vrijdag 29 november 2013

Old Chisholm Trail (1928) / Western Cowboy (1933) / When I Was a Cowboy / Out on the Western Plain / Sporting Cowboy (1927)


In July, 1933, Alan Lomax and his father John Lomax visited the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. John Lomax, as a representative of the Library of Congress in Washington, was searching for folksongs, but there seemed to be little in the way of singing at Angola, that is until a warder brought Leadbelly to their attention. Playing a heavy 12-string guitar and singing in a deep, rumbling manner, Leadbelly began with a version of the old cowboy song The Old Chisholm Trail, which he called Western Cowboy (AAFS # 119-B-1)
Leadbelly's version of "Western Cowboy" was recorded by the Lomaxes on July 16, 1933. It's not a typical cowboy song, but it shows how an imaginative blues singer can take a fragment of a song and build it into a powerful story.
Leadbelly recorded this song at least five times and each version varied in content as well as title. It shows Leadbelly's love of Western Music.

Listen here to the 36 seconds version of  Leadbelly's first ever recorded song from 1933 as part of a medley:




As I just said Leadbelly's song " Western Cowboy" was derived from "The Old Chisholm Trail".
Especially the "Come a ti-yi-yippee, yipee yay, yippee yay" part.

"The Old Chisholm Trail" (named after the famous Chisholm cattle trail ) is a cowboy song that dates back to the 1870s, when it was among the most popular songs sung by cowboys during that era. Based on an English lyrical song that dates back to 1640, "The Old Chisholm Trail" was modified by the cowboy idiom. It has been recorded by the world's most popular Western singers, including Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, cisco Houston, Peter LaFarge, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Bing Crosby, Randy Travis, and Michael Martin Murphey and Roger McGuinn (see (Roger McGuinn's Folk Den)

The oldest version seems to be recorded on March 22, 1928 by Harry "Mac" McClintock (1928)



Listen here:




Leadbelly's song "Western Cowboy" is also partly derived from "The Sporting Cowboy", which starts with the line "When I Was a Cowboy".

Below a version of Watts and Wilson's "The Sporting Cowboy"
Watts and Wilson (Wilmer Watts and Frank Wilson),
Recorded c. April, 1927 in Chicago, IL.
Released on Paramount 3006



Also released on Broadway 8112 (as by Weaver and Wiggins)



Listen here:




As I said above Leadbelly recorded "Western Cowboy" at least five times

In 1934 Leadbelly recorded another version of "Western Cowboy".
Recorded ca. July 1, 1934 in Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, Louisiana for the Library of Congress (#122-B)

Listen here:



In 1943 Leadbelly recorded another version: "Cow Cow Yicky Yicky Yea / Out on the Western Plains"
Recorded ca. October 1943 in New York City.
Released on Disc 3002 (as part of the 3-disc album "Negro Folksongs sung by Lead Belly".



Listen here:



And in 1944 Leadbelly recorded another version : "When the Boys Were On the Western Plain" (later retitled as "Western Plain (When I Was a Cowboy)")
Recorded February 17, 1944 in New York City


Listen here:



Leadbelly's "When I Was a Cowboy" was also contained in John A. Lomax's book "American Ballads and Folk Songs" (1934)




"The Old Chizzum Trail" was also contained in Lomax's "American Ballads and Folk Songs" (1934), where it was right behind Leadbelly's "When I was a Cowboy"



But already in 1910 "The Old Chisholm Trail" was contained in John Lomax's book "Cowboy Songs and other Frontier Ballads"







Woody Guthrie used Leadbelly's arrangement for his song "Jesse James".
Recorded April 25, 1944
Moses Asch planned to release this Woody Guthrie song on an anthology of cowboy songs, but it was not released at the time. It was finally released in 1991


And in 1997



Listen here:





In 1944 Woody Guthrie also recorded a version of "Chisholm Trail" 
Recorded April 19, 1944
First released in 1964 on the album "Hard Travelin" (Disc D-110)



Listen here:




Leadbelly's version was also covered by:

(c) Ian & Sylvia 1966 (as "When I Was a Cowboy")



Listen here:






(c) John Denver 1966 (as "When I Was a Cowboy")


Listen here:





(c) Jim Kweskin Jug Band  (1967)  (as "When I Was a Cowboy")          

Maria Moldonado (better known as Maria Muldaur) sings a beautiful version on Jim Kweskins album Garden of Joy (Reprise label RS6266)


