles to play you some old standards—instrumentals all!  & yes, there will be an Alice of Wonder Band song of the month on the Monday prior to Christmas—& that one will be seasonal.


If you'd like some more music—& poetry too—please check out the first installment of Music Theory for Poets on The Spring Ghazals blog.

In the meantime, hope you enjoy my take on “Gun Street Girl.”

"Country Blues"

A happy Monday morning to you from wintery Idaho.  It’s another morning for the Monday Morning Blues around here, & this morning’s selection is one of the eeriest & spookiest songs I know: “Country Blues” by (or at least closely associated with) Dock Boggs.

For those of you who don’t know, Dock Boggs was a coal miner who also happened to be an extraodrinary banjo player.  In fact, he was successful enough with his music in the late 1920s to record a number of sides for Brunswick Records.  Unfortunately, the Great Depression hit the recording industry hard, & musicians in southern rural areas weren’t recorded as much in the 1930s as in the previous decade.  Unable to make a living with his banjo, Boggs pawned the instrument.

However, when Harry Smith issued his landmark compilation, The Anthology of American Folk Music, two of Boggs’ songs were included: “Country Blues” & “Sugar Baby.”  Both are extremely dark songs played in different modal tunings that Boggs favored for such old-time fare.  As was the case with several of the musicians featured on the Anthology, Boggs was sought out, “discovered,” & found himself in a whole new musical career from the early 60s until his death in 1971.  Mike Seeger was particularly instrumental in getting Boggs his new start.

It must be said that “Country Blues” is a real banjo song—not only did Boggs play it this way, but Doc Watson also did a wonderful cover version in a somewhat different banjo-playing style.  Also, to my mind a guitar can't capture the modal feel the way a banjo can.  That being the case, why am I playing it here on a resonator guitar?

First, I’m not familiar with the odd tuning that Boggs used when recording this song (f#CGAD), but the instrument clearly has to be in some form of modal tuning.  The modal tuning I’m most familiar with on the banjo is the so-called “Sawmill tuning,” & I simply couldn’t come up with anything using that tuning, or even using the common G-major tuning while playing in D minor (technically, more like a D suspended chord), that seemed to work.  Also, fact is: I’m a better guitar player than a banjo player.

So this is played on my Regal resonator guitar tuned to double drop D—in other words, both the highest & the lowest strings are D, rather than E as in standard tuning.  I recorded the song both in D & then in Eb by using a capo on the first fret.  I actually liked the D version better, but there seems to be a glitch in the recording itself, so I’m sharing the Eb take with you today.

Hope you enjoy it.

“Lost Highway”

Happy Monday, folks—& once again a Musical Monday on Robert Frost’s Banjo.  If you saw yesterday’s coming attractions, you know that I really wasn’t sure what I was going to record for today’s song; earlier I’d talked about posting just instrumentals for awhile, but I knew I felt like singing a song.

On the other hand, it’s something different: a song associated with Hank Williams—tho actually written by the great, if not as well-known Leon Payne—played slide style on my Regal resonator guitar.  Sort of country meets blues, which seems eminently appropriate to this tune.  For those who are curious about such things, the Regal is tuned to open G, & I’m playing with a brass slide (as usual).   I'll also probably play around with doing this one on the banjo.

I’m trying to shake things up a bit on the music front.  Hope you enjoy this one!
Finally: there's a great review of my book of poetry, The Spring Ghazals, up at the Tangerine Tree Press blog.  Please check it out—this is the link.

pic shows Highway 395 south in Oregon

“Spanish Flang Dang”

Hi folks, & welcome back to the Monday Morning Blues.  Actually, today’s selection isn’t a blues piece by any standard definition of the genre, but it certainly is a relation.


The tune “Spanish Flang Dang” or “Spanish Fandango” was a popular instrumental piece in the late 19th & early 20th century.  As I understand it, the piece derived originally from a guitar instruction book in which it was given as an example of playing in “Spanish” tuning.  For those of you who aren’t up on the complexities of guitar tunings, “Spanish tuning” is another term of open G tuning, which simply means that the guitar is tuned so that all six strings, if played unfretted, sound a G major chord.  The standard tuning for a guitar (from bass string to treble string) is EADGBE, while the open G tuning lowers a few notes as follows: DGDGBD.  


Many old time pickers had a version of “Spanish Fandango” in their repertoire, but my arrangement is based on Elizabeth Cotten’s.  Cotten’s version of the tune (“Spanish Flang Dang” as she called it) is unusual in that it’s a waltz—this tune typically was played in 4/4 time.  


Now Cotten played both guitar & banjo, but she played this song on the guitar—in fact most people do, & I myself have played it on the guitar quite a lot—after all, it got its start as a piece written for guitar.  Why did I choose to record it on the banjo?


As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been thinking about adding some instrumental pieces to my performance repertoire, & when this idea first occurred to me, I immediately started making a list of instrumentals I already knew, as they’d be the easiest to get into performance shape.  “Spanish Flang Dang” was high on the list.  But as I sat in the music room the first day of practicing these pieces, I realized the guitar I liked to play in open G tuning needed to be re-strung & I wasn’t in the mood for that.  & I didn’t feel like re-tuning another.


Laziness was the mother-of-invention, because there was a banjo in a stand right next to me.  Those of you who know the banjo know that open G is the most common banjo tuning—so here was an instrument in open G right at my fingertips.  True, it only had 5 strings instead of 6, & one of the 5 is a high-pitched drone—but why not try it?


I did, & it was great fun to play.  I liked the way it sounded; Eberle did too.  So today’s recording is yours truly playing Spanish Flang Dang on our 1930s Windsor banjo.  Hope you enjoy it!

"Cool Drink of Water"

Happy Monday everybody.  As you’re reading this, I’ll be traveling in the Golden State on my way to see the Carolina Chocolate Drops perform at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico.  Wish you were here, as the post card says!

So it will certainly be a musical Monday for me, at least in the evening, & I’m hoping to make it a musical Monday for you as well with another edition of the Monday Morning Blues.  Today’s song is a true classic—a blues by the great Tommy Johnson, one of the real Delta blues’ legends.  Although Johnson only left a recorded legacy of 16 songs from two recording sessions, several of these are standards: “Big Road Blues,” “Canned Heat Blues,” “Maggie Campbell,” & “Cool Drink of Water” are all songs any acoustic blues musician should know.

Johnson’s version of “Cool Drink of Water” is characterized by his trademark singing range, which could go from a baritone growl to a haunting falsetto—similar in some respects to the “high lonesome” sound we associate more with “mountain music.”  Now I can do a baritone growl, but I can’t reproduce those high tones—however, I’m satisfied overall with the way I perform this song.

I play “Cool Drink of Water” fingerstyle on my Gold Tone roundneck dobro (see pic)—no slide.  The guitar is tuned to an open D (I believe Johnson recorded this in E & in standard tuning).  As far as the recording goes, I’m experimenting with a one mic set-up.  Although I’ve always recorded “live” (i.e., I don’t record either the vocal or the guitar as discreet takes), I’d mic the voice & guitar separately, the way I do in live performance.  Yesterday I recorded a few songs with our Shure KSM 27 condensor mic, which picks up both the voice & the guitar, & overall I was pleased with the results.  It does, I think, bring more immediacy to the recording, tho it also limits the adjustments in balance you can make when processing the sound.

Hope you enjoy it, & have a great Monday.

“St James Infirmary”

Happy Monday folks!  Due to technical difficulties I’m not bringing you the Monday Morning Blues song I’d intended—I’m way behind on my amorphous & self-determined recording schedule, & yesterday afternoon’s prime recording time found me with nary a microphone stand in sight—they were all still in the car from Saturday’s gig & the car was not near at hand. 

Fortunately, I’m able to substitute a song that I recorded last year in place of the offering I had in mind for today.  This is my take on the great song “St James Infirmary.”  It’s a song many of you will know as it’s been recorded by countless artists—everyone from Dave Van Ronk to Bobby Bland, from Danny Barker to Janis Joplin, from King Oliver to the White Stripes. 

According to all the sources I’ve ever seen, the song dates back to a British folk tune called “The Unfortunate Rake”—interestingly, “The Unfortunate Rake” is also an ancestor of the old western song, “The Streets of Laredo.”  You will notice some similarity in the lyrics tho musically they are very different tunes both in terms of melody & harmony.  The song is sometimes credited to “Joe Primrose,” which was a pseudonym of Irving Mills.  However, there’s no evidence the song was “composed” by Mills any more than “Wabash Cannonball” was actually written by A.P. Carter.  For an industry that seems to enforce copyright so stringently, the music business has played pretty fast & loose with the rules when this was in its own interests.

Were I to record this song again, I’d probably do a few things differently, but all in all I can stand by the take.  It's funny—I really don't get thrown by little glitches in live performance, but I sometimes think I'm too much of a perfectionist for my own recording good; I rarely come up with a recording that totally satisfies me.  I recently read on Ami Worthen's Ukulele Rockstar blog about thinking of each recording as a snapshot of one moment in time, & I'm thinking this is good advice.

By the way: Kat Mortensen will be this week's featured writer on the Writers Talk interview series.  I know many of you are familiar with Kat's work & won't want to miss this.  Kat's interview will be posting Thursday morning (US Mountain Time!)

& for now: hope you enjoy "St James Infirmary."

“Bird’s Nest Bound”

What if you were so blue you still had the Monday Morning Blues on Tuesday?  Well, figuratively speaking, that’s what’s happening here.  The Monday Morning Blues was displaced by one day by yesterday’s blog anniversary.  But to my mind, the old-time blues are good on any day of the week.

