Click on the title to link to a presentation of the song listed in the headline.
The year 2009 has turned into something a year of review of the folk revival of the 1960s. In November I featured a posting of many of the episodes (via “YouTube”) of Pete Seeger’s classic folk television show from the 1960s, “Rainbow Quest”. I propose to do the same here to end out the year with as many of the selections from Harry Smith’s seminal “Anthology Of American Folk Music,” in one place, as I was able to find material for, either lyrics or "YouTube" performances (not necessarily by the original performer). This is down at the roots, for sure.
4 “The Drunkard’s Special” by Coley Jones
Coley Jones’s World
One of the interesting aspect of Harry Smith’s Anthology is that it didn’t classified the perfomers in terms of race or ethnic groups. Before that, the recording industry always made really distinct catalogues, each one destinate to a particular ethnic group. You had “race records” for african-americans, “hilbilly” for whites of the southern mountains, italian, jewish, irish catalogues, etc… In their efforts to sell records to every american citizen, they documented for posterity really diverse ethnic musical traditions that were sometimes dying out in their own countries (Ireland,for example, where the revival of irish music was strongly influenced by the recordings of irish musicians in the 20’s and 30’s in America).
So, in 1952, when the Anthology came out, there was no information in the handbook to tell the listener if the musicians were black or white (apart from the cajun tracks, Harry Smith didn’t include any other ethnic groups). And then, for many years, as Smith pointed out, people were conviced that Mississippi John Hurt was a hillbilly! I admit myself that it took me a while to realise that Coley Jones was a black musician… When we look at his repertoire, we can see he was more of a songster than a bluesman. He performed songs and tunes from the ministrel show tradition, and his band, the Dallas String Band, played many popular tunes of the day.
-You can go here for more informations about Coley Jones and The Dallas String Band.
-I’ve compiled all the tracks that i have by Coley Jones, his duets with Bobbie Cadillac and the superb ones by the Dallas String Band.
COLEY JONES
1.Drunkard’s Special
2.Army man in no man’s land
3.Travelling Man
4.Drunkard’s Special
5.The Elder is my man
I couldn't find where you linked to the original posting that this was taken from, but for the benefit of anybody else that reads it, make sure to check out the rest of the stuff from the excellent Harry Smith blog called "The Old, Weird America."
ReplyDeleteHere's the original post, which includes some downloadable music and such:
http://oldweirdamerica.wordpress.com/category/4-drunkards-special-by-coley-jones/