If not for the dedication of the 1930’s WPA and its team of folk music collectors, many wandering troubadour’s songs would have been lost, including the team of Woofer Joe and the Hobo Kid, whose song “Big Rock Kibble Mountain” could be heard around many an evening campfire:
On the big rock kibble mountain,
Every dog gets thirty trees,
And all the cats are slow as snails
And there’s no such thing as fleas…
My toes are a-tappin’, Sharon H.
Dang, I remember listening to some of those old tapes and the Smithsonian ones during my American music classes college.
Have yet to hear a better rendition of “Little Pink.”
Recommend watching the movie “Song Catcher” if this is your thing.
They had a cool series on PBS recently – I think it’s called “American Epic” from T-Bone Burnett, about recordings of rural southern music from the early 20th Century, where they’d go around and record with the old wax cylinders and wax records. I haven’t seen the whole thing, but what I did see was fascinating – I bet it’s available online.
I have to catch up on American Epic, which looks awesome. In the meantime, the WPA stuff you guys are talking about is probably the work of Alan Lomax. He made some mistakes about ownership/copyright, but he also collected a massive ton of music that would otherwise likely have been lost to the ages.
The Alan Lomax collection is held at the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/
Learn more here: http://www.folklife.si.edu/legacy-honorees/alan-lomax/smithsonian
And here: http://www.culturalequity.org/alanlomax/ce_alanlomax_bio.php
And this is arguably the culmination of Lomax’s dream: https://theglobaljukebox.org
I love the pic. Looks like it could be a Shorpy find—Mike, do you know where it comes from?
Wow, thank you for the info – that is great! I’ve heard of Alan Lomax but don’t know much about him (yet).
I saw the pic recently at http://www.pleated-jeans.com but don’t know original source.
If the dog had his own banjo they could play Duelling banjo.
Here’s my favourite, no not the one from the movie Deliverance, this one :
Yeah!
Thank you for that! 🙂
Mike, I forgot to even say – I love the text – we need more verses!
THAT sounds like a challenge.
“Where the bees they fly in slo-mo so
That you can always snatch them.
And the squirrels can’t climb the trees so well,
It’s easier to catch them.”
Excellent!