Listen here:




(c) The Sllednats (= Standells) 1967  (as "When I Was a Cowboy")


Listen here:




(c) Harpers Bizarre 1968  (as "When I Was a Cowboy")



Listen here:




(c) Hearts and Flowers (1968)  (as "When I was a Cowboy")
On album "Of Horses, Kids, and Forgotten Women"




Listen here:




(c) Rory Gallagher 1975 (as "Out On The Western Plain")


Listen here:




(c) Peter Rowan 1978 (as "When I Was a Cowboy")






(c) Odetta (2001) (as "When I Was a Cowboy")


Listen here:




(c) Van Morrison  (as "Western Plain")
Recorded in the Caledonia Studio in Fairfax, California in 1975
Released in 1998 on the album "The Philosopher's Stone"


Listen here:




(c) Alvin Youngblood Hart 1996 (as ("When I Was a Cowboy (Westen Plains)"
Released on album "Big Mama's Door")



Listen here:





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zaterdag 23 november 2013

Beautiful Star of Bethlehem (1940)


"Beautiful Star of Bethlehem" was written in 1938 by a Tennessee dairy farmer, R. Fisher Boyce and was first published in 1940 by the Vaughan Company. The song was printed in the company's song-book, "Beautiful Praise".

One year later "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem" was printed as song #1 in the 1941 book "Singing Star", also published by James D. Vaughan.


Look inside this book:





As we can see on the sheet above, Adger M. Pace is also mentioned as co-composer of the song.
My guess is, Pace was responsible for the arrangement of the song before it got published.


In the 1960's on several gospelalbums "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem" was credited to A.L. Phipps.
Most likely Arthur Leroy Phipps made a new arrangement of  "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem", which was probably introduced on a radio-show in the early 1960's. The Phipps Family recorded a version in 1966 on the album "Christmas with the Phipps Family" (SEE FURTHER ON)




Beautiful Star of Bethlehem

Few people today realize the popular Christmas song "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem" was written by the late R. Fisher Boyce in a Middle Tennessee milk barn in the early part of the 20th century. It would go on to become a seasonal standard performed by a variety of artists, and it would eventually be sung in the White House by The Judds during a nationally televised Bob Hope Christmas special.

Boyce was born in the tiny community of Link, located in southern Rutherford County, in November 1887. The third of six children, Boyce loved music and was singing solo and in quartets by the early 1900s. In the spring of 1910, he married Cora Carlton from the Rockvale community. They would become the parents of 11 children, five of whom lived to be adults. Only one daughter, Willie Ruth Eads, remains alive. Eads remembers singing as a great source of entertainment for their family.

"The neighbors would come in, and we'd all gather around our family piano," Boyce's daughter said. "My sister Nanny Lou (Taylor) would play, and we would sing way into the night."

In 1911, the young couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary and saw Boyce's song "Safe in His Love" published by the A.J. Showalter Company, one of the early publishers of shape note hymnals. As did many others from across the Southeast, Boyce later traveled to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, to attend one of the annual music normal schools conducted by the James D. Vaughan Publishing Company, which was founded around 1900. Vaughan was another major publisher of shape note hymnals.

After completing his studies, Boyce went on to teach shape note "singing schools" through-out the area. Rather than using standard music notation, this system assigned a tone on the musical scale to each of the distinctive geometrically shaped note heads. (See Darlyne Kent's article Old-Time Music Square Music in November's Old-Time Times.)

In 1940, the Vaughan Company published Boyce's song "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem." The song was printed in the company's song-book, "Beautiful Praise". Later, the song would be republished in Vaughan's Favorite Radio Songs.
Dr. Charles Wolfe, a Middle Tennessee State University English professor and nationally recognized authority on the origins of traditional country and gospel music, said, Vaughan,s Favorite Radio Songs would be like a collection of greatest hits today. By the 1940s, radio was an important part of the American landscape and reached a vast audience. Vaughan salesmen would pitch the songs in this book to radio stations and quartets who performed on the stations in an effort to broaden their exposure.

Boyce wrote Beautiful Star of Bethlehem while the family was living on a dairy farm in the Plainview community, about two or three miles from what is now the Interstate 24 Buchanan Road Exit. The songwriter's son, the late Franklin Boyce, recalled in a 1996 interview that his dad said he couldn't concentrate in the house because of noise made by the children. He walked across the road to the barn to find the solitude he needed to write.

My father said the song was inspired by the Lord. Otherwise, how could he, a simple country man, ever write a song about such a glorious event in world history, Franklin Boyce asked.

When searching through some old papers, the family found a yellowed article clipped from The Daily News Journal, a newspaper in Murfreesboro. It had been written in the early 1960s. A story by Marie Chapman recounts the elder Boyce's recollection of how the song came to be written.

"I got up one Sunday morning to write it down, Boyce recalled. When his train of thought was interrupted by a member of the family who entered the room singing, he moved his pencil and pad to the barn, and there "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem" was put on paper.

The words and melody got on my mind," Boyce told Chapman, "till I could hardly sleep at night." The humble farmer said he looked upon both the words and tune as gifts from God.

Dean Boyce, Franklin's wife, remembers how her late sister-in-law, Nanny Lou, talked about helping her father put down the music for the song. "I believe, she said, they worked all morning on the music at the piano, and it rained hard all the time they were working on it.

Nell McKee, a retired educator who lives in the Buchanan area, attended Mt. Carmel Baptist Church where Boyce was a deacon and song leader when the song was written. Now in her 90s, McKee still attends the same church and recalls that Boyce would sing the lead part and his wife would sing the harmony in her clear alto voice.

"Fisher and Cora would sometimes sing the song at church," McKee remembers. "Cora would weep every time they sang together. She was very proud of her husband for writing that song."

Ironically, the family has never received royalties from the song. As was commonplace during that time in history, the legal copyright became the property of the company that published the material. As a rule, the song-writers were paid a one-time fee. To make a living, Boyce taught private voice lessons and worked at a variety of jobs including dairy farming and insurance and nursery sales

During his later years, Boyce and his wife moved into town where he and a nephew, M. B. Carlton, were partners in the Ideal Fruit Market on West College Street. There, Boyce sold single copies of the song for a small amount of money.
Although he is often overlooked, Boyce is an important part of Tennessee's musical history. Wolfe said, With the exception of Uncle Dave Macon's music, Boyce's song is the most important musical composition to come out of Rutherford County.

Wolfe added that he thinks the earliest professional recording of the piece was performed by the John Daniel Quartet on their private Daniel label.





(Thanks to Roel Vos for the picture and the soundfile below)




Initially, the John Daniel Quartet had been one of the Vaughan Company's traveling quartets. The job of these traveling musical groups was to perform, for free, the Vaughan songbook compositions in churches through-out the Southeast and beyond so that congregations, once given a sampling of the music, would want to order songbooks.

In Daniel's case, the group became so popular that they soon struck out on their own and, in the 1940s, became one of the hit acts of the Grand Ole Opry. Interestingly, one of the early members of this foursome was West Tennessee native Gordon Stoker, who would go on to become a member of the Jordanaires, made famous for their work with Elvis.

The exposure the tune received from appearing in songbooks, combined with its performance on the Opry, propelled Boyce's song to new heights. Bluegrass great Ralph Stanley recorded the song. Later, Emmylou Harris, Ricky Skaggs, the Judds, The Bishops, and others also cut it.



Here's another early version, sung by Mr. J. W. Breazeal, Springfield, Missouri on April 27, 1958:



(c) The LeFevres 1961 on the album: Christmas With The Gospel Singing Caravan
Released on (Sing Records/LP-556):






(c) Jimmie Davis 1963 on the album Highway To Heaven
Released on Decca Records DL74432)




Listen here:




(c) Stanley Brothers 1964 on the album Hymns of the Cross
Released on King Records (KS 918)




Listen here:





(c) Phipps Family (1966) (on the abum: "Christmas with the Phipps Family")
Released on the Pine Mountain label (#128) (owned by the Phipps Family themselves)






Listen here at 19 min and 46 sec in the next YT:




(c) Mother Mabel Carter sang "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem" on Johnny Cash's "Holy Land Concert", which was broadcasted on December 26, 1968 on the BBC.

It begins at 40 min and 40 seconds in the next YT:




(c) Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys 1977
Released on the album "Clinch Mountain Gospel" (Rebel SLP-1571)


Listen here:




(c) Emmylou Harris 1980 (on the album "Light of the Stable")


Listen here:




(c) Judds 1987


Listen here:




(c) Patty Loveless (2002)  (on album "Bluegrass & White Snow")


Listen here:




(c) Oak Ridge Boys (2002)  (on album "An Inconvenient Christmas"
Released on (Spring Hill Records CMD1034):


Listen here:





NOT to be confused with Neil Young's "Star of Bethlehem", despite the cooperation of Emmylou Harris




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woensdag 13 november 2013

Jesse James (1920) / Jesus Christ (1940)




In April of 1882, Jesse James was murdered.... With Jesse's death (shot in the back of the head, unarmed, by a man he trusted as a friend), the legend was complete.... All that was needed in order to enshrine the legend permanently was a ballad. Within a short time after Jesse's death, an otherwise unknown minstrel by the name of Billy Gashade (mentioned in the last verse of the song) created the ballad which has come to be Jesse James' lasting epitaph....




"Until recently, the earliest known printing of 'Jesse James' was a broadside printed by New York publisher Henry J. Wehman (no. 1044). Though undated, it can be placed between 1888 and 1897 on the basis of Wehman's address given on the sheet. It has been reproduced by Finger (1927) and by Thede and Preece.




According to Norm Cohen in his book Long Steel Rail, in 1977, Guthrie T. Meade came across an 1887 pocket songster in the Library of Congress, Comic and Sentimental Songs; one of the texts, as sung by Robert Jones, is 'Jesse James'.
Jones, born blind in east Tennessee, made his living after the age of fifteen by singing and playing the fiddle . In the text of "Jesse James", in the last stanza it says the song was made by Billy LaShade, rather than Gashade (as mentioned above)




In 1910 "Jesse James" was collected by John A. Lomax in "Cowboy Songs and other Frontier Ballads". In the last stanza of Lomax's text of "Jesse James", it says the song was made by Billy Gashade.


It's on page 27 of the next pdf: Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads



The first recorded version of this traditional I could find : Bentley (or Bently) Ball in 1920.
His source for the "Jesse James" ballad was John A. Lomax's 1910 lyrics as printed above.
He made a few minor textual changes: "dirty little coward" in Lomax's lyrics became "mean little coward" in Ball's version.

      Bentley Ball

The only info on Bentl(e)y Ball I could find is this: Bently Ball was an itinerant typewriter salesman and song collector who forayed into recording. He also was the first artist to record "Gallows Trees" (which became a classic, recorded by Leadbelly as "Gallis Pole" and Led Zeppelin as "Gallows Pole").  SEE NEXT LINK
And the first artist to record "The Dying Cowboy".  SEE NEXT LINK
The recorded history of "Jesse James" begins rather early compared to most of the other songs in this book. It was first recorded by Bentley Ball for Columbia in May, 1919, as part of a group of folksongs rendered in concert-hall style for "cultured" listeners.
Bentley Ball also wrote a book in which he made some comments on cowboy songs like "The Dying Cowboy" and "Jesse James"






(o) Bentley Ball (1920)
Recorded April 1919 in New York
Matrix # 90039
Released in 1920 on Columbia A3085
 

Listen here:


Or here:





(c) Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1924) (as "Jesse James")
Bascom Lamar Lunsford, vocals and banjo
Recorded in Atlanta, GA Saturday, March 15, 1924
Released on Okeh 40155



Listen here:




Here's a version by Lunsford from a few years later.






(c) Ernest Thompson (1924) (as "Jessie James")
Recorded  April 26, 1924 in New York.
Released on Columbia 145-D and also on Harmony 5121-H



Listen here:





(c) Riley Puckett (1924) (as "Jesse James")
Acc. by Gid Tanner on guitar
Recorded September 11, 1924
Released on Columbia 15033-D


Listen here:




(c) George Reneau (1924) (as "Jesse James")  (DIFFERENT SONG)
Recorded September 12, 1924
Released on Vocalion 14897

As you can hear this is a different song about Jesse James




(c) Vernon Dalhart (1925) (as "Jesse James")
Recorded September 1925 in New York
Released on Gennett 3143 and Silvertone 4012


Listen here:




(c) Vernon Dalhart 1925 (as "Jesse James")
Recorded September 22, 1925
Released on Edison 51621


And on Edison Blue Amberol cylinder 5057


Listen here:




(c) Fiddlin’ John Carson and his Virginia Reelers 1927 (as "Jesse James")
Fiddlin’ John Carson, f; unknown, f; unknown, bj; Moonshine Kate (Rosa Lee Carson), g.
Recorded Atlanta, GA Thursday, March 17, 1927
Released on Okeh 45139


Listen here:




(c) Vernon Dalhart 1927 (as "Jesse James")
Vernon Dalhart, v; acc. Murray Kellner, f; own h; Carson Robison, g. New York, NY
Recorded April 12, 1927
Released on Victor 20966




(c) Frank Luther 1927 (as "Jesse James")
Recorded Febr/March 1927
Released on Grey Gull 4133




(c) Harry "Mac" McClintock (1928) (as "Jesse James")
Recorded on March 10, 1928 in Oakland, CA
Released on Victor 21420




Listen here:




(c) Marc Williams (1928) (as "Jesse James")
Recorded March 23, 1928 in Chicago, IL
Released on Brunswick 269





(c) Uncle Dave Macon & Sid Harkreader 1929 (as "Life and Death of Jesse James")
Uncle Dave Macon, bj/v; Sid Harkreader, g
Recorded in Chicago, IL Thursday, June 20, 1929
Released on Vocalion 5356



Listen here:




(c) Bill Bender (The Happy Cowboy) (1939) (as "Jesse James")
Recorded Fall 1939 in New York
Released on Varsity 5141



Re-released in 1943 on Asch in 






(c) Woody Guthrie (1940) (as "Jesus Christ")

In 1940 Woody Guthrie turned Gashade's original song around. Observing the disparity between how the rich and the poor people lived in New York City, he wondered what might happen if Jesus "was to walk into New York City and preach like he use to." Using Gashade's melody as well as the lyrical structure from "Jesse James," Guthrie provided his answer, putting Jesus in the lead role and having him nailed in the air by the bankers, preachers, cops and soldiers.

And here's Woody's "Jesus Christ"




In 1944 Woody Guthrie would record a song with the same title "Jesse James", which is a different song in both melody and lyrics. That version was copied from Leadbelly's "Western Cowboy" (1933) or "Cow Cow Yicky Yea / Out on the Western Plains" (1943) or "Western Plain (When I Was a Cowboy)" (1944)
On his turn Leadbelly's version was adapted from Watts & Wilson's "The Sporting Cowboy" -
Watts & Wilson (Wilmer Watts and Frank Wilson), c. April, 1927, Chicago, IL.

But more so from the traditional "The Old Chisholm Trail" recorded on March 22, 1928 by Harry "Mac" McClintock





(c) Carl Sandburg 1945 (as "Jesse James")
Recorded June 3, 1943 in NYC
Released on Decca 40023 (as part of album A-356)








And here's "The Ballad of Jessie James" from the 1949 movie "I Shot Jessie James"





(c) Pete Seeger 1957 ( as "Jesse James")


Listen here:




(c) Kingston Trio 1961 ( as "Jesse James")


Listen here:




(c) Bob Dylan 1961 (as "Jesse James")

In February 1961 Dylan sang a portion of "Jesse James", recorded in the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob & Sid Gleason





Bob Dylan, in his song "Outlaw Blues" from his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home, defends his decision to "go electric" with the line "Ain't gonna hang no picture, ain't gonna hang no picture frame/Well, I might look like Robert Ford, but I feel just like a Jesse James."



(c) Bob Seger  (1972) (as "Jesse James")


Listen here:




(c) Ry Cooder 1980 (as "Jesse James")

 Ry Cooder's arrangement of the song plays over the end credits of Walter Hill's 1980 movie The Long Riders

Listen here:





(c) Pogues 1985 (as "Jesse James")


Listen here:





(c) U2 1988 (as "Jesus Christ")
Due to U2's spirited 1988 cover, Guthrie's revision as "Jesus Chist" may be as well known -- if not more so -- than the original "Jesse James"

Listen to U2's version of Woody Guthrie's "Jesus Christ"





(c) Jackson C Frank 1997 (as "Jesse James")
(home-recording) on CD "Blues Run the Game"


Listen here:




(c) Van Morrison, Lonnie Donegan & Chis Barber 2000 (as "Ballad of Jesse James")
on album "Skiffle Sessions" (Live in Belfast 1998)


Listen here:





(c) Bruce Springsteen 2006 (as "Jesse James")



Listen here:



(c) Nick Cave 2007 (as "Ballad of Jesse James")

A portion of the song is performed on-screen by Nick Cave, playing a strolling balladeer in a bar patronised by Robert Ford, in the 2007 movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

View here:




More versions:





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