Today’s song is by Charley Patton, & it’s been passed down to us from a recording he made in 1930 in Grafton, Wisconsin for Paramount Records.  He’s accompanied by Willie Brown on second guitar on the recording.  Although he’s not well known outside of blues aficionado circles, Willie Brown was one of the great Delta blues guitarists.  Once Son House (who was also at the same 1930 Grafton recording session) was asked about Willie Brown’s & Charley Patton’s comparative guitar-playing abilities:

House: Well, now Charley…I thought Charley was the best player because I met Charley first, but I had never heard Will.
Q: When you first heard them together who was better?
House: Then I knowed it was Willie.
Q: Do you suppose that Charley knew he couldn’t play like willie?
House: Yeh, yeh, Charley knew it. Yeh, he knowed it, ‘cause a lot of times we’d be together & Bill, he called him Bill…Bill you c’mon play that piece….Charley could beat him singing, but those beats & things, Willie could beat him on that & he knowed it

from Oak Anthology of Blues Guitar: Delta Blues by Stefan Grossman

Patton & Brown played the song in open G, which is also called “Spanish tuning.”  This name comes from the song “Spanish Fandango,” a tune that many country blues guitar players had in their repertoire that was invariably played in open G tuning; for those of you who don’t know, “open G” means that the 6 guitar strings are tuned so that if you play them without fretting any strings, a G major chord is played.  In standard tuning, the open strings don’t produce a common major chord.  My version is done in drop D tuning, (the bass string tuned down to D rather than E) & there’s only one of me, so the arrangement is quite different.  I’m playing my Regal resonator guitar.

Hope you enjoy it & that it drives your Tuesday blues away!

"Levee Camp Moan"

Happy Monday!  It’s time for the Monday Morning Blues again, but I’m doing things a bit differently from here on out—the tune is embedded in mp3 form, not as a video.  Why this change?

A few reasons.  First, I’ve been procrastinating recording a cd, & that’s something I really should get done because it will add at least a little more "mad money" from gigs.  While I have a high tolerance, & indeed great enjoyment, for playing & performing, I tend to have a low tolerance for the recording process—while I generally like having done it, I don’t so much like doing it, & it’s always a bit of a problem with anything creative when result is valued over process.

So I’m hoping that the shift to mp3s on the Monday Morning Blues will be a motivating force.  In addition, tho, I can get much better quality recordings with our digital workstation than I can with our webcam; & on top of the marginal sound quality on the webcam mic, there’s the problem that the audio & the video are a split second out of sync, which can be a bit “crazy-making” to anyone trying to watch.  & at this point, anyone who’s followed the blog for any length of time knows what I look like when I play guitar & sing!

Today’s song is by the great Son House, one of the real masters of the delta blues.  Actually, House did two versions of “Levee Camp Moan” that are quite different—this one is based on the first version I heard, on his Delta Blues & Spirituals (Capitol); there’s also an older take of a similar version that I believe was recorded prior to son House’s “re-discovery” in the 1960s.  House was certainly important to the history of blues as a mentor to Robert Johnson, but he was a first-rate blues musician in his own right, with a powerful slide style & vocals of amazing power.  In addition to serving as a mentor to  Robert Johnson, House also mentored Howlin’ Wolf & Muddy Waters, & was close to his Charlie Patton & Willie Brown.

The tune was recorded on our Boss digital workstation.  It’s a “live recording”—no overdubs, vocal & guitar performed together.  There was some minor tweaking with EQ & reverb, but all fairly minor stuff.  I record using an AKG 880D mic for the vocals & a Shure Beta 57a mic for the guitar—same set-up as when I play live.  The guitar is my Gold Tone resonator, in open D tuning—&to any purists: yes, I know Son House recorded this in open G.

Hope you enjoy it!

“Hobo Blues”

Do you have a case of the Monday Morning Blues?  If so, you're in the right place! 

“Hobo Blues” is a classic John Lee Hooker song, first issued in 1948.  For those of you who don’t know, Hooker was born near Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1917, right in the midst of the Delta blues country.  Although he is best known for his electric, riff-based songs (which have been covered by everyone from the Animals to ZZ Top), his material had roots in what music critic Robert Palmer termed “the Deep Blues”—music typically associated with artists like Charlie Patton, Son House & Robert Johnson (to name the best known practicioners).  It wasn’t uncommon for this type of music to use a drone-like background, with the 3-chord setting that now typifies the blues being at most implied.  Actually, Hooker wasn’t the only one to bring this type of roots music into the electric blues arena; Muddy Waters & Howlin’ Wolf (to name just two) also had big hits that—in musical terms—never stray far from the “I chord”—you might think of “Catfish Blues” & “Smokestack Lightnin” (again, to stick to two well known examples). 

“Hobo Blues” is just such a song—in my version, it sticks to a D chord (more minor than major), & has two riffs—one copied from Hooker & the other my own invention.  John Lee Hooker played this in open G (guitar’s unfretted strings tuned to a G major chord), while I’m playing in drop D tuning (guitar in standard tuning except the lowest sounding string is tuned from E down to D), so there are significant variations in the arrangements.

Hope you enjoy it.