A journal about the songs, musicians and performances I love, Old Time, Bluegrass, Folk and Blues, Rock n Roll and occasional Mongolian Throat Singing....
Here's a great jam song, often heard at the Brew Pub Jam, and recently exported to England courtesy of Rachel Eddy, at a short course at Kingham Hill called, appropriately enough, Sore Fingers. North Carolina Breakdown, as far as I can tell, it is completely an instrumental with no lyrics. It was composed in the US rather than inherited from Scotland or Ireland (just about all Scotch Irish fiddle tunes have words, by the way). It is attributed to Fiddling' Arthur Smith and the Dixieliners. According to an article in Wikipedia, Arthur was actually born in Tennessee rather than North Carolina, and became a performer with the Grand Ole Opry in 1927. The Dixieliners were formed a few years later. He hung around famous luminaries such as Uncle Dave Macon (who readers of this blog will recognize as the Patron Saint of clawhammer banjo players), the McKee Brothers and the Delmore Brothers, an early blues group. Other songs made famous by the Dixieliners include Chittlin' Cookin' Time in Cheatham County, There's More Pretty Girls Than One, and Beautiful Brown Eyes. The Dixieliners played well into the 1960's and made an appearance at the famous Newport Festival in 1965.
From the mandolin tab (transplanted from the UK, appropriately enough), the chords go kind of like this:
Part A
G G C/G D G G C/G D-G
Part B
C C G G C C C/G D-G
I have not played much of a C in the third and seventh measures of the A-Part, really it's just a G chord as far as my tin ear can tell, but others with more discerning sensibilities are invited to comment.
The other day, I saw a used fretless Kala U-Bass on sale on E-Bay at a reasonable price, so I bought it. It's an amazing instrument, the same size as a baritone Ukulele, but it is tuned like a bass. Most people would not imagine that an instrument this small would put out that kind of sound, but it does.
Now it is not the same kind of powerful sound that comes out of an upright bass, which physically shakes your body and instrument, almost forcing you to stay on the beat and in the right key. But it is way more sound than you might imagine just looking at it.
I first found out about the U-Bass on the internet, and later got a chance to try a version with frets at Fawley's Music, a great music store in Morgantown West Virginia. For me the unfretted version is way better because the frets seem to get in the way and create a kind of buzzy sound.
One of the cool things about having a short fretboard is that you can easily slide up and down creating all kinds of different sounds.
My sense is that it might be fun to take further advantage of the short scale length by tuning the instrument like a violin: GDAE, instead of like the upright bass EADG. The GDAE tunings is by fifths, which makes some chord positions an enormous stretch on an upright bass. But for the U-Bass, it should be a piece of cake. Plus your normal 1-5 1-5 pattern is easy--both strings held at the same position. This would make the open string positions somewhat higher than on the upright---two tones higher on the lowest string, and six tones higher on the highest string. That might be a more natural range to play in, anyway, at least in an acoustic jam. This way, in a jam, I might be supplementing the bass player, sometimes playing a fifth higher or even an octave higher, rather than always playing the same notes. So I'm going to try that.
The strings are what makes the whole thing possible. As a hack physicist, I am interested in problems like that. Back when stringed instruments were invented, most instruments were based on strings from animal parts, cat gut being an industry standard. Accordingly, to get a string with reasonable tension to vibrate at a low pitch, you pretty much had to design an instrument with an enormous scale length; hence the upright bass and other similar instruments. Wound strings are a recent invention, and make possible much lower pitch without the sound getting too flabby.
Thus, in medieval times an instrument with low pitch really had to be huge. I'm convinced that even today, much of our intuition about stringed instruments is based on the the world of Renaissance times. In particular, some people flat out disbelieve that a small instrument can have a low pitched sound. But they can, honest.
Kala strings are even more different. These strings are made from a polymer, and are very fat, and low tension (i.e., low modulus, meaning that you don't have to pull too hard to make sound). You have to turn the tuning keys quite a bit to affect the pitch. Yet they have a reasonable sustain, which in physics terms means that the vibrational energy is dissipated at a fairly slow rate, and the strings will vibrate for a long time. The strings also have a good creep resistance, meaning that they hold their pitch for a long time and don't need to be constantly re-tuned.
I can't wait to try this out at a jam. See you there soon!
One of the highlights of the Worley Gardner Music Festival was Ray Hicks leading the Percival Pickers in Long Journey Home (Two Dollar Bill). It's a great song, and Ray is a great singer, and the Pickers are a great jamp group. To me the best part of it was that Ray and the Pickers got the entire auditorium to sing along with this one. That was a thrill, to have so many people involved with the song.
As described elsewhere in this blog, the Pickers are a group of Old Time music enthusiasts headquartered in Percival Hall at West Virginia University who have been playing every week for the past 35 years or so. In fact, you can join them each and every Tuesday night around 730 or so. Likewise, the Worley Gardner Winter Music Festival is held in Morgantown every year in February. Y'all come now.
This song is a variant of the Carter Family's Worried Man Blues, and tells the story of a Depression era fellow who managed to lose all of his money except for a two dollar bill. Two dollars was worth something in those days; nevertheless we should understand that this was an economic disaster. But somehow the song remains upbeat, and maybe that's how we relate to the song. One of the functions of music is to keep people moving forward even in the face of great misfortune, including deaths, romantic disappointments and financial reversals like this one. People have a need to sing about their lives, both the good and the bad.
Video Credit: Kathryn Madison.
The Stanley Brothers recorded an early version of this song. Also on youtube is a version by Bill Monroe and Doc Watson. I really think that it works a little better the way Ray does it however. Namely by slowing it down a tad, it allows the rhythm to give the song a little punch.
Bill Monroe and Doc Watson.
[G]Lost all my money but a two dollar bill Two dollar bill boys, [C] two dollar [G] bill Lost all my money but a two dollar bill I'm [D] on my long journey [G] home
Cloudy in the West and it looks like rain Looks like rain, boys, looks like rain Cloudy in the West and it looks like rain I'm on my long journey home
It's dark and a raining and I want to go home Want to go home, boys, want to go home Its dark and a raining and I want to go home I'm on my long journey home
Homesick and lonesome and I'm feeling kind of blue Feeling kind of blue, boys, feeling kind of blue Homesick and lonesome and I'm feeling kind of blue I'm on my long journey home
There's black smoke a rising and it surely is a train Surely is a train boys, surely is a train There's black smoke a rising and it surely is a train I'm on my long journey home
The Percival Pickers performed “Katy Cline at the Worley Gardner Winter Music Fest, last Friday February 22. GWMF is an awesome event held each year in midwinter, created by Worley Gardner and friends some 35 years ago.
Worley and Margaret Gardner with a hammer dulcimer.
For the past two years some of the jam groups have performed at GWMF. This is different from normal performances because a jam is unrehearsed and may have a larger number of performers. Time will tell whether it catches on or not. But Old Time musicians are very adept at playing together without written music, and so for that reason twenty or thirty musicans can play together on stage remarkably well. The Percival Pickers have been going strong since about the time of the inception of GWMF, and this is not a coincidence as Worley Gardner was one of the organizers of both functions. It is an open group that meets every Tuesday at about 730 PM at Percival Hall at West Virginia University. Ray Hicks chose the song Katy Cline, and it proved to be a tremendous success, judging from the audience reaction. Thanks to Kathryn Madison for creating a video record of the event.
Video Credit: Kathryn Madison
Our version is a bit ominous and there is the distinct suggestion that Katy and/or her family may have met with foul play. Did the Wild Boys attack? Perhaps so, otherwise we can not explain why there is no one to weep and no one to mourn and no one to see Katy Cline.
Versions of the song were recorded as early as 1937 by the Monroe Brothers. Stanley Brothers and others.
Interestingly, there are earlier versions of the song. The oldest known version was composed by one L. V. H. Crosby and published in 1853, as Kitty Clyde. This version has none of the grim lyrics of the newer version, and is much more happy and carefree. Because of the copyright laws of the day, one can not conclude with certainty that Crosby composed the tune and lyrics, but he at least compiled the earliest known version.
Katy Cline A[G] Now, who does not know Katy Cline, She lives at the foot of the E[D] hill, In the A[G] shady nook by the D[C] old babbling brook, That A[G] runs by her E[D] dear old father's A[G] mill. Chorus:A[G] Oh tell me that you love me, Katy Cline, Tell me that your heart is true as E[D] mine. A[G] Oh tell me that you love D[C] your own turtle dove, A[G] Oh tell me that you E[D] love me, Katy A[G]Cline. It's away from my little cabin door, Oh, it's away from my little cabin home. There's no one to weep and there's no one to mourn And there's no one to see Katy Cline.
If I was a little bird, I'd never build my nest on the ground. I'd build my nest in some high yonder tree Where them wild boys couldn't tear it down.
Kitty Clyde (L. V. H Crosby, 1853)
Oh, who has not seen Kitty Clyde,
She lives at the foot of the hill,
In a sly little nook by the babbling brook,
That carries her father's old mill.
Oh, who does not love Kitty Clyde?
That sunny-eyed, rosy-cheek'd lass,
With a sweet dimpled chin that looks roguish as sin,
With always a smile as you pass.
Chorus.
Sweet Kitty, dear Kitty, my own sweet Kitty Clyde
In a sly little nook by the babbling brook,
Lives my own sweet Kitty Clyde.
With a basket to put in her fish.
Every morn with a line and a hook,
This sweet little lass, through the tall, heavy garss,
Steals along by the clear running brook.
She throws her fine into the stream,
And trips it along the brook side;
Oh, how I do wish that I was a fish,
To be caught by sweet Kitty Clyde.-Chorus.
How wish that I was a bee,
I'd not gather honey from flowers,
But would steal a dear sip from Kitty's sweet lip,
And make my own hive in her bowers.
Or, if I was some little bird,
I would not build my nest in the air,
But keep close by the side of sweet Kitty Clyde,
And sleep in her soft silken hair. - Chorus.
33 minutes ago · Like
There I was, at the Trolley Stop Old Time Jam in Dayton, playing as best I could with my friends. In the audience was Dan Gellert, who is an absolutely terrific and highly respected professional musician, playing fiddle, banjo and who-knows-how-many other instruments.
This is Ry Cooder and Dan Gellert, who showed up spontaneously at the Trolley Stop in Dayton to give a concert before the normal jam, just to amuse themselves. They are so talented that I'm terrified of both of these fellows. Photo credit: http://twitter.com/katysteinmetz/status/213080359225655299/photo/1
Well in the middle of a jam song, up comes Dan on stage and places his ear right on my guitar! OK Dan, you got me! I was ready to confess, that yeah, I really don't belong up here with the other people that are really good. Don't call the cops, I'll go quietly...
But instead Dan says, "Wow, that is really cool. How do you have your guitar tuned?"
I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn't going to be evicted after all. "It's a baritone tuning, B E A D F# B . Some of the Old Time guys used to use this tuning....Pete Seeger got it from Leadbelly..." and we wound up having a nice chat about weird guitar tunings. Dan even sat in with us a little bit. That is really something, after he had played with the legendary Ry Cooder, so I guess he doesn't mind playing with real people.
Now why would anyone want to tune their guitar so dadburn low?
I learned how to play in jams in Morgantown, mainly at the Morgantown Brew Pub Wednesday Night Jam, and Percival Pickers . Often we would have around six or eight guitar players, so I wanted to be able to add something a little bit different than a boom-chuck boom chuck accompaniment.
The late Harry Lewman turned me on to the baritone 12 string in this great lecture on Leadbelly's guitar, which I previously linked in an article about Leadbelly elsewhere in this blog. Others, notably Pete Seeger also picked up on the baritone 12 and adapted it for their own sound. Here is a clip of Pete Seeger playing a Martin baritone 12, accompanied by Arlo Guthrie.
You
have to restring the instrument with heavier gauge strings, and there
are some tricks to it. Basically what I do is buy the D'Addario light
gauge 12 strings, Then I put the B strings where the E strings should
have been at 1-2; the wound G string goes to 3, the .010 string goes to
position 4; D strings go to 5-6, A strings go to 7-8, and E strings go
to 9-10. Then you have to buy heavier strings for 11-12, which are
ordered online. The net result is that the strings are B =.014/.014, F#
= .023w/.010 D = .030w/.012, A = .039w/.018, E = .047w/.027w B =
.056w/.036w (next time I may bump up the bass B string a tad). The tension will be about the same as with your "normal"
guitar tuning, and your guitar will not implode as long as you buy a halfway decent guitar (Yamaha makes one of the best moderately priced 12 strings, but there are several really good ones out there). Even though these strings are fatter than the normal
strings, they are at lower tension, so the stress on the neck is no higher than the normal strings with the normal tuning. The main issue is
that the grooves in the nut may need to be widened to accommodate larger
diameter strings.
Tuning is a bit problematic because the low B string really wants to be
longer. As a result it plays sharp as you go up the neck. What I do is
to press the string to the third fret (D), and use the Snark tuner to
get that note right on, such that it plays a little flat in the open
position and a little sharp further up the fretboard. You have to compromise, or else have a custom built guitar with a saddle that sits a bit farther back for the bass strings.
The chord positions are the same as the usual guitar, but of course you have to transpose 5 half steps in order to come to the real world tuning.
But the real key is the playing style. In my case, I am usually playing backup for some musicians that are at a much higher level than I am. So I don't go crazy; i'm just trying to hit the right chord more often than not. But every once in a while I substitute a Leadbelly progression in place of the standard Old Time or bluegrass tag. In the key of G, for example:
Standard: GAB_BDEDG
Leadbelly: GGBBDDEEG
I try to be careful with it, and not overdo it. In the baritone tuning it's easy to use this tag in the (real world) key of D, so our finger position is G. For G as well as C, a bass run can be a full octave lower than the other guitar players because they are starting on the 5th string, while we are on the 6th string. That can be kind of cool sometimes.
The real sucky chord is F, which obliges us to use the finger position for b-flat. However, one of the compensating advantages of the 12 string is that you can play two strings and it sounds okay because of the octave strings. So I usually play 1st fret on the 5th string, and open on the 4th string. So with this cheat, you can play the b-flat position (real-world F) with only one finger.
Now that isn't so hard is it?
To get an
idea how the baritone 12 string can play off the "normal" 6 string,
check out this clip from this movie about Leadbelly:
Be advised that the music is not authentic Leadbelly at all, and it's actually two white guys supplying the music. In the movie, the young Leadbelly is played by Roger Mosely, but the guitar playing is from the very white Artie Traum. As a young man, Leadbelly plays the 6 string guitar, but one day he meets an old master who teaches him a few things about the baritone 12 string. The old guy, believe it or not, is Dick Rosmini, a white 12-string guitarist that they made up to look like an African American (sort of. At least he's better than Al Jolson). But if it's not the Leadbelly sound (other than the tuning) it is very, very good music. Dick Rosmini played an incredibly clean 12 string, as further evidenced by the following:
In Morgantown West Virginia, Elmer Rich is a legend. Elmer comes from a musical family you now. Elmer's Uncle Sanford Rich wrote a popular song called Colored Aristocracy, which was famously played when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt came to Arthurdale WV circa 1936. Arthurdale was a resettlement community for persons displaced during the Great Depression, a project that the First Lady promoted. Musicologist Charles Seeger
(father of Pete, Peggy and Mike Seeger) recorded the Rich
Family for the Library of Congress (AFS 3306 B2).
I had heard this story several times,and in fact you can here old Elmer tell this story himself, at the 2008 Fiddler's Contest in Morgantown....
Other comments are from Tom O'Brien. Amazingly enough, the event was caught on an old newsreel, and you can see Elmer and his fmaily playing the same song for the First Lady. According to notes from Centrum.org ( http://centrum.org/2012/06/elmer-rich-plays-for-eleanor-roosevelt/), Elmer is playing the mandolin rather than the fiddle. Elmer's Dad Harry is fiddling, and Elmer's brothers are on banjo and guitar.
Elmer told me that the title Colored Aristocracy is a tribute to the old Ragtimers that inspired and influenced the tune. It derives from a book, The Colored Aristocracy of St Louis, by Cyprian Clamorgan. Also, the term "colored" is perhaps derogatory today, but 100 years ago or so, it was the most polite term possible to refer to African Americans. In a way, this song underscores the Ragtime influence on Old Time music and Appalachia. You will definitely hear echoes of this in the Brew Pub Jam, with songs like "Ragtime Annie," "Tear it Down" or "Raise a Rough House Tonight." When you stop and think about it, it's really incredible. Elmer's musical family reaches way back into the 19th century in terms of their repetoire, and Elmer is still going strong. He really does represent a time machine. If I want to find out how West Viriginia fiddlers treated a particular song in the 1930's, I am not limited to library references. I can just ask Elmer, because he's still doing it! Elmer's friends, like Tom O'Brien and Mark Crabtree and others, also know an incredible amount about the songs in general and about local West Virginia music history.
And you can play with Elmer, also. Since I've moved away from Morgantown, I no longer
see Elmer and his friends very often, but he hosts a jam at the Senior Center in
Westover, across the river from Morgantown. I believe that it's only 3
Fridays per month, so call to make sure the jam is on before you go. Like most Old Time musicians, Elmer is just as relaxed and friendly as he could be, not stuck up in any way, and you would never guess that he is a world renowned fiddler. Some of the other regulars are also very talented peformers, but newcomers are very welcome as well. You really can sit down and play with a legend if you want. And no, you do not have to be a senior to attend.
Elmer and Tom Gibson lead Hanging On to Glory at the Senior Center Jam. Check out other videos from YewPiney as well.
Why can't you sound like Leadbelly? Or at least play the guitar the way he did? I learned to play the guitar, sort of, in High School, and really got into it when I attended Cuyahoga Community College and worked at a music store (LaBash Music in Berea), where I hung out with some truly awesome musicians. Anyway I made some clumsy attempts to play old transcriptions of music from guys like Leadbelly (famous for the boogie woogie walking bass line), Missississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Big Bill Broonzy. But Leadbelly was the most mysterious. Very few recordings even existed of this man, who everyone from the Beatles and Bob Dylan credited with being a link between blues and modern rock 'n roll.
On the one hand, one reason why modern musicians may have difficulty duplicating the Leadbelly sound, or more importantly, his FEEL, is simply that YOU ain't Leadbelly. Leadbelly lived in a very different world than we do. Leadbelly, let it not be forgot, was a killer who was sent to prison twice for killing people. He himself was left for dead at least once, and if you look at some of his pictures you can see the horrific scar which goes from ear to ear. Part of Leadbelly's experience comes from the violent world of night life in the segregated South, and it just isn't going to translate for most of us. His performing got him sprung from the joint twice. In other words, most of us lack authenticity if we try to sing his songs, or even copy his playing style.
Imagine trying to sing the lyrics of Black Snake Moan for a modern audience: Oh, I ain't got no mammy now. I ain't got no mammy now. Ya told me late last night, ya didn't need no mammy no how!
Leadbelly is singing about being rejected by his lover. It is actually a very painful song, punctuated by Leadbelly's incredible bass runs. But, oh gosh if you are a white person and get invited to perform at the Apollo theater I hope you will consider carefully what you are gong to perform and be sensitive to your audience before attempting to perform lyrics such as these for a modern audience. They might laugh you off the stage.
It may not come out right if you try too hard to tell someone else's story. Music is kind of the same way. And one of the rules of the blues (if there are any rules) is that you need to put some of yourself into it. If you will search on youtube, you will find that there are an amazing number of muscians, many of them young, who are interested in Leadbelly songs and trying to bring them forward. The best ones, in my opinions, are the ones who don't try to imitate him, but maybe incorporate a few licks into their own sound.
There is also a secret to the Leadbelly sound, however. The best lecture on Leadbelly's guitar that I have ever heard is from the late Harry Lewman. What you need to know is that Leadbelly's guitar was constructed differently than the conventional style. Among his guitars was an old Stella that did not use the cross-bracing system of industry standards from Gibson and Martin. Leadbelly used very heavy gauge strings, and here's the kicker: the rascal actually tuned his guitar five half-steps lower than a conventional guitar. In other words, his guitar is tuned B-E-A-D-F#-B. Sometimes this is referred to as a "baritone" tuning or a BEAD tuning. Although many people have never heard of such a thing, Martin and other manufacturers actually make guitars designed for this tuning, with a little bit longer scale length. Stella used to make a 12 string jumbo designed for baritone tuning, and that was one of the guitars that Leadbelly played. So you play the same chord forms, but they are lower than a standard guitar. Harry does the best job of anyone in getting the Leadbelly sound from the instrument: check this out:
It's also very hard to sing when you're playing these bass runs, by the way. It sounds easy, but it is not, at least not for me. You just have to just practice 10,000 times until you get the knack for singing one melody while playing another on the guitar. I have been keeping my own 12 string at Leadbelly tuning for about years now. I don't sound much like Leadbelly and mostly I play Old Time which is far different from Leadbelly's music. But every once in a while I work in a bass run that might sound just a little bit like him.
.jpg)
.jpg)
