Mississippi John Hurt//The Chicken

I really cannot tell you what made this song pop into my head recently, but once it got there it was hard to make it leave.

Here, Mississippi John Hurt teaches us how to spell "Chicken" and not the state for which he is named, bane of grade school spelling tests from coast to American coast.

Hurt, whose real name was John Smith Hurt and who definitely is from Mississippi (in fact, he lived and died in Mississippi), was a sharecropper by occupation, in addition to a blues singer. Despite his obvious brilliance, his music was a commercial failure for much of his life. Of course, as is so often the case, his posthumous influence has spanned several music genres including blues, country, bluegrass, folk and contemporary rock and roll.

Here is a short, simple ode to a bird we all know and love:



Chicken.mp3

Oh, chicken, chicken, you can't roost too high for me.
Oh, chicken, chicken, come on out of that tree.
Oh, chicken, chicken, chicken, you can't roost too high for me.
C is the way it begins.
H, the next letter then,
I am the third.
C, what a seasonly bird.
K is to fill him in.
E, I'm near the end.
C-H-I-C-K-E-N,
That's the way you spell chicken.

Cleoma Breaux And Joseph Falcon//La Vieux Soulard Et Sa Femme

Today at around noon, the power went out in my office. As a result, I'm finishing the day working from home (read: my backyard). My upstairs neighbor has planted sunflowers and they've gotten taller than me. It's pretty damn nice out here right now.

To go with the pastoral outdoor theme that the afternoon unexpectedly took on, I thought I would post my favorite track from one of my all-time favorite birthday presents ever (thanks, Aunt Deb).

This six-disc set is jam packed with old-timey...well...jams. Als and I got pretty obsessed with the whole collection during the summer of 2006 (the last golden summer in Ann Arbor), after repeat viewings of Wisconsin Death Trip, which features many of the songs as a soundtrack.

This one is obviously the best. The title translates, from the Creole French, to "The Old Drunkard and His Wife." From the very thorough annotations that come with the anthology, we learn that this is Joe Falcon (1900-1965) and his wife Cleoma Breaux. It's Cajun (obvs) and was recorded in Atlanta in 1929. These guys totally blew up in Louisiana, where Cleoma also played with her brothers, The Breaux Freres.



La Vieux Soulard Et Sa Femme.mp3

A bit more here.

The Carter Family//Single Girl, Married Girl

Sorry for all the sadness of yesterday. Today is better. The sun is shining and the roots of American folk music is in the air! Ok, it’s not really in the air up here in the NYC tri-state area, but I can dream that I’m sliding down some slippery rocks in the a cold Appalachian river, right?

The Carter Family was a legendary early country band that recorded between 1927 and 1956. AP Carter made it his mission to collect all the folk songs in the mountains of his Southwestern Virginia area and record them with his wife and sister-in-law, Maybelle Carter (godmother of country, inventer of the Carter scratch and portrayed in a movie I bet you’ve seen, Walk the Line—Maybelle’s daughter is June Carter.).

Like a modern band, this band has plenty of drama--but in their case, it was all family drama. I won’t go into all the details, but there’s a great PBS documentary that will, if you’re interested.

My interest in The Carter Family was piqued by Wisconsin Death Trip, whose awesome soundtrack draws heavily from the Smithsonion Folk Anthology, which is a totally amazing collection. I highly recommend both the movie and the box set.

This song is about how much more fun it is to be single than to be married, especially in impoverished Appalacia. Also worth noting, many of us speculated that the lyrics were “single girl, single girl/she wears a skinny tie.” Too bad, they’re actually not.



Single Girl, Married Girl.mp3

Married girl, married girl. She rocks the cradle and cries.

I’m right there with you, sister.