Charlie Louvin - (July 7, 1927 – January 26, 2011)

R.I.P. Charlie Louvin.

Born on July 7, 1927 in Henagar, Alabama, Charles Elzer Loudermilk was one half of one of the greatest brother acts of all time. Professionally known as Charlie Louvin, Charlie and his brother Ira (April 21, 1924–June 20, 1965) began performing in 1940 and continued to work together as performing and recording artists until they disbanded in 1963. Although recording several secular songs (such as "Cash On The Barrelhead"), the Louvins were best known for their gospel recordings, particularly their 1960 album Satan Is Real, with its iconic cover. "The Christian Life" from that album was famously covered by the Byrds (featuring a young Gram Parsons) on their Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.

Following Ira's tragic death in a car accident, Charlie carried on as a solo performer, recording fourteen albums under his own name between 1965 and 1982. In 2007, Charlie began releasing new albums on the Tompkins Square label. Although his voice had deteriorated, he remained one of the masters of the country-gospel genre. Among his finestlate-period albums is Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs, an album released as a companion to Tompkins Square's People Take Warning: Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs, 1913-1938.

Below is a link to "I'll Never Go Back," a song cut during a 1952 radio session by the Louvin Brothers.

I once was bound by the chains of sin.
There was no light to shine within.
Down on my knees I knelt and prayed,
And He took my burdens all away.

I'll never go back to the ways of sin.
Where the Lord found me and took me in.
He came to me in a world so black.
To the ways of sin I'll never go back.

As I travel on this narrow way,
I'll help the lost to find their way.
I'll shine my light so the world can see
What a saving grace has done for me.

I'll never go back to the ways of sin.
Where the Lord found me and took me in.
He came to me in a world so black.
To the ways of sin I'll never go back.

At the set of sun I'll be going home,
To rest my soul around the throne.
I'll bid farewell in a little while,
And change my tears for a lasting smile.

I'll never go back to the ways of sin.
Where the Lord found me and took me in.
He came to me in a world so black.
To the ways of sin I'll never go back.

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Remember that I still host "Doin' The Thing," a weekly jazz program on KRML 1410 AM and 94.7 FM in Carmel, California. The show airs from 8 PM to 10PM (Pacific Time) on Sunday nights. You can also listen online by visiting the KRML website at 8 PM Pacific, 11 PM Eastern Time. Please tune in and give me feedback!


Here's a clip of Charlie performing "Will You Visit Me On Sundays" in 1970.



Download and listen to The Louvin Brothers - "I'll Never Go Back"

Merry Christmas To All!

In honor of the day, here's a recording of Bessie Smith performing "At The Christmas Ball."

Hey Bessie, it's Christmas here!
Yes, yes! Hurray for Christmas!

Christmas comes but once a year, and to me it brings good cheer,
and to everyone who likes wine and beer.

Happy New Year is after that. Happy I'll be, that is a fact.
That is why I like to hear, folks I say that Christmas is here.

Christmas bells will ring real soon, even in the afternoon.
There'll be no chimes shall ring at the Christmas Ball.

Everyone must watch their step, or they will lose their rep.
Everybody's full of pep at the Christmas Ball.

Grab your partner one an' all, keep on dancing 'round the hall.
And there's no one to fall, don't you dare to stall.

If your partner don't act fair, don't worry there's some more over there.
Seekin' a chance everywhere at the Christmas Ball.

A rollicking celebration of the earthy side of the Christmas season, "At the Christmas Ball" was recorded on November 18, 1925. Joining Bessie on this recording are Joe Smith (cornet), Charlie Green (trombone) and Fletcher Henderson (piano).

This recording is available on the excellent Dust-to-Digital collection Where Will You Be Christmas Day, a disc that comes highly recommended.

The Shameless Plug Department: You can still become a fan of "Where Dead Voices Gather" on Facebook, however, and follow us on Twitter. Where Dead Voices Gather: Using today's technology to promote yesterday's music!

Remember that I still host "Doin' The Thing," a weekly jazz program on KRML 1410 AM and 94.7 FM in Carmel, California. The show airs from 8 PM to 10PM (Pacific Time) on Sunday nights. You can also listen online by visiting the KRML website at 8 PM Pacific, 11 PM Eastern Time. Please tune in and give me feedback!

Here's a 1929 soundie featuring Bessie Smith performing "St. Louis Blues."



Download and listen to Bessie Smith - "At The Christmas Ball"

Two New Discs From Dust-to-Digital

I received an early Christmas/Birthday gift in the mail today from my good friend Henry, who will be spending the holiday in Virginia with his wife and daughter.

The gift consisted of two new releases from Dust-to-Digital, my favorite record label.

The first of the two releases is Baby, How Can It Be?, a three CD collection of old time music with a romantic theme.

The second item is called The Hurricane That Hit Atlanta which features Rev. Johnny L. Jones.

Both are superb. The Jones is his second release for D2D (the first is the LP-only Jesus Christ From A to Z). It contains songs and sermons, all recorded live at his Atlanta church. Whether you believe or not, listening to this collection is as close to truly "feeling the spirit" as anyone is likely to get.

Baby, How Can It Be? is an absolute delight. Each disc contains a theme (Love, Lust, and Contempt) which is amply expanded upon through the superb musical selection. Speaking personally, it's a fun set to listen to when you're going to through a divorce. Also contains liner notes by none other than Where Dead Voices Gather
(no relation) author Nick Toches, and an odd little graphic by 78 hound R. Crumb. Both are exceptional and well worth seeking out...

And In The End...

So, here we are. The final entry in this project. It's been an extraordinary journey that has taken me through hundreds of years of history and thousands of miles, all without leaving the chair in front of my speakers. I have listened closely to music I have heard thousands of times before, and in so doing I have heard that music afresh. I have listened to the music of the Anthology of American Folk Music one track at a time, the way it was heard by its original audience in the 1920s and 30s...and the way a young Harry Smith would have heard it, too. And after more than a year of listening to two sides a week, over and over again, until every pop and hiss was as familiar to me as the sound of my own heartbeat, what have I learned?

The first thing I did after writing the last entry was to listen to the entire Anthology straight through, in order to experience it once again as a whole. In so doing, I have drawn a few conclusions, which I will set down here:

1) The Anthology was compiled at the dawn of the LP era, which is a fact that should not be overlooked. Until the advent of the LP, there was only one way to listen to recorded music: One song at a time, one side at a time. A record was a short-lived pleasure. After a little more than three minutes, a side was finished. At that point, you had only a few options. You could play the side again, turn the record over and listen to the flip side, or you could put on another record. That was it. The LP changed the way people heard music. Suddenly, a side's worth of music wasn't a little over three minutes, but twenty minutes. Freed from the time constraint of the 78, artists could stretch in ways that hadn't been possible just a few years earlier. And it took a long time for the potential of the LP to be realized. But Harry Smith saw that the LP allowed music from the 78 era (which was already in danger of obsolescence) not only to be preserved, but to be reformed into something that commented on the music, its era, and on the present as well. One might argue that by compiling the Anthology, Harry Smith invented the mixtape, the bootleg, and the historical reissue as we know them. The historical reissue part speaks for itself. The Anthology was a mixtape in that Smith took the music created by others to make a unique personal statement. It was a bootleg in that almost all of the music included was under copyright to various extant record labels at the time. It is important to remember that prior to this moment in history, none of these things had been possible. Harry Smith was looking backwards in terms of the music he preserved, but he was looking forward in the way he preserved it. It's strange to think that Smith was on the cutting edge of technology as he was making available music that represented a lost part of America's cultural history. In that sense, a song like "Peg and Awl," a song about the industrial revolution, stands as an emblematic selection. "They've invented a new machine," the Carolina Tar Heels sing, "Prettiest thing you've ever seen." Indeed, they had invented a new machine. It spun at 33 1/3 RPM.

2) As I've noted before, much has been made of the sequencing on the Anthology and how Smith did not place the songs in a chronological sequence according to recording date. But as we've seen throughout this project, Smith did not sequence the songs randomly. Beginning with the "Ballads" volume and continuing at least through the two discs of the "Social Music" volume, the tracks are sequenced chronologically by the age of the song in question. On the "Songs" volume and the "Lost" volume, the songs are usually sequenced thematically. In many cases, Smith placed songs on similar subjects in sequence. In some cases, Smith chose songs that echoed one another lyrically or musically. This was, once again, something that could not have been done during the 78 era. The very idea of arranging songs on a recording in any kind of sequence was something unheard of, impossible, just a few years before.

3) I've tried to resist the temptation to romanticize the world described in the music heard on this collection. That it sounds so alien is one of the reasons it is tempting to imagine that this music represents a "simpler" time. I submit that when taken together, the world represented on the sixteen sides of Anthology is nearly baffling in its complexity. There's nothing simple about a world that demands a song like Rev. Sister Mary Nelson's "Judgment" or Bascomb Lamar Lunsford's "I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground." Not because the pressures that led people in the 20s and 30s to wish for a just God's vengeance or for a sense of home were so alien to us today. Quite the opposite. These songs show that people then were just as lost in the world as we are today. We love and hate and die just as they did. We all know that the Titanic sank in 1912. We forget that it also sank in 1941. And in 1968. And it 2001. Because man never stops building "unsinkable" ships, and fate never fails to sink them.

What's left is the music, and in the end, that's all we need.

Thank you for following this blog and for your moral support of the last year. Enjoy the music, because the music is all that remains.

