Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – January 28, 2025: Harmonica

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/595/68751.html

Theme: Harmonica.

Jerry Jeff Walker- Harmonica Talk

Bein’ Free (Atco)

Sonny Terry

Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee- Harmonica Blues

Sonny Terry’s New Sound (Folkways)

Guy Davis & Fabrizio Poggi- Freight Train

Sonny & Brownie’s Last Train (M.C.)

Paul Rishell & Annie Raines- Key to the Highway

I Want You to Know (Tone-Cool)

James Cotton with Joe Louis Walker & Charlie Haden- Country Boy

Deep in the Blues (Verve)

Michael Jerome Browne with JJ Milteau & Eric Bibb- Shake ‘Em on Down

Gettin’ Together (Borealis/Stony Plain)

Vince Halfhide with Steve Marriner- Sonny Boy Said

Vince Halfhide (Vince Halfhide)

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band- Blues with a Feeling

An Anthology: The Elektra Years (Elektra)

Corky Siegel

Corky Siegel- Movement I – Filisko’s Dream

Symphonic Blues No. 6 (Dawnserly)

Corky Siegel- Movement II – Slow Blues

Symphonic Blues No. 6 (Dawnserly)

Corky Siegel- Movement III – Allegro

Symphonic Blues No. 6 (Dawnserly)

Larry Adler- Blues in the Night

Harmonica Virtuoso (Audio Fidelity)

Paul Reddick- Breathless Girls

Sugar Bird (NorthernBlues Music)

Mike Stevens- Clarinet Polka

The World is Only Air (Borealis)

Saul Broudy- Bei Mir Bist Du Sheyn

Travels with Broudy (Saul Broudy)

Shtreiml- Uncle Tibor’s Spicy Paprikash

Spicy Paprikash (I.J. Rosenblatt)

Toots Thielmans- Five O’Clock Whistle

The Soul of Toots Thielmans (Dr. Jazz)

John Sebastian & David Grisman- Harmandola Blues

Satisfied (Acoustic Disc)

Grant Dermody- Waterbound

Lay Down My Burden (Grant Dermody)

Charlie Musselwhite- Blues Up the River

Mississippi Sun (Alligator)

Marc Nerenberg- This Time Around: A Banjo Harmonica Duet

Little Birdie: Birds, Beasts & Banjo Blues (Marc Nerenberg)

Next week: Remembering Garth Hudson (1937-2025).

--Mike Regenstreif

Eric Bibb – Migration Blues

ERIC BIBB

Migration Blues

Stony Plain

ericbibb.com

stonyplainrecords.com

As I’ve said often before, Eric Bibb is one of the most inspired, and inspiring, of contemporary blues and folk artists. Eric has been quite prolific over the past two decades, releasing many studio albums, live albums and collaborative albums and the quality of his work has been consistently high. My best-of-the-year lists here on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches blog have included an Eric Bibb album for six of the past eight years – and they were on my lists many times before that when the Montreal Gazette was publishing my annual picks.

Migration Blues, a topical and timely set of songs about the migration of peoples and individuals – from country to country or place to place – is one of Eric’s most powerful and compelling collections.

Before discussing any of the songs, I’ll mention that this is an intimate recording. In addition to Eric, who variously plays various guitars and six-string banjo, the core musicians are multi-instrumentalist Michael Jerome Browne of Montreal on various banjos, various guitars, fiddle and mandolin; and harmonica master JJ Milteau of France. The three virtuoso musicians – whether all three or two at a time – are a seamless unit.

The album opens with Eric’s “Refugee Moan,” a haunting song sung from the perspective of a refugee praying for a way out of his war-torn country to find a home somewhere peaceful. The song is a universal plea that could apply to refugees from any of the conflicts that have plagued our world in recent decades – even recent centuries.

Other songs about refugees include “Prayin’ for Shore,” a heartbreaking account of refugees – such as the millions who have left Syria over the past six years, or the Vietnamese boat people of a generation ago, or the displaced Jewish Holocaust survivors attempting to reach pre-state Israel after the Second World War – who cross treacherous waters in flimsy boats because they have no other choice; and “Four Years, No Rain,” co-written by Michael and B.A. Markus, which reflects how combinations of war, drought and even terrorism affect refugees.

“Delta Getaway,” co-written by Eric and JJ, reflects the experience of a pre-war blues artist from Mississippi who witnessed a lynching and feared for his life in the Jim Crow South setting out to make his way north to Memphis and on to Chicago. A similar theme is voiced later in the album on “With a Dolla’ in My Pocket” and, to an extent, on “Blacktop,” an older song co-written by Michael and B.A. Markus and sung as a duet by Eric and Michael.

