Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – June 4, 2024: Remembering Spider John Koerner; The Enduring Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis

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/595/65407.html

Themes: Part 1: Remembering Spider John Koerner (1938-2024) / Part 2: The Enduring Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis (1896-1972)

Part 1: Remembering Spider John Koerner

Spider John Koerner was an influential folk and blues legend who died of cancer on May 18 at age 85.

Spider John Koerner was already one of the leading performers on the Minneapolis folk scene when Robert Zimmerman, still a teenager, moved there to attend the University of Minnesota. Spider John was highly influential in the musical direction that Zimmerman took that year – including beginning to call himself Bob Dylan. In his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan wrote: “Koerner was tall and thin with a look of perpetual amusement on his face. We hit it off right away … when he spoke he was soft-spoken but when he sang he became a field holler shouter. Koerner was an exciting singer and we began playing a lot together.”

I first discovered Spider John Koerner while I was a teenager. It was probably 1969 or ’70 when I bought an LP called Blues, Rags & Hollers by the trio of Koerner, Ray & Glover – Spider John Koerner, Dave "Snaker" Ray and Tony "Little Sun: Glover. The album, from 1963, was mostly solo cuts by one or another of the three, along with a few duo cuts by two of the three.

Koerner, Ray & Glover- Linin’ Track

Blues, Rags & Hollers (Red House)

Ray Wylie Hubbard- Spider, Snaker and Little Sun

Tell the Devil I’m Coming As Fast As I Can (Bordello)

Spider John Koerner & Dave "Snaker" Ray- Black Dog

(Lots More) Blues, Rags & Hollers (Red House)

Koerner, Ray & Glover- What’s the Matter with the Mill

(Lots More) Blues, Rags & Hollers (Red House)

Spider John Koerner- Froggie Went a-Courtin’

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Been (Red House)

Spider John Koerner- The Roving Gambler

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Been (Red House)

Spider John Koerner- The Days of Forty-Nine

StarGeezer (Red House)

Spider John Koerner- Taking My Time

StarGeezer (Red House)

Part 2: The Enduring Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis

Reverend Gary Davis, who died in 1972 at age 76, was a street preacher and a highly influential legend of blues, gospel and folk music. His guitar playing influenced many of the artists who came into the folk scene in the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s and continuing to the present.

Reverend Gary Davis- You Got to Move

A Little More Faith (Prestige/Bluesville)

Mountain City Four- Motherless Children

Mountain City Four (Omnivore)

Mr. Rick- I’ll Fly Away

Mr. Rick Sings About God + Booze (Mr. Rick)

Mary Flower- Sit Down on the Banks

Gary Davis Style: The Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis (Riverlark)

Michael Jerome Browne- Reverend Strut

Gettin’ Together (Borealis/Stony Plain)

Reverend Gary Davis- I’m Glad I’m in That Number

A Little More Faith (Prestige/Bluesville)

Marie Knight- When I Die

Let Us Get Together: A Tribute to Reverend Gary Davis (M.C.)

Andy Cohen- Pure Religion

Oh Glory, How Happy I Am: The Sacred Songs of Rev. Gary Davis (Riverlark)

William Lee Ellis- I Heard the Angels Singing

Gary Davis Style: The Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis (Riverlark)

Roy Book Binder- The Preacher Picked the Guitar

Singer-Songwriter Bluesman (PEGleg)

Dave Van Ronk- Cocaine

Live at Sir George Williams University (Just a Memory)

Reverend Gary Davis- Buck Dance

Live & Kickin’ (Just a Memory)

Guy Davis- Candy Man

Stomp Down Rider (Red House)

Penny Lang & Friends- God Knows How Much We Can Bear

Gary Davis Style: The Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis (Riverlark)

Mitch Greenhill & Mayne Smith- Samson & Delilah

Gary Davis Style: The Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis (Riverlark)

Bruce Cockburn- Twelve Gates to the City

Bone on Bone (True North)

Reverend Gary Davis- I Will Do My Last Singing in This Land Somewhere

Live at Newport (Vanguard)

Next week: Songs for Fathers

--Mike Regenstreif

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday September 5, 2023: Joni Mitchell and Others at the Newport Folk Festival

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/595/61791.html

Theme: Joni Mitchell and Others at the Newport Folk Festival.

Brandi Carlisle- Introduction

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell featuring Lusius- Big Yellow Taxi

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell featuring Brandi Carlisle & Marcus Mumford- A Case of You

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell featuring Taylor Goldsmith- Amelia

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell- Both Sides Now

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell- Just Like This Train

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell- Summertime

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell featuring Brandi Carlisle- Carey

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell featuring Celisse- Help Me

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell featuring Taylor Goldsmith- Come in from the Cold

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell featuring Brandi Carlisle- Shine

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Joni Mitchell- The Circle Game

Joni Mitchell at Newport (Rhino)

Ian & Sylvia- C.C. Rider

Live at Newport (Vanguard)

Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee- Drink Muddy Water

Newport Folk Festival: Best of the Blues 1959-68 (Vanguard)

Mississippi John Hurt- Candy Man

Newport Folk Festival: Best of the Blues 1959-68 (Vanguard)

Joan Baez- Farewell, Angelina

Live at Newport (Vanguard)

Tom Paxton- Ramblin’ Boy

Best of the Vanguard Years (Vanguard)

Reverend Gary Davis- I Won’t Be Back No More (I’m Going to Sit Down on the Banks of the River)

Live at Newport (Vanguard)

Peter, Paul & Mary- If I Had My Way (Samson and Delilah)

At Newport 1963-1965 (Shout! Factory)

Jean Carignan- Le Reel du Diable (Devil’s Dream)

Newport Folk Festival 1963: The Evening Concerts, Vol 2 (Vanguard)

Next week: Part 1 – Songs and Conversation with author David Eisenstadt; Part 2 – Songs of Dave Carter.

--Mike Regenstreif

Rory Block – A Woman’s Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith

RORY BLOCK

A Woman’s Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith

Stony Plain Records

roryblock.com

In 2006, after more than three decades as one of the finest contemporary interpreters of traditional country blues, and as an accomplished songwriter in the country blues tradition, Rory Block released an album called The Lady and Mr. Johnson, a magnificent tribute to Robert Johnson, the Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist who made a series of what would eventually become highly influential recordings in 1936 and 1937 before his death at age 27 in 1938. Rory followed that album with a series of equally fine tributes to her mentors – blues legends she met and was influenced by while growing up in Greenwich Village – including Son House, Skip James, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White and Reverend Gary Davis.

Now, with A Woman’s Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith, Rory begins a new series of tributes to legendary women blues singers. Bessie Smith (1894-1937) was a logical artist with whom to begin this series. The 160 recordings Smith made between 1923 and 1933 remain among the most influential of the classic blues era and earned her the title of “The Empress of the Blues.”

While Smith recorded with pianists and other jazz musicians – including Louis Armstrong – Rory has arranged these songs in her own country blues style for vocals and guitar, sometimes overdubbing more guitar parts, bass, homemade percussion and harmony vocals herself. So, while these 10 songs are familiar from Smith’s versions, Rory makes them her own – with her powerful guitar playing and soulful singing.

Among my favorites here are “Jazzbo Brown from Memphis Town,” a song that pays tribute to a turn-of-the-20th-century musician from before the recording era; “Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer,” which evokes a Harlem speakeasy during Prohibition; and a very sexy version of “Empty Bed Blues.”

I’m looking forward to more volumes in Rory’s tribute series to legendary blues women with great anticipation.

The photo of Bessie Smith, taken in 1936, is from the Carl Van Vechten Photographs collection at the Library of Congress.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Rory Block – Keepin’ Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White

RORY BLOCK

Keepin’ Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White

Stony Plain Records

roryblock.com

In 1974, when I was 20-years-old, I was a stage manager (area co-ordinator) at the Mariposa Folk Festival and one of the artists I got to work with that year at Mariposa was Booker “Bukka” White, a 68-year-old legend of the Delta blues. I wasn’t yet familiar with White’s recordings, but I knew some of his songs via recordings by Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk and Tom Rush. What I remember most, more than 40 years later, was White’s imposing presence sitting on stage with his steel-bodied National guitar, and the authority and power in his singing and slide playing. That June weekend in Toronto was the only time I got to see him play live. He died less than three years later.

Rory Block, who grew up in the folk music community in Greenwich Village, met White there in 1965, when she was about 15. “Watching him perform was transformative. Bukka had absolutely no mercy on the guitar and slammed it like Paul Bunyan wielding an axe,” she writes in the notes to Keepin’ Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White, the latest in her series of tribute albums to legendary blues artists she had the opportunity to know and learn from as a kid. Earlier releases in the series include tributes to Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James.

While Rory has often included a song or two she wrote about those artists on these Mentor Series tribute albums, along with her versions of their classic songs, she brings many more of her own songs to this project than ever before. Of the 10 tracks, half are Bukka White classics and half are Rory’s original songs inspired, in some way by him.

She opens the album with a pair of original tracks. In “Keepin’ Outta Trouble,” she gives us a couple of scenes from (or imagined from) White’s life: a fight in a Mississippi barroom that gets him in trouble and a prison term at Parchman Farm that ends when he impresses the governor with his music. Then, in the gospel-influenced “Bukka’s Day,” we hear about his hard life of work growing up, the influence of the church, his becoming a musician and again, of that fight that put him in prison. Ultimately, it’s a piece of blues philosophy about the saint and the sinner in all of us.

Rory’s songs later in the album include “Spooky Rhythm,” in which she pictures White as an itinerant musician, “Gonna Be Some Walkin’ Done,” which was inspired by White’s guitar part to his song “Jitterbug Swing,” and by an off-hand comment he made on a record, and “Back to Memphis,” a tribute to the music White played in Memphis so many decades ago.

Booker "Bukka" White

Bukka White’s songs – covered with equal doses of respect for his original versions and Rory’s own creativity – include “Aberdeen Mississippi Blues,” “Parchman Farm,” and the often-covered “Fixin’ to Die Blues.”

My favorites of White’s songs in the set are the train songs, “New Frisco Train” and “Panama Limited,” a description of a train trip with the slide guitar duplicating the various sounds of the train as it makes it journey through the south.

Rory is the only musician and singer on the album but she sometimes fills out the sound by overdubbing more guitar parts, harmony vocals and creatively improvised percussion effects.

Like she had with the other albums in her Mentor Series tribute, Rory inspired me to pull Bukka White’s own recording off the shelf and listen again to that powerful musician I encountered at Mariposa so many years ago.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Dave Van Ronk – Live in Monterey

DAVE VAN RONK
Live In Monterey
Omnivore Recordings 
omnivorerecordings.com

I’ve written several times before about my valued friendship with the late, very great Dave Van Ronk (1936-2002), the legendary folk-blues-jazz-cabaret singer, guitarist and songwriter, including in reviews of Down in Washington Square, the marvelous 3-CD collection released last fall, and my book review of his memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, (completed brilliantly in Dave’s words by Elijah Wald).

My last opportunities to spend extended periods of time with Dave were in 1998 when he came to Montreal to perform at the Montreal International Jazz Festival (and sit down with me for an extensive interview on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches radio program), and then later that same summer when I was MCing and he was performing at the Champlain Valley Folk Festival in Burlington, Vermont.

Dave was pretty damn great when he started out in the 1950s – by the early-‘60s he was a major influence on Bob Dylan and just about every other singer, guitarist and songwriter who passed through the Village folk scene – and just kept getting better and better as time went on. The concerts and workshops I saw him in do in Montreal and Burlington in 1998 were all superb – Dave was at the peak of his form.

A couple of months before his great Montreal Jazz Festival concerts, Dave was in similarly fine form when he performed in Monterey, California. An edited version of that concert has now been released as Live In Monterey.

Dave’s repertoire that night seems like a pretty typical Dave Van Ronk concert. Almost all of the 16 songs are numbers I heard him do many times over the years but all are songs I never got tired of hearing him sing and play. For one thing, there were always different nuances and developments in his vocal phrasing and guitar playing that made every version of every song unique. For example, “St. James Infirmary” (sometimes known as “Gambler’s Blues’) is a song I heard him do in almost every show I ever saw him do – and there were many – and I’ve got 10 different recordings of Dave doing the song, but I hear something new and exciting in every one.

And the same goes for the other songs in the set. It is a treat to hear his whisper-to-a-growl-to-a-shout voice and inspiring, always-intricate guitar arrangements on such classics as Jelly Roll Morton’s “Winin’ Boy Blues,” Reverend Gary Davis’ “Cocaine Blues,” “Candy Man” and “Jesus Met the Woman at the Well,” Brownie McGhee’s “Sportin’ Life Blues,” his beautiful version of “He was a Friend of Mine,” adapted by Dave, Dylan and Eric Von Schmidt, from the traditional “Shorty George,” Mississippi John Hurt’s “Spike Driver Blues,” Tom Paxton’s tribute song, “Did You Hear John Hurt?” and all the rest.

Some of these songs – including “Cocaine Blues,” “Candy Man,” Bessie Smith’s “You’ve Been a Good Old Wagon,” and his own “Losers” – are infused with Dave’s patented humor while others, including “Jelly Jelly,” “St. James Infirmary” and “Winin’ Boy Blues” are informed by jazz, particularly the traditional New Orleans jazz that Dave loved and sang so well.

Although almost all of the repertoire on Live In Monterey was from the standard Van Ronk canon, the set ends with an extraordinary and beautiful version of Ian Tyson’s classic “Four Strong Winds.” Although, Dave recorded the song on To All My Friends In Far-Flung Places, I don’t recall ever hearing him perform it in concert.

The CD booklet includes words from co-producer Rick Chelew and a great essay by Happy Traum, who knew Dave from the mid-1950s on and recalls vividly their friendship from the early days in Washington Square forward, as well as Dave's importance as a musical innovator and mentor to many.

About the only thing I miss on Live In Monterey are most of the asides and stories that typically punctuated a Dave Van Ronk concert. I assume they were edited from this recording to make it a purely musical experience.

I return often to many of Dave’s albums and this is one that will certainly be among those for years to come.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif