Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – April 15, 2025: “All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir”

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU, 93.1 FM, in Ottawa on Tuesdays from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also available 24/7 for on-demand streaming.

This episode of Stranger Songs was recorded and can be streamed on-demand, now or anytime, by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/69786.html

Theme: “All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir” – all the songs have something or other to do with animals.

Bill Staines- A Place in the Choir

The First Million Miles (Rounder)

Ian & Sylvia- Old Blue

Ian & Sylvia (Vanguard)

Ron Hynes- A Good Dog is Lost

Get Back Change (Borealis)

James Talley- Somewhere in the Stars (A Song for Diego)

Ballads, Bandits and Blues (Cimarron)

Bob Dylan with Hilda Harris, Albertine Robinson & Maeretha Stewart- All the Tired Horses

Another Self Portrait 1969-1971: The Bootleg Series Vol. 10 (Columbia/Legacy)

Garnet Rogers- Small Victory

The Best Times After All: Live (Snow Goose Songs)

Amy Speace- There Used to Be Horses Here

There Used to Be Horses Here (Windbone)

Priscilla Herdman- Waltzing with Bears

Stardreamer (Alacazam)

Rosalie Sorrels- Mehitabel’s Theme

Always a Lady (Green Linnet)

Phil Harris- Thomas O’Malley Cat

Disney’s Jazz Album: Big Band & Swing (Disneyland)

Cisco Houston- The Cat Came Back

The Folkways Years 1944-1961 (Smithsonian Folkways)

Tom Russell- Gallo del Cielo

Old Songs Yet to Sing (Frontera)

Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer- Man Gave Names to All the Animals

Get Up and Do Right (Community Music)

Odetta- The Fox

At the Gate of Horn (Tradition)

Paul Geremia- Foolish Frog

I Really Don’t Mind Livin’/My Kinda Place (Flying Fish)

Dave Van Ronk, Anne Hills & Cindy Mangsen- Froggy Went A-Courting

Never Grow Up (Flying Fish)

Ladysmith Black Mambazo- Mbube (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)

Gift of the Tortoise (Music for Little People)

Amelia Hogan- The Snow Hare

Burnished (Amelia Hogan)

The Marigolds- Inchworm

The Marigolds (The Marigolds)

Oscar Brand- The Derby Ram

The Riverside Folklore Series, Volume Three: Singing the New Traditions (Riverside)

Deborah Robins- The Three Ravens

Lone Journey (Zippety Whippet Music) 

James Keelaghan- Red-Winged Blackbird

Home (Jericho Beach Music)

Jackie Washington- The Snake

Midnight Choo Choo (Borealis)

Dave Van Ronk- I’m Proud to Be a Moose

Peter and the Wolf (Alacazam)

Next week: Songs for Earth Day.

--Mike Regenstreif

Jim Kweskin & Geoff Muldaur – Penny’s Farm

JIM KWESKIN & GEOFF MULDAUR

Penny’s Farm

Kingswood Records

jimkweskin.com

geoffmuldaur.com

When I started collecting records obsessively in the 1960s, the LPs by Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band were – and remain – among my favorites. Drawing on folk songs, blues, jazz and early pop and novelty songs, the LPs were filled with fun, deceptively sophisticated, and an entrée into the older traditions and source artists they were drawing on. Well over 50 years after the Kweskin Jug Band got together and 40-something years since they broke up, Jim Kweskin and band stalwart Geoff Muldaur have reunited for the sublime Penny’s Farm, an eclectic collection of folk-rooted and folk-branched songs played by a couple of masters whose interpretive skills have aged like fine whiskey. Jim and Geoff each take the lead vocal on about half the tracks.

The album opens with Jim’s version of the traditional “Diamond Joe,” a song Alan Lomax collected from Big Charlie Butler at the Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi in 1939, and that has become familiar through countless interpretations by artists ranging from Cisco Houston to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan. Jim begins singing a cappella and is then joined by Suzy Thompson’s powerful fiddling, Jim and Geoff’s guitars, Cindy Cashdollar’s Weissenborn guitar and Geoff’s harmonies.