“Diego’s Blues,” co-written by Eric and Michael, tells the origin story of the son of a Mexican woman and African American man. Diego’s mother was one of the many Mexican migrants who’d arrived in the Delta in the 1920s to find work in an area experiencing a labor shortage because of the migration of African Americans leaving the rural South for the urban North hoping to escape Jim Crow; while “We Had to Move” – inspired by the story of James Brown’s family – describes the reasons why the people in one particular African American neighborhood were forced to migrate somewhere else.

Michael Jerome Browne, Mike Regenstreif & Eric Bibb (2005)

There are three powerful instrumentals on the album. In the title track, co-written by Eric, Michael and JJ, you can virtually feel the footsteps of people on the move in the sounds of the instruments. In “La Vie c’est un oignon,” Michael’s fiddle and JJ’s harmonica wordlessly tell the story of the forced migration of 18th century Acadians from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island to Louisiana where they became Cajuns; and in the short “Postcard from Booker,” Eric plays a guitar owned by the late blues artist Booker (Bukka) White in a tribute that perhaps reflects the traveling life that White led as a musician.

In addition to the songs written or co-written by Eric, Michael and JJ, there are also superb versions of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” (including the often unsung political verses) and Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” two songs which remain as powerful today as when they were written more than 75 and 50 years ago.

The album ends quietly with a beautiful version of the traditional African American spiritual “Mornin’ Train,” featuring Eric on vocals and guitar with Ulrika Bibb singing harmony and Michael setting the pace with his banjo.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Eric Bibb & JJ Milteau – Lead Belly’s Gold

ERIC BIBB & JJ MILTEAU

Lead Belly’s Gold

Stony Plain Records

ericbibb.com

Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter, 1888-1949) was one of the most definitive and influential of all American folk and blues singers. He lived a life of a legend that included early years growing up in the Deep South at a time of intense racism and spent time in Texas and Louisiana prisons for killing two men. Legend has it that he sang his way out of prison in 1934, earning a pardon from the governor of Louisiana.

Lead Belly’s recordings from the 1930s and ‘40s, and his repertoire – songs that he wrote and traditional songs that he adapted – have been cornerstones of the folk and blues revivals from the 1930s to the present and his tremendous influence has also been felt by artists from other music genres from rock to jazz.

Pete Seeger, who was inspired by Lead Belly to play 12-string guitar, once told me that the greatest thing he ever did in music was to help spread the songs of Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie after they could no longer do so. And I have fond memories of sitting with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee – the first musicians older than my parents who I had the chance to get to know – as they told me stories about their friends Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie. I don’t think I ever saw Pete or Sonny and Brownie do a concert that didn’t include a Lead Belly song.

Eric Bibb is one of my favorite contemporary folk and blues artists and I’ve written about many of his terrific albums over the years. As the son of the late Leon Bibb, an acclaimed singer and actor who passed away last month at age 93, Eric grew up in a musical milieu in New York City in which Lead Belly songs would have been familiar to him virtually from birth. Now, Eric, who has lived most of his adult life in Europe, has teamed with French harmonica player Jean-Jacques (JJ) Milteau to record Lead Belly’s Gold, a magnificent collection of 13 songs from Lead Belly’s repertoire and three original songs written and sung from what they imagine to be Lead Belly’s perspective. The first 11 tracks were recorded in concert at the Sunset, a Paris jazz club, while the other five are studio recordings.

Each of the Lead Belly songs is a well-known classic, and even though I’ve heard each of them countless times over many decades, they all sound fresh and contemporary thanks to Eric and JJ’s outstanding performances.

Some of these renditions, notably the allegorical “Grey Goose” and the topical “Bourgeois Blues, are incredibly powerful. Some others, like “Bring a Little Water, Sylvie,” “Midnight Special,” “Pick a Bale of Cotton,” “Titanic” and “Rock Island Line,” are completely infectious.

Among my other favorites are the haunting renditions of “House of the Rising Sun” and “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.”

Lead Belly

All three of the original songs – two written by Eric and one by Eric and JJ – are also excellent. “When I Get to Dallas,” is sung from the perspective of the young Lead Belly en route there to be a street singer. In “Chauffeur Blues,” which very appropriately follows “Bourgeois Blues,” Eric imagines how Lead Belly might look back at the indignity of being a servant for exploitative folklorist John Lomax after his parole. And, in “Swimmin’ in a River of Songs,” the album’s finale, Eric imagines Lead Belly looking back at some of the memorable events of his life, all experienced while “swimmin’ in a river of songs.”

As always, Eric’s singing and guitar playing is brilliant throughout and he is ably assisted by JJ’s fine harmonica playing and Larry Crockett’s drums and percussion. Gilles Michel plays bass on several songs while Michael Jerome Browne is on 12-string guitar and mandolin on “Swimmin’ in a River of Songs.” Michael Robinson and/or Big Daddy Wilson's backing vocals are heard on several songs. Wilson’s singing reminds me of Sam Gary’s singing with Josh White.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif