Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – November 12, 2024: Remembering Barbara Dane (1927-2024)

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/595/67642.html

Theme: Remembering Barbara Dane (1927-2024).

Barbara Dane, the folk, blues and jazz singer – and political activist – died at home in Oakland, California on October 20 at age 97. Barbara was born in Detroit in 1927 and began singing at demonstrations for racial equality and labor rights while still a teenager. She remained an activist for those causes, as well as for peace and women’s rights all of her life.

In 2017, I had the honor of interviewing Barbara on stage during the Wisdom of the Elders panel at the Folk Alliance International conference in Kansas City. She truly had a remarkable and inspiring life.

Mike Regenstreif & Barbara Dane (2017)

Barbara Dane- Stranger’s Blues

Barbara Dane Sings the Blues (Folkways)

Barbara Dane- Nine Hundred Miles

Anthology of American Folk Songs (Tradition)

Barbara Dane- When I was a Young Girl

Anthology of American Folk Songs (Tradition)

Barbara Dane & Doc Watson- You Don’t Know Me/You Don’t Know My Mind

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane & Pete Seeger- Solidarity Forever

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane with Jesse Cahn, Pablo Menendez & Johnny Harper- Oh, Had I a Golden Thread

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane & The Chambers Brothers- It Isn’t Nice

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane & The Chambers Brothers- Come By Here

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane with Memphis Slim & Willie Dixon- Walking Blues

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane & Lightnin' Hopkins- Sometimes I Believe She Loves Me

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane- Ain’t Nobody Got the Blues Like Me

Trouble In Mind (Dreadnaught)

Barbara Dane- Prescription for the Blues

Trouble In Mind (Dreadnaught)

Barbara Dane with Earl 'Fatha' Hines & His Orchestra- Livin’ with the Blues

Livin’ with the Blues (Dreadnaught)

Barbara Dane- Basin Street Blues

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane- Mama Yancey’s Advice

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane with Earl 'Fatha' Hines & His Orchestra- Mecca Flat Blues

Livin’ with the Blues (Dreadnaught)

Barbara Dane- Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane & Pete Seeger- We Shall Not Be Moved

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Barbara Dane & The Chambers Brothers- This Little Light of Mine

Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs (Smithsonian Folkways)

Next week: Immigration, Part 1 – The Man from God Knows Where.

--Mike Regenstreif

Saturday Morning with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Saturday February 26, 2022

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 prerecorded at home and can already be streamed on-demand at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/128/55354.html

Bruce Cockburn- Wondering Where the Lions Are
Greatest Hits (1970-2020) (True North)

Mike Regenstreif & Arlo Guthrie (1996)

Arlo Guthrie- Buffalo Gals
Son of the Wind (Rising Son)
Eliza Gilkyson- Buffalo Gals Redux
Songs from the River Wind (Howlin’ Dog)
Buffao Gals Band- Little Sugar Creek
Where the Heart Wants to Go (Buffao Gals Band)
Annie & Rod Capps- Build the Fire
When They Fall (Maynard Music)

Tom Mitchell- You Save Everything
When the Moon is Right (Truesongs)
Ronney Abramson- Three O’Clock Ride
Three O’Clock Ride – single (Castor Island Music)
Tom Paxton- What a Friend You Are
Comedians & Angels (Appleseed)
Steel Rail- Paper Girl
Coming Home (Crossties)

Dom Flemons- He’s a Lone Ranger
Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboys (Smithsonian Folkways)
Over the Moon- John Ware
Chinook Waltz (Borealis)
Odetta- When I was a Cowboy
Lookin’ for a Home: Thanks to Leadbelly (M.C.)

Kenny 'Blues Boss' Wayne- Stewball
Blues from Chicago to Paris: A Tribute to Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon (Stony Plain)
Memphis Slim & Willie Dixon- John Henry
Songs of Memphis Slim & Willie Dixon (Folkways)
Dave Van Ronk & The Ragtime Jug Stompers- K.C. Moan
Ragtime Jug Stompers (Oldays)

Mike Mullins- Hallelujah
8-String Sketches (Rubber Chicken)

James Gordon- Crybabies Caravan
Crybabies Caravan – single (James Gordon)

Bruce Murdoch- (If I Had) Wings
Bruce Murdoch (Radio Canada International)
Eliza Gilkyson- Farthest End
Songs from the River Wind (Howlin’ Dog)
Stephen Mendel- Ready for the Storm
Sing Me a Story (Stephen Mendel)

Mike Regenstreif & Garnet Rogers (2006)

Garnet Rogers- Corrina, Corrina
Night Drive (Snow Goose Songs)
Bob Dylan- Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (Columbia/Legacy)
Ralph McTell- West 4th Street and Jones
Hill of Beans (Leola)
Kevin Hearn & Thin Buckle with Garth Hudson- You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
Garth Hudson Presents a Canadian Celebration of The Band: 10th Anniversary Edition (Curve Music)

Janis Ian- Nina
The Light at the End of the Line (Rude Girl)
Nina Simone- Stars
The Montreux Years (BMG)
Tom Russell & The Norwegian Wind Ensemble- Nina Simone
Aztec Jazz (Frontera)

The StorySound All-Stars: Rachelle Garniez, Chaim Tannenbaum, Dick Connette, Ana Egge, Amanda Homi, Connie Kirch, Daisy Press, Terry Radigan, Lucy Wainwright Roche, Suzzy Roche, Loudon Wainwright III & Lorenzo Wolf- Dangerous Business
Dangerous Business – single (StorySound)
Noel Paul Stookey- Fun Police
Fazz: Now & Then (Neworld Multimedia)

RanchWriters- Earl’s Taxi
RanchWriters (True North)

Don Armstrong- Annabelle Teaching Her Daddy to Dance
Mother Don’t Give Up on Me Now (Ronstadt Record Co.)
Annabelle Chvostek- Dance Me to the End of Love
Dance Me to the End of Love – single (Annabelle Chvostek)
Leonard Cohen- Thanks for the Dance
Thanks for the Dance (Columbia/Legacy)
Lynne Hanson- Hip Like Cohen
Hip Like Cohen – single (Lynne Hanson)

Eliza Gilkyson & Mike Regenstreif (2006)

Eliza Gilkyson- Charlie Moore
Songs from the River Wind (Howlin’ Dog)
Sally Potter- May the Light of Love
Summer’s Child (Sally Potter)
David Roth- Last Day On This Earth
Last Day On This Earth (Maythelight Music)

Jana Pochop- Head Spin
The Astronaut (Jana Pochop)
Jordi Baizan- Palm Reader
The Love in You (Berkalin)
Maria Dunn- Declan’s Song (The Good Life)
Joyful Banner Blazing (Distant Whisper)

Folkapotamus- We’ll Dance Again
We’ll Dance Again (PhatCat)
Isabel & The Uncommons- Distance
Distance – single (Isabel Fryszberg)
Karen Morand & The Bosco Boys- Ghost Hotel
Ghost Hotel (Karen Morand)
Keith Glass Band- Different World
Different World – single (Stump)

Artie Traum & Pat Alger- From the Heart
From the Heart (Rounder)

I’ll be hosting Saturday Morning next on March 26. I also host Stranger Songs on CKCU every Tuesday from 3:30-5 pm.

Find me on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Guy Davis – Kokomo Kidd

GUY DAVIS

Kokomo Kidd

M.C. Records

guydavis.com

As I said two years ago in the intro to my review of Juba Dance, over the past two decades, Guy Davis has been one of the premiere interpreters of traditional acoustic blues and one of the songwriters whose in-the-tradition work has kept the genre vital and alive in modern times. In the hands of Guy and a few of his peers, the traditional blues forms remain timeless – as relevant now as they were 30, 50 or 80 years ago. All of the recordings Guy has released since the limited edition Guy Davis Live in 1993 (repackaged as Stomp Down Rider in 1995) have been both a homage to Guy’s musical forebears and a crucial contribution to contemporary music.

Guy is in great form on Kokomo Kidd with eight new songs and five covers – a couple of which are very pleasant surprises.

The album opens with the bouncy “Kokomo Kidd.” Guy assumes the persona of Kokomo Kidd, a seemingly ageless bootlegger/dealer/pimp/fixer, who supplies liquor, drugs and women (or men) to top Washington politicians during Prohibition and through to the present where he continues as an ultimate dirty trickster. Guy’s banjo playing sets the rhythm, his voice tells the story in a kind of blues-based pre-rap style, and the bottom is filled by some terrific tuba playing by Ben Jaffe of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Other favorites from among Guy’s originals include “Taking Just a Little Bit of Time,” which celebrates stepping out of the hectic pace of contemporary life “for just a little bit of time”; “Shake It Like Sonny Did,” a great tribute to country blues harmonica legend Sonny Terry (who I had the opportunity to know and work with in the 1970s); and the delightfully catchy “Maybe I’ll Go,” a nod to Mississippi John Hurt.

With the support of Professor Louie on Hammond organ, Guy moves into classic soul ballad mode on the powerful “She Just Wants to be Loved,” an empathetic piece about a lonely woman who has never found the love she’s spent her lifetime looking for.

The most moving piece on the album is “I Wish I Hadn’t Stayed Away So Long,” in which Guy poignantly laments that his life as touring musician meant the he “got home too late to say goodbye” when his mother (the legendary actress Ruby Dee) died.

Guy Davis & Mike Regenstreif (2006)

Among the songs Guy didn’t write are three blues standards. Among them is Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster” done in classic Chicago blues style with Charlie Musselwhite on harmonica. 

The pleasant surprises I mentioned are a soul ballad version of Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” and a reggae version of Donovan’s “Wear Your Love Like Heaven.” Both songs so familiar and yet so fresh-sounding in these interpretations.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Catherine Russell -- Inside This Heart of Mine

CATHERINE RUSSELL
Inside This Heart of Mine
World Village
catherinerussell.net

In the spring of 2006, an album called Cat by Catherine Russell, a singer I’d never heard of before, landed on my desk. As a radio host and producer, and as a music reviewer for Sing Out! and several other publications, a lot of albums by artists I’ve never heard of before land on my desk. Every once in a while, one of those albums jumps out at me from the first track and I know I’m hearing someone special.

And so it was with Catherine Russell. She grabbed me from this first track, an old jazz tune called “Sad Lover Blues.” Cat’s version – Cat, short for Catherine, has been her nickname since childhood – blends classic blues, swing, R&B and country influences into something a jazz-loving folkie like me was going to take to right away. As I listened to the other 14 songs on the album, it quickly became obvious that this was a great singer who’d certainly been exposed to all of those kinds of music and much more.

It was easy to tell – from the sound of her voice and the maturity of her delivery, and from the pictures on the CD cover that showed an attractive, middle-aged woman – that Cat couldn’t be a newcomer to the world of music. But why, I wondered, hadn’t I heard of her before? How could it be that this 50-year-old singer was releasing her very first album?

Montreal has the world’s largest jazz festival and in my review of Cat for The Montreal Gazette, I said, “Russell needs to be here at the jazz festival next year.” Somebody at the jazz festival was paying attention and there she was, in June 2007, wowing a crowd of 10,000 or more at the Montreal International Jazz Festival. And her trip to Montreal for the jazz festival gave me the opportunity to sit down with Cat and find out about this fabulous singer I’d never heard of before that album landed on my desk.

I found out from Cat that she’d spent the first three decades of her career as a side person, helping make other artists sound good. “People ask me all the time why I waited so long to do my first record,” she said. I wasn’t waiting. I was a side person.”

Those are the opening paragraphs to “Blues & Country & All That Jazz: The Genre Fusing Music of Catherine Russell,” an article I wrote for the Winter 2008 issue of Sing Out! Magazine.

When I interviewed Catherine Russell on Folk Roots/Folk Branches and for that Sing Out! article, Cat was preparing to record Sentimental Streak, her second CD. Released about the same time as the article was published, Sentimental Streak was every bit as good as that inspired debut that grabbed me in 2006.

I could say the same about Cat’s third release, Inside This Heart of Mine. But, I won’t, because, if anything, it’s even better. Her alto, sounding even more relaxed and confident than before, pulls you right into this set of mostly classic jazz and blues tunes anchored by inventive arrangements steeped in all of the kinds of music she grew up listening to – her parents are the late Luis Russell, a jazz legend who was Louis Armstrong’s bandleader in the 1930s and ‘40s, and Carline Ray, a bass player and singer, who was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a band that made history in the 1940s as the first all-female big band – and all the different kinds of music she’s played and sung over the years.

I love the whole album, but if I had to pick a few highlights they’d certainly include what is now my all-time favourite version of Willie Dixon’s oft-recorded “Spoonful,” featuring some wonderful blues banjo playing by Matt Munisteri (who’s heard on guitar for most of the album and on banjo on a couple of others) and the tuba of the always-wonderful Howard Johnson; “We the People,” a delightful Fats Waller tune from 1938 that swings like mad that I’d never heard before; “Long, Strong and Consecutive,” a sassy song filled with double entendres which seems like it could be a Bessie Smith song but was actually written by Duke Ellington in the 1940s; and “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” a great old tune that Cat’s father must have played hundreds of times with Louis Armstrong.

Along with the classic material, Cat also includes a couple of great contemporary songs that fit right in. “November,” is a sad song of separation written by producer Paul Kahn; and “Just Because You Can,” written by Rachelle Garniez, sounds like something Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli might have played (if Reinhardt played banjo).

Catherine Russell is always a joy to listen to. Inside This Heart of Mine will be released on April 13.

Pictured: Catherine Russell and Mike Regenstreif at CKUT during Folk Roots/Folk Branches (June 28, 2007).

--Mike Regenstreif

Mose Allison -- The Way of the World

MOSE ALLISON
The Way of the World
Anti-
moseallison.com

Back about 30 years ago, Mose Allison used to come through town occasionally and his shows were absolutely required listening to we who knew we were musically hip (or, at least, thought we were). We’d sit in really bad joints like the Rising Sun and listen to him play – sometimes with local pickup musicians who couldn’t quite figure out his timing – great original tunes like “Your Mind is on Vacation,” probably the ultimate putdown song, “Everybody’s Cryin’ Mercy,” “Your Molecular Structure,” and “Parchman Farm,” or a weird, jazzy covers of surprising choices like Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’” or “You Are My Sunshine.”

We all thought that Mose was one of the hippest old guys we’d ever encountered (actually, Mose then, would have been younger than I am now). Now, at age 82, and on his first studio album in 12 years, Mose is still one of the hippest guys around as he plays his patented blend of blues and jazz with occasional suggestions of country and folk.

That hipness is obvious right from the get-go on The Way of the World when Mose opens with “My Brain,” on which he puts original lyrics to the template of Willie Dixon’s “My Babe” to wittily expound on the efficaciousness of his aging brain cells (of which there is no doubt).

Mose is still a terrific piano player – listen to “Crush,” a Monkish instrumental – and he’s still singing with that distinctive and unmistakable Mose Allison phrasing.

Among the highlights are original songs like “Modest Proposal,” a sly indictment of all those who presume to speak on behalf of God, and “The Way of the World,” co-written with producer Joe Henry, a bit of homespun philosophy from someone who’s been around long to have a handle on the ways of the world; and such covers as “I’m Alright,” Loudon Wainwright III’s kiss-off to an ex, and “Everybody Thinks You’re an Angel,” written by daughter Amy Allison and featuring some very nice, folkish slide guitar playing by Greg Leisz.

Speaking of Amy Allison, father and daughter do an odd, but charming, duet on Buddy Johnson’s “This New Situation,” that, coming at the very end of the album, almost seems like a passing of the torch.

--Mike Regenstreif