Jim continues to shine whenever he takes the lead vocal. Among his highlights are “Down on Penny’s Farm,” one of several songs on the CD drawn from Harry Smith’s seminal Anthology of American Folk Music, on which Jim plays banjo and Geoff is heard on pennywhistle; the infectious African song “Guabi, Guabi,” which he first recorded on a solo LP, Relax Your Mind, in 1965; a haunting version of “The Cuckoo,” also drawn from the Harry Smith Anthology and also a reprise from Relax Your Mind; and a couple of Mississippi John Hurt songs, “Louis Collins (Angels Laid Him Away) – which Philadelphia Jerry Ricks once told me was John Hurt’s very favorite of his own songs – and “Frankie,” a variant of “Frankie and Johnny (or Albert).”

Geoff’s first lead vocal is on “The Boll Weevil,” another folk song collected by Lomax that has become a folk music standard in countless versions. This version is among the best I’ve heard. Geoff is playing six-string banjo and is ably supported by Jim on harmony vocals and guitar, Suzy on fiddle, Cindy on Dobro and Kevin Smith on bass.

Geoff, too, shines, whenever he’s at the lead vocalist’s mic. His highlights include Henry Thomas’ “Fishing Blues,” also drawn from the Harry Smith Anthology; “Just a Little While to Stay Here,” a New Orleans funeral song Geoff recorded earlier on his wonderful album, The Secret Handshake; a couple of Beale Street Sheiks numbers, “Sweet to Mama” and “Downtown Blues” (Geoff first recorded “Downtown Blues” in 1967 on the Kweskin Jug Band LP See Reverse Side for Title); and a fun version of Mississippi John Hurt’s “C-h-i-c-k-e-n.”

My very favorite of Geoff’s tracks, though is his version of Bobby Charles’ beautiful “Tennessee Blues,” a song he recorded more than 40 years ago on Geoff Muldaur is Having a Wonderful Time. Van Dyke Parks joins the ensemble on accordion on this version of the song.

And while Geoff may have been having a wonderful time on that long-ago solo LP, I’ve been having a wonderful time listening to Jim and Geoff both having a wonderful time on Penny’s Farm.

I’ll also mention that the CD package includes an appreciation of Jim and Geoff and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band by John Sebastian and informative song notes by Mary Katherine Aldin.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

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--Mike Regenstreif

John McCutcheon – Joe Hill’s Last Will

JOHN McCUTCHEON

Joe Hill’s Last Will

Appalsongs

folkmusic.com

Joe Hill (1879-1915) is a legendary figure in the history of folk music and the labor movement. A Swedish immigrant (born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund), he immigrated to the United States in 1902 and learned to speak English as a migrant laborer. Sometime around 1910, Hill joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Wobblies, a union that believes in industrial unionization, “One Big Union,” as opposed to trade unionism, and began to write songs for them – often set to tunes borrowed from popular songs of the day. In some ways, Woody Guthrie followed in Hill’s footsteps a generation later.

In 1914, Hill was arrested in Salt Lake City, Utah for a murder he did not commit, and was tried and convicted. He was executed by firing squad on November 19, 1915 at the age of 36.

Like many of my generation, I initially learned about Joe Hill from the song written about him in the 1930s by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson via recordings by Paul Robeson and recordings and performances in the ‘60s by Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Much of what I know about Joe Hill, though, came from another great Wobblie songwriter, my late friend Bruce “Utah” Phillips, who I heard sing many of Joe Hill’s songs, and tell many stories about him, over a period of many years.

This year is the 100th anniversary of Hill’s execution and John McCutcheon marks the occasion with Joe Hill’s Last Will, an inspired and inspiring collection of Joe Hill songs – a couple of which I’m hearing for the first time on this CD, others which I know from recordings by such artists as Utah Phillips, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, and Hazel Dickens.

One of the astounding things that hits home about these songs is the so very brief period in which they were created. The earliest is from 1911 and the latest from 1915 – just a four year period. But, although these songs date from a century and more ago and are essentially topical songs, most – particularly with John’s infectious and creative arrangements – seem relevant to the (economic) times we’re living in now.

While the entire album is entirely praiseworthy, some of the finest moments include “It’s a Long Way to the Soup Line,” a song Hill wrote in prison in 1915 to the tune of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”; “The Preacher & the Slave,” a parody of “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” that Hill used to mock the Salvation Army (the “Starvation Army”) and their brass bands that were used back in the day to disrupt IWW rallies; and the rousing finale, “There is Power in the Union,” on which John is joined by a bunch of fellow workers from the American Federation of Musicians, Local 1000 (the folksingers' local), and the Seattle Labor Chorus.

Certainly the most moving song is the title track, “Joe Hill’s Last Will,” whose words Hill wrote the day before his execution and which were smuggled out of the prison by a guard.

My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kind don't need to fuss and moan –
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”

My body? Ah, If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.

Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will.
Good luck to all of you.

Joe Hill

“Joe Hill’s Last Will” has been set to music several times over the years – I have a bluegrass version on the collaborative 1976 album by Country Cooking and the Fiction Brothers – but John’s lovely version is to a melody of his own. (I’ve also heard it performed as recitation by both Utah Phillips and the late Tex König.)

I’ll also note that a couple of the songs, “Overalls & Snuff,” and “Where the Fraser River Flows,” are of special Canadian interest as they were written for the strike against the Canadian National Railroad in 1912.

An essential recording and an excellent companion to John's Woody Guthrie tribute, This Land: Woody Guthrie's America.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Arlo Guthrie – Here Come the Kids

ARLO GUTHRIE
Here Come the Kids
Rising Son Records 
arlo.net

The centennial of the birth of the great folksinger and prototypical songwriter Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) was July 14, 2012. Since around that time Arlo Guthrie has been out on tour celebrating his father’s milestone with a tour – and now, a 2-CD live album recorded last October at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago – called Here Come the Kids.

While Arlo has usually included some Woody Guthrie songs in his concerts and on his albums, about half the songs in this set were written by Woody and most are introduced with stories – Arlo is a master storyteller with perfect timing – about Woody or the songs.

Among the classic Woody Guthrie songs are great versions of “Oklahoma Hills” (credited to Woody and his cousin, Jack Guthrie, who had a hit with it in 1945), “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).” “Do Re Mi,” and a sing-along version of Woody’s best known song, “This Land is Your Land.”  

“Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” by the way, is always considered to be part of the classic Woody Guthrie canon, but Woody's words about a tragic 1948 plane crash were set to music in the late-1950s by Martin Hoffman. More recently, Nora Guthrie, Arlo’s sister, has been commissioning many artists to set some of the 3000+ sets of Woody’s lyrics discovered in the Woody Guthrie Archives to music. Early in the concert, Arlo does a lovely version of “Mother’s Voice (I Hear You Sing Again,” Woody’s tribute to his mother and the songs he heard her sing, which was set to music by Janis Ian. And then, as the encore, he concludes the concert with the inspiring “My Peace,” set to music by Arlo himself.

Arlo also uses the concert to pay tribute to some of Woody’s friends and musical associates with versions of “St. James Infirmary,” learned from Cisco Houston, and “Alabamy Bound,” picked up via Lead Belly. Along the way, we also hear stories about other of Woody’s friends including Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

There are also some perennial favorites like Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans,” and Arlo’s

Mike Regenstreif and Arlo Guthrie (1996).

own “Motorcycle Song” and “Coming into Los Angeles.” The most poignant moment comes when Arlo sings a beautiful version of “Highway in the Wind,” the first song he wrote for Jackie Guthrie, his wife of 43 years, who succumbed to cancer on October 14, 2012, a year – almost to the day – before the concert at the Old Town School of Folk Music was recorded.

Throughout the concert Arlo receives tasteful backup from Bobby Sweet on guitar and fiddle and from longtime musical associates Terry A La Berry on drums and Abe Guthrie, Arlo’s son, on keyboards.

Arlo Guthrie is one of our finest live performers and superbly recorded live albums (credit Abe for that) like Here Come the Kids are the next best thing to being in the audience.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif