Revising an old collection of favorites, I thought I would program a set of music. These are mostly lesser known modern folk tracks that take me out of myself and send me off looking for more of the same. The premise of this collection is that one or more of these might do the same for you. With all the murder in the news, it’s a sad day. Maybe a mental health break is in order. With the theme of death in a few of these songs, this isn’t entirely escapist fare either.
Josh White wrote and recorded “Where Were You Baby” for The Story of John Henry (1955). The liner notes on my Elektra compilation say the song “fully captures [White’s] cabaret blues style and sexy, sophisticated sense of humor.” It is, shall we say, not in tune with the times. I first heard Don McLean give it a loving workout in a live performance at Dartmouth’s Spaulding Auditorium in the spring of 1972 or so. Don raved about Josh White in my interview with him for this 2020 SMCD installment.
Which reminds me. A friend gave me his ticket to that Don Mclean show. I went with a bad, bad attitude, wanting to see some heavy group like the Grateful Dead or John McLaughlin and the Mahavishu Orchestra. Playing solo, McLean was like the Sammy Davis Jr. of folk. He would not quit until he had won the audience over. When he divided the audience in three and assigned us rounds to sing on “Babylon,” damn if he didn’t have me following his instructions with all my heart. That show is more or less preserved on the double album Solo (a live recording compiled from 1973 shows that was released in 1976). The first comment on the “Babylon” video I see this morning captures my experience: “I remember him doing this at my college in Buffalo, and it has stayed with me all these years. Haunting.”
That fall Don released Playin’ Favorites. “Mountains O’ Mourne” was one of his favorites. Where did that come from? It’s a gem that awaited McLean’s heartfelt performance.
Tim O’Brien is one of my favorite artists. His “Time To Learn,” with the O’Boys, cuts almost too close to the bone. Oh Boy! O’Boy! (1993), produced by dobro virtuoso Jerry Douglas, is full of good stuff. This number in particular stopped me cold. O’Brien wrote the song with Pat Alger. He explains in the liner notes that he lost two of his siblings when he was a child: “Pat Alger and I tried to write about the strange finality of death and how we deal with it.” Mary Chapin Carpenter sings the harmony part.
It’s a short hop from Tim O’Brien to Kathy Mattea. Mattea recorded “Rock Me On the Water” with the songwriter himself for the Red Hot + Country compilation in 1994. We are approaching legitimate Sunday morning territory.
R.E.M.’s “Fall On Me” is the opening number of the self-titled album released by Cry Cry Cry in 1998. Taking their name from the Johnny Cash song, Cry Cry Cry was a folk supergroup including Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplansky, and Dar Williams. Their one and only disc makes you yearn for more. When we saw them on tour at St. Catherine College the following year this is the number with which they opened the show.
Bob Feldman was the proprietor of St. Paul’s Red House Records. I bumped into Bob when he took Lucy Kaplansky to lunch just after he released Lucy’s Flesh and Bone on Red House in 1996. I ran to buy a copy at the bookstore adjacent to the restaurant for Lucy to sign. After I apologized for interrupting her lunch, she inscribed it to me: “You’re welcome to interrupt my lunch any time.” Lucy’s cover of “Return of the Grievous Angel” by Gram Parsons fits right in here. Larry Campbell plays all the string instruments except the bass; Zev Katz plays the bass. I think Richard Shindell contributes the harmony vocal. This is what Parsons called cosmic American music, or Cosmic American Music.
Kaplansky gave up a career as a staff psychologist at a New York hospital to pursue music for a living. She must have been the kind of therapist that Dar Williams lauds in “What Do You Hear In These Sounds.” I should have thought to ask Dar for a referral.
Richard Shindell takes the lead vocal on James Keelaghan’s “Cold Missouri Waters,” about the Mann Gulch Fire of 1949 in Montana. The fire is the subject of Norman Maclean’s posthumous Young Men and Fire. The theme of the song is death. The song is so real.
Bob Feldman alternated hosting duties with Marian Moore on Urban Folk, KFAI’s long-ago Sunday morning contemporary folk show. As he ran Red House Records, Bob seemed to me to have united his avocation with his vocation. He loved the artists he worked with and the music he promoted. I thought he came straight out of Robert Frost’s “Two Tramps in Mud Time.” This was Bob: “Only where love and need are one, / And the work is play for mortal stakes, / Is the deed ever really done / For heaven and the future’s sakes.” Bob adopted John Gorka’s “The Gypsy Life” (1992) as the theme song of Urban Folk on the Sundays when he hosted it. The late Nanci Griffith adds the harmony part on this one. “People love you when they know you’re leaving soon.”
When we saw Cry Cry Cry in St. Paul, Lucy Kaplansky performed her own “Ten Year Night” (1999). It’s not about a one-night fling. It’s about falling in love with her husband. Caution: This one might scorch.
Dolly Parton clearly had Sunday morning in mind when she recorded a bluegrass version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” for Halos & Horns (2002). Her cover of the Led Zeppelin classic is outrageous — as in outrageously beautiful.
