Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday April 18, 2023: The Philosophy of Modern Song, Part 1

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

CKCU can be heard live at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and https://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web. 

This episode of Stranger Songs was recorded and can already be streamed on-demand by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/60086.html

Theme: The Philosophy of Modern Song, Part 1.

Bob Dylan wrote about each of the songs on this show in his book, The Philosophy of Modern Song. Except where noted, these tracks are the versions of the songs that Dylan cites.

Bobby Bare- Detroit City

The Best of Bobby Bare (Razor & Tie)

Elvis Costello- Pump It Up

This Year’s Model (Radar)

Dylan cites Webb Pierce’s version of “There Stands the Glass.”

Ted Hawkins- There Stands the Glass 

The Next Hundred Years (Geffen)

Billy Joe Shaver- Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me

Old Five and Dimers Like Me (Monument)

Little Richard- Tutti Frutti

18 Greatest Hits (Rhino)

Elvis Presley- Money Honey

Elvis Presley (RCA)

The Who- My Generation

The Who Sings My Generation (Decca)

Dylan cites Harry McClintock’s 1928 version of “Jesse James.”

Bruce Springsteen- Jesse James

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (Columbia)

Dylan cites Ricky Nelson’s 1958 version of “Poor Little Fool.” This is a later live version.

Rick Nelson- Poor Little Fool

A Night to Remember (True North)

Dylan cites Perry Como’s version of “Without a Song.”

The Righteous Brothers- Without a Song

Greatest Hits (Verve)

Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson- Pancho and Lefty

Pancho & Lefty (Epic)

Jackson Browne- The Pretender

The Pretender (Elektra)

Bobby Darin- Mack the Knife

That’s All (Atco)

Dylan cites Bing Crosby’s version of “The Whiffenpoof Song.”

Art Neville- The Whiffenpoof Song

Let New Orleans Rock (Blues Interactions)

Dylan cites Cher’s 1971 version of “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves.” This is a later live version.

Cher- Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves

Live in Concert (HBO)

Dylan cites Rosemary Clooney’s version of “Come On-A My House.”

Kay Starr- Come On-A My House

Come On-A My House – single (Capitol)

Eddy Arnold- You Don’t Know Me

You Don’t Know Me – single (RCA)

Johnnie & Jack- Poison Love

Poison Love – single (RCA)

Alvin Youngblood Hart- Nelly was a Lady

Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster (American Roots Publishing)

Dylan cites Johnnie Ray’s version of “The Little White Cloud That Cried.”

Jackie Washington- The Little White Cloud That Cried

The World of Jackie Washington (Borealis)

Ray Charles- I Got a Woman

The Birth of Soul (Atlantic)

The Fugs- CIA Man

The Fugs First Album (Fantasy)

Grateful Dead- Truckin’

American Beauty (Warner Bros.)

Dylan cites Vic Damone’s version of “On the Street Where You Live.”

Pat Guadango- On the Street Where You Live

1964 (Campbell Music)

Next week: Willie Nelson at 90.

Find me on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Saturday Morning with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Saturday February 25, 2023

Saturday Morning is an eclectic roots-oriented program on CKCU in Ottawa heard on Saturday mornings from 7 until 10 am (Eastern time) and available for on-demand streaming anytime. I am one of the four rotating hosts of Saturday Morning and base my programming on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches format I developed at CKUT in Montreal.

CKCU can be heard live at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and https://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web.

This episode of Saturday Morning was recorded and can already be streamed on-demand at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/128/59512.html

Odetta- Mr. Tambourine Man

Odetta Sings Dylan (RCA)

Ben Sures- Cry Like a Flood

The Story That Lived Here (Ben Sures)

Kat Goldman- Gypsy Girl

Gypsy Girl (Kat Goldman)

Jason Lang- Firewater

Handled with Care (Famgroup/Genison Music)

Ken Pearson, Penny Lang & Mike Regenstreif (1976) photo: Felicity Fanjoy

Penny Lang- It’s Not Easy

Stone + Sand + Sea + Sky (Borealis)

Jason Lang- Senses of Your Leave

Handled with Care (Famgroup/Genison Music)

Ramblin' Jack Elliott & Mike Regenstreif (2006)

Ramblin' Jack Elliott- South Coast

South Coast (Red House)

Hoyt Axton- Evangelina

The A&M Years (A&M)

Mark Rubin – Jew of Oklahoma- Good Shabbes

The Triumph of Assimilation (Rubinchik)

Bonnie Raitt- Just Like That

Just Like That (Redwing)

Mike Regenstreif & Jesse Winchester (2006)

Jesse Winchester- That’s What Makes You Strong

Gentleman of Leisure (Sugar Hill)

Emily White- Stone in Your Pocket

Songs You Didn’t Know I Wrote About You (Squeezed Fresh Productions)

Benny Bleu- Lost Goose

March of the Mollusk (Benny Bleu Haravitch)

Taivi- Ukraiyna

Ukraiyna – single (Taivi)

John McCutcheon- Ukrainian Now

Ukrainian Now – single (Appalsongs)

Artists for Action- Which Side Are You On? *

Which Side Are You On? – single (Figs D Music)

Mike Regenstreif & Eric Bibb (2005)

Eric Bibb- Masters of War

Migration Blues (Stony Plain)

*The Artists for Action singers and musicians are, in alphabetical order, Black Umfolosi, Ray Bonneville, Bruce Cockburn, Chris Corrigan, Guy Davis, Ani DiFranco, Maria Dunn, Adam Hill, Bob Jensen, James Keelaghan, Richard Knox, Lucy MacNeil, Tony McManus, Moulettes, Oysterband, Richard Perso, Heather Rankin, Martin Simpson, and Jon Weaver.

The Vanier Playboys- Reach Out and Touch a Hand

Deux (The Vanier Playboys)

Ball & Chain & The Wreckers- More

Satisfied (Ball & Chain)

Mike Regenstreif & Lynn Miles (2013)

Lynn Miles- Hockey Night in Canada

Black Flowers Vol. 3 (Lynn Miles)

Moore & McGregor- Don’t Let Us Get Sick

Dream with Me (Ivernia)

Eric Kilburn- Waiting at Your Door

Reckonings (Wellspring)

Shelley Posen- Long, Long Tunnel

Old Loves (Well Done Music)

Doug Cox & Linda McRae- Ready for the Times to Get Better

Beyond the Great Pause (42 RPM)

Annie Capps- Two Different Things

How Can I Say This? (Yellow Room)

Jaimee Harris- Love is Gonna Come Again

Boomerang Town (Thirty Tigers)

Danny Britt- Friends and Memories

All Over the Map (Red Dawg Music)

Taraf Syriana- Abdul Karim’s Tango

Taraf Syriana (Lulaworld)

Reggie Garrett- Stagecoach Mary

York’s Lament & other stories (WonderDog)

Dom Flemons- Steel Pony Blues

Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboys (Smithsonian Folkways)

Odetta- Rock Island Line

Lookin’ for a Home: Thanks to Leadbelly (M.C.)

Preservation Hall Jazz Band & Ani DiFranco- Freight Train

Preservation (Preservation Hall)

Julian Taylor- 100 Proof

Beyond the Reservoir (Howling Turtle)

Mavis Staples & Lucky Peterson- Wade in the Water

Spirituals & Gospel (Gitanes)

Dave Rudolf- Mary Don’t You Weep

Traditional (MoneyTree)

Reggie Harris- Sheep, Sheep/Little David

Ready to Go (Reggie Harris Music)

The Klezmatics & Joshua Nelson- Didn’t It Rain

Brother Moses Smote the Water (Piranha)

Last Forever with John Cohen- Dillard Chandler

No Place Like Home/Last Forever (2nd Story Sound)

John Cohen- The Story That the Crow Told Me

Stories the Crow Told Me (Acoustic Disc)

Grateful Dead- Uncle John’s Band

Workingman’s Dead (Warner Bros./Rhino)

The Dumptrucks- Friend of the Devil

Selections (Laughing Cactus)

The Persuasions- Ripple

Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead (Grateful Dead)

CornMaiz Stringband- Jubilee

Fresh-Picked Kentucky Music (CornMaiz Stringband)

I’ll be hosting Saturday Morning next on March 25. I also host Stranger Songs on CKCU every Tuesday from 3:30-5 pm. 

Find me on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Rosalie Sorrels 1933-2017

I am deeply saddened today to learn that my old friend and colleague – and folk music legend – Rosalie Sorrels passed away last night at her daughter Holly’s home in Reno, Nevada. Her children – Holly Marizu, Shelley Ross and Kevin Sorrels – and I believe other family members were with her as she slipped away over the past several days. Rosalie would have turned 84 on June 24.

Rosalie was one of the great interpretive singers on the folk music scene. She sang traditional folk songs, cabaret songs and gave us definitive versions of the songs of so many songwriters – notably Bruce “Utah” Phillips and Malvina Reynolds, among many others. And, of course, she was a remarkable songwriter herself.

Rosalie began her folk music journey in the 1950s and early-‘60s, collecting traditional songs and performing locally in Idaho and Utah – and making an occasional trip east to perform at events like the Newport Folk Festival. She made several albums of traditional songs in those years and one of them, “Folksongs of Idaho and Utah,” originally released in 1961, remains in print to this day via Smithsonian Folkways.

In 1967, she made a lovely album, “If I Could Be the Rain,” in which she introduced her own songs for the first time. About half the songs were Rosalie’s and about half were written by her Salt Lake City friend, Bruce “Utah” Phillips. Rosalie’s guitarist on the album was Mitch Greenhill, who would go to work with Rosalie often over the years as a musician, record producer, and agent.

Around that time, Rosalie’s marriage broke up and she hit the road – five children in tow – to earn her living on the folk music circuit. Nanci Griffith tells Rosalie’s story in the song “Ford Econoline.” Lena Spencer of the legendary folk music venue Caffé Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York, gave Rosalie a home base as she began to travel to folk clubs, concerts and festivals – sometimes traveling by Greyhound Bus – in the U.S. and Canada.

Rosalie played in Montreal often. I was still in high school when I first heard and met Rosalie at the Back Door Coffee House in Montreal, sometime around 1970. The gig at the Back Door was four or five nights long and it was during that stay in Montreal that Rosalie wrote “Travelin’ Lady,” which became her signature song.

I began to produce concerts in Montreal as a college student in 1972 and my first booking with Rosalie was a double bill with Utah Phillips at Redpath Hall on the McGill campus in 1973. By 1974, I was running a Montreal folk club, the Golem Coffee House, and Rosalie played there often throughout the 1970s and ‘80s. Sometimes Rosalie came to the Golem as a solo artist and sometimes with musicians like Mitch Greenhill or Tony Markellis. Sometimes she came to the Golem on a double bill with Utah Phillips, and once as part of a three-woman show with Terry Garthwaite of Joy of Cooking and writer and storyteller Bobbie Louise Hawkins.

Rosalie was a quietly mesmerizing performer on stage and I have so many great memories of performances that I produced with her in Montreal – but also of concerts I saw her do in many other places in Canada and the U.S. In addition to her singing, Rosalie was one of the most masterful storytellers ever.

In the late-‘70s, I operated an independent booking agency for a few years representing a select roster of folk music artists and I was honored that Rosalie was one of my treasured clients.

In her song, “Rosalie, You Can’t Go Home Again,” Rosalie refers to lessons that she learned from her “teachers” – not referring to school teachers. Rosalie was one of my teachers. Rosalie taught me much about the endurance of the human spirit and that adversities and personal tragedies can be the basis for cathartic art. And she taught me how to recognize greatness in songs.

Rosalie Sorrels & Mike Regenstreif (1993)

A quick anecdote: I was at a folk festival with Rosalie – it could have been Mariposa or Philadelphia or Winnipeg or Vancouver, or maybe somewhere else, and Rosalie was in a multi-artist workshop. One of the other artists, a folkier-than-thou type who I will leave nameless, ranted on about how there were no good rock songs, that contemporary singer-songwriters starting with Bob Dylan were all terrible, and that traditional folk songs or songs that have lasted 50 or 60 years were the only ones that mattered. Rosalie responded by saying something like, “Yeah, you’re right, let me play you this song.” She proceeded to sing “If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine/And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung…” When she finished the song, the folkier-than-thou guy said something like, “Now that was a great song! Where did you collect it?” Rosalie turned to him and said, “It’s by the Grateful Dead.”

The memories of times spent with Rosalie – in Montreal, Saratoga, Vermont, Philadelphia, Boston, Toronto, etc. – are flooding back tonight. I remember the performances, for sure, but I also treasure the times around her kitchen tables in Ballston Spa or Burlington or in bars and friends’ living rooms all up and down the road, sitting up late and sharing songs, stories, drinks and memories.

I’m listening tonight to Rosalie’s 1972 album “Travelin’ Lady.” It was her most recent album the first time I produced a concert with her and it remains one of my favorites of Rosalie’s albums. One of the most inspiring songs of Rosalie’s original songs on the album is “Postcard from Indian (Keep on Rocking).” It’s a kind of existential, secular prayer song:

“If I should die before I wake
There’s nothing here I’d want to take with me
I’ve had the best, I’ve had the worst
I’ve been last, I got into the line first
I’ve been hungry, I’ve been satisfied
I’ve seen the carnival, I’ve taken every ride

If I should wake before I die
I’d never stop to wonder why
I’d grab the day, take it and run
Naked, reaching for the sun
I’d run like a rabbit, fly like a dove
All around the world, searching for love…sweet love

And yet here I lie, afraid to sleep
Afraid to look inside too deep
Just want to climb outside this skin
I’ll find out who it is that’s in there
Oh, friends and lovers, keep me afloat
Keep on rockin’…It’s a beautiful boat.”

That’s a message I think Rosalie would want to leave us with: “Keep on rockin’…It’s a beautiful boat.”

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Bonnie Dobson – Take Me for a Walk in the Morning Dew

BONNIE DOBSON

Take Me for a Walk in the Morning Dew

Hornbeam Recordings

hornbeamrecordings.com

Canadian folksinger Bonnie Dobson began her career, circa 1960, singing traditional songs. She recorded quite prolifically in the ‘60s and is best known for her 1961 song, “Morning Dew,” the classic anti-nuclear war anthem recorded by countless artists from the Grateful Dead to Long John Baldry and Vince Martin & Fred Neil.

By sometime in the 1970s, Bonnie was living in England and stepped away from performing and recording for many years. She has returned with a vengeance, though, with Take Me for a Walk in the Morning Dew, a collection of new recordings on which she revisits some of the most memorable songs – both original and traditional – that she recorded back in the day, as well as several songs I’d not heard from her before.

While Bonnie’s voice is just as beautiful as what I remember from her early Prestige LPs, her singing, more than 50 years later, is much more powerful – and more than a match for the folk rock arrangements and the fine band that accompanies her – which brings a very different feeling to the familiar songs. For example, while her 1964 live recording of “Morning Dew” captured the vulnerability and fear of the Cold War period, this new version brings out the anger that such vulnerability and fear should have ever existed.

A few of my other favorite tracks include “Born in the Country,” a rocking version of Judy Roderick’s adaptation of Richard “Rabbit” Brown’s “James Alley Blues,” one of my favorite songs from Harry Smith’s remarkable Anthology of American Folk Music; “Living on Plastic,” a witty, post-divorce piece about living on credit with the bills going to the ex; and “JB’s Song,” a beautiful lament for someone who died at much too young an age.

As much as I enjoyed the band arrangements on most of the album, my very favorite piece here is Bonnie’s stunning a cappella version of the traditional “Dink’s Song.” I’ve got dozens of versions of “Dink’s Song” in my collection and this is one of the best.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif