S/D: Old-Timey Music (e.g., Prewar Gospel Blues, Bluegrass, Mountain Music)

This isn't great, but fun, and gets better as it goes along (they credit New Lost City Ramblers for what they've lifted, and the folks NLCR lifted it from as well)(spoken stuff is is speedy, brief, and all at the beginning of this live-in-the-Stanford-radio-station set: no interviews, station IDs etc) orig posted on the Garcia side projects thread:
Just listened to xpost Hart Valley Drifters' album on Spotify (they've got a lot of JG sidetrips---the whole GarciaLive series to date, for a start---and even more Dead). Relaxed vocals, not nasal or otherwise trying to sound mountain-y---maybe a little too relaxed at times--but the picking is sharp and vivid, also without trying too hard, as Garcia trades off guitar and banjo with Ken Frankel; David Nelson's rhythm guitar and Robert Hunter's bass keep chugging along, and things get more engaging when Frankel plays fiddle for just about all of the second half (not much dobro that I've noticed, but Norm Van Maastricht gets bonus points for his name). Bluesier on "Sugar Baby" and then, right at the end, Mississippi Sheiks' "Sitting On Top Of The World", cool and bouncing us to another, contiguous world, just down the mountain aways, where Garcia has no prob suggesting Mississippi John Hurt sitting in with the Sheiks. I'd put this track in a Garcia acoustic comp (he's already the star here, but never ever hogging the spotlight, not that there is one).

― dow, Friday, December 2, 2016

Also digging Peter Stampfel and the Brooklyn & Lower Manhattan Fiddle/Mandolin Swarm's Holiday for Strings, which, on "New Polly Wolly Doodle", for instance, and also this string band version of "Telstar", and all over, really, is quite action-packed, without seeming too busy or tweety.

Mississippi John Hurt sitting in with the Sheiks

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/arts/music/paul-oliver-authority-on-the-blues-dies-at-90.html?mcubz=3&_r=0

At his death Mr. Oliver left a 1,400-page manuscript on the Texas blues that he had begun writing with the researcher Mack McCormick in 1959. The project was abandoned after the two men quarreled. Mr. McCormick died in 2015.

Texas A&M University Press is scheduled to publish it in fall 2018, with essays by Alan Govenar and Kip Lornell, as “The Blues Come to Texas: Paul Oliver and Mack McCormick’s Unfinished Book.”

Cool that the Texas manuscript will come out(even if McCormick wasn't happy with it)

Oliver wrote a lot--After taking a trip through the American South in 1964, interviewing and recording blues singers, Mr. Oliver wrote “The Story of the Blues.” Published in 1969, it was the first comprehensive history of the genre and remains an indispensable work.

“Conversation With the Blues” (1965), an oral portrait of the music and the American South that included indigenous musical artists of every description.

“Screening the Blues: Aspects of the Blues Tradition” (1968) and “Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues” (1970).

His other books on the subject included “Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records” (1984), “Broadcasting the Blues: Black Blues in the Segregation Era” (2006) and “Barrelhouse Blues: Location Recordings and the Early Traditions of the Blues” (2009). His liner notes were collected in “Blues Off the Record: Thirty Years of Blues Commentary” (1984).

Stomp & Swerve: American Music Gets Hot 1843-1924 pre-release CD-R version, apparently includes lots of tracks Wondrich was unable to license, or something.)

You MUST tell us what was on the CD-R, xhuxk

michael coleman - the monaghan jig (1921)
kumasi trio - yaw donkor (1928)
joe ayers - old dan tucker (1989) (? that's what it says; not sure if that's a typo or not)
pryor's band - falcon march (1910)
sousa's band - at a georgia camp meeting (1908)
sousa's band - trombone sneeze (1902)
peerless orchestra - whistling rufus (1904)
vess l. ossman - a coon band contest (1901)
ossman-dudley trio - st. louis tickler (1906)
arthur collins - all coons look alike to me (1899)
len spencer - you've been a good old wagon (1901)
polk miller - rise and shine (1909)
dinwiddie colored quartette - poor mourner (1902)
bert williams - nobody (1906)
bert williams - play that barbershop chord (1910)
afro-american folk song singers - swing along (1914)
europe's society orchestra - down home rag (1913)
versatile four - circus day in dixie (1916)
original dixieland jass abdn - livery stable blues (1917)
hickman's orchestra - avalon/japanese sandman (1920)
mamie smith - crazy blues (1920)
ed andrews - time ain't gonna make me stay (1924)
lanin's southern serenaders - shake it and break it (1921)
mound city blue blowers - arkansas blues (1924)
charles creath - market st. blues (1924)
alberta hunter - cake walking babies from home (1924)
uncle dave macon - old dan tucker (1925)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, May 27, 2008 7:02 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm on a serious old music kick at the moment. Made a mix/playlist of all these songs located on my mp3 downloader programs of choice (youtube-to-mp3/slsk) all songs located to the best of my limited abilities, and it FUCKING RULES.

btw, does anybody remember that blog that some (ex?)-ilxor had that specialized in old 1900-10s-era songs? Would love to revisit that, even if it's through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Think you're probably thinking of this - 50 Records That Matter, 1900-1919 - by Jonathan Bogart, but this is his current, more-comprehensive version - https://justonesongmore.com/

I am sometimes on slsk myself and have the source files for centuries of sound, user name is weejay

Totally forgot about this v. informative thread despite my posts---nowadays this is more the go-to, w fairly recent updates etc. all along: Pickers: a catchall thread for modern bluegrass, nu-old-time music, rootsy americana string bands, etc.

x-post OMG I sometimes forget that ILX is full of famous people, I just wanted to say that I love your Centuries of Sound radio podcasts and mixes I listen to them all the time! But I’m only up to the year 1917 because I end up doing monster deep dives for each year and it takes me about a month to get to the next year.

Anyway, that 50 Records That Matter blog is _probably_ the one I’m thinking of (I can’t really remember), but it looks amazing. Now I need to do a deep dive on those songs from 1900 to 1917 to catch up. So much great music!

in old-time 78rpm collector news, a 15,000 piece collection of old-time music & early country is being liquidated a few hundred every month by venerable music (a 78-specific auction website) -- really incredible stuff tbh. and i can't win even a fraction of what I meant.

xp if you're saying I'm famous then I'm very flattered and happy to hear it but I really don't think I am! & sure Jonathan would say the same if you meant him (though I think he's at least a professional critic)

You will catch up with me before too long if you're doing a year per month as I'm not working at nearly that rate myself.

joe ayers - old dan tucker (1989) (? that's what it says; not sure if that's a typo or not)

Not a typo. In the actual Stomp and Swerve book (which I’m currently halfway through and enjoying immensely), the author David Wondrich says:

In 1989, banjoist Joe Ayers recorded a cassette titled Old Dan Tucker: Melodies of Dan Emmett & the Virginia Minstrels, 1843–1860 (it's still not available on CD, as far as I know — which indicates the amount of call there is for this kind of thing). It's a sincere, skilled, historically informed attempt to reproduce the music of a century and a half ago.

Sadly, this cassette appears to have completely vanished off the face of the internet. Can’t find any information about it anywhere. If anybody has a copy please get it uploaded to youtube pronto!

Haven't heard that one, but you're reminding me that the late mega-collector and muso Joe Bussard sometimes recorded with his friends on 78, kind of folkie fantasy camp--as on this 2015 collection of originals and covers, that I blogged about in an annual round-up of worthies:

Although several of the promo files won't play, I'm getting some pretty strong early impressions of (most of) Joe Bussard Presents: The Year of Jublio---78 RPM Recordings of Songs From The Civil War. "Joe's got shit that God don't have," begins one blurb, and while that's always been true, his evident desire to depict via a range of material, starts with historically significant in-your-face sickly sentimentality x formalism, as written and performed (rich liner notes incl. discussion of attempts to redeem image of Confederacy via music, also redeeming image of fiddlers, but this is more like icky parlor music). It may be more about the renditions, like what are described as "maidenly" vocals; I do love the version of "Lorena" sung by Del McCoury on the mostly good-to-excellent collection Divided and United (which topped my 2013 Scene ballot's Top 10). And here we do get a rendition of "The Poor Old Slave, " in which straight-forward, non-tremulous sincerity finds its way unerringly among faded emblems, truth-based imagery (sung by ladies who may be maidens, for all I know, but don't make a big deal of it). Ditto the crisp, brisk "In The Cruel Days of Slavery." "Dixie" is all-instrumental, except for the occasional, too-cued-sounding cheers, and one brief, urgently spoken mention of those magnificent men massing outside----more old Rebs, mebbe, but this "Dixie" is all sinewy lide guitars and/or dobros, not the sound I usually associate with misty visions of the Confederate Lost Cause.
Bussard and friends play *Rebels Hornpipe" (recorded on 78, like he's been doing since the 60s, the 1960s, that is, so it's only a ringer chronologically).Starts strong, proceeds in a merry-to-dizzy, compulsive circle, in a way I def do associate with Confeds. "Pass The Bottle Round" starts as Rebel (maybe sometimes Union too) parody of the line, "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground, but his truth is marching on." "Johnson Boy" is a fiddle-stomper about a local rake ("Jump girls, don't be afraid," girls unexcitedly join in on chorus), who gets drafted even though he can't see good, and keeps romping 'round the hotly contested countryside, though maybe fog of war will slow him down, as myopia alone didn't do, back under the presumably clearer skies of home---so,"Jump up girls, don't be afraid." "Sweet Bunch of Violets" starts as a tearjerker, but that's a set-up for revenge beyond the grave, hurrah boys!

Over his lifetime, Bussard amassed a collection of between 15,000 and 25,000 records, primarily of American folk, gospel, jazz and blues from the 1920s and 1930s.[1] From 1956 until 1970, Bussard ran the last 78 rpm record label, Fonotone, which was dedicated to the release of new recordings of old-time music. Among these were recordings by hundreds of performers, including the first recordings by the guitarist John Fahey. A five-CD anthology of Fonotone releases was issued in 2005 by Dust-to-Digital.[4] It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package in 2006.[2][5]

I spent a few days transcribing the discography from Tony Russell's great book Country Music Classics to RYM. They didn't have everything in their database but this was as close as I could get. I think There were 4 parts
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/stevolende/country-music-originals-the-legends-and-the-lost-pt1-old-timey/