"Aces' Breakdown" - The Four Aces

Set Four: The "Lost" Volume; Disc Two; Track Fourteen: "Aces' Breakdown" performed by The Four Aces. Recorded in New Orleans on April 2, 1938. Original issue Bluebird 2045.

The Four Aces were a Cajun group that began, in 1934, as a backing band for fiddler and Cajun music pioneer, Leo Soileau. The group originally consisted of Floyd Shreve and Dewey Landry on guitars and Tony Gonzales on bass and drums. Gonzales became the first drummer to appear on a Cajun recording when he performed on the Aces' debut session for Bluebird. The group moved to Decca the following year. After Soileau's departure in the late '30s, Floyd Shreve, who also recorded and performed with the Hackberry Ramblers, took over the group. Replacing Soileau on fiddle was Boyce Jones.

Unfortunately, as of this writing, no biographical information (including birth and death dates) was available on Shreve, Landry, Gonzales, or Jones. If anybody has any such information, please e-mail me at wheredeadvoicesgather1@gmail.com or leave a comment.

"Aces' Breakdown" is the second of only two instrumental pieces on this volume of the Anthology. It was recorded in a makeshift studio at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans on April 2, 1938. A little over six months later, Floyd Shreve would return to the St. Charles Hotel, this time with the Hackberry Ramblers, to record "Dans Le Grand Bois." Like the previous selection, "Aces' Breakdown" is a hybrid of Cajun music and traditional country and string band music. It demonstrates the cross-pollination of styles that occurred between Louisiana and Texas.

The recording is spirited and would fit comfortably on the "Social Music" volume of the Anthology. Members of the Four Aces can be heard whooping and shouting throughout the record. The song itself is a medley of fiddle tunes, including the polka "Flop Eared Mule." The group is joined by a pianist on this recording, believed to be Robert Thibodeaux, who made his own recordings at the same session.

"Aces' Breakdown" is the second recording on the Anthology to include a drum. It is difficult to know whether this was intentional on Smith's part, but it seems fitting that he closes the Anthology with the appearance of an instrument that would come to define American music during the post-war era. Virtually all genres of American music today, including country, feature drums.

With this selection, we complete not only the "Lost" Volume of the Anthology, but the Anthology itself. In our next and final entry, we will look back at the Anthology and try to examine what we have learned.

The Shameless Plug Department: You can still become a fan of "Where Dead Voices Gather" on Facebook, however, and follow us on Twitter. Where Dead Voices Gather: Using today's technology to promote yesterday's music!

Remember that I still host "Doin' The Thing," a weekly jazz program on KRML 1410 AM and 94.7 FM in Carmel, California. The show airs from 8 PM to 10PM (Pacific Time) on Sunday nights. You can also listen online by visiting the KRML website at 8 PM Pacific, 11 PM Eastern Time. Please tune in and give me feedback!

Here's a clip from the film The Big Easy (1987) that features Cajun dancing...


Download and listen to The Four Aces - "Aces' Breakdown"

"Dans Le Grand Bois (In The Forest)" - Hackberry Ramblers

Set Four: The "Lost" Volume; Disc Two; Track Thirteen: "Dans Le Grand Bois (In The Forest)" performed by Hackberry Ramblers. Recorded in New Orleans on October 22, 1938. Original issue Bluebird 2059.

The Hackberry Ramblers are an influential Cajun group based in Hackberry, Louisiana, a small town in the southwestern portion of the state. The group was founded by fiddler Luderin Darbone (January 14, 1913 - November 21, 2008) and accordionist Edwin Duhon (June 11, 1910 - February 26, 2006) in 1933. While the group is famous for their interpretations of traditional Cajun music, they also perform western swing, blues, and rockabilly. Despite numerous changes in personnel over the years, the Hackberry Ramblers continue to perform to this day, surviving the passing of founding members Darbone and Duhon in 2008 and 2006, respectively.

"Dans Le Grand Bois" is a Cajun song that borrows the melody of "La Jolie Blonde," a song first recorded by Les Breaux Freres as "Ma Blonde Est Partie." The personnel of the Hackberry Ramblers on this recording is Luderin Darbone on fiddle, Floyd and Danny Shreve on guitars, and Pete Duhon on string bass and vocal. Whether Pete Duhon was a relative of Edwin Duhon or another name Edwin Duhon went by is not clear as of this writing. It is known that Edwin Duhon played guitar, bass, piano, and harmonica in addition to the accordion, so it is possible that Pete and Edwin Duhon are one and the same.

Moi, j'connais,
Ma 'tite fille.
T'es la bas dans l'grand bois tout seule.
Moi, j'm'en vas dans l'grand bois.
Moi, j'm'en vas dans l'grand bois.
Avec ma fille.

Moi, j'connais,
Ma 'tite fille.
T'es la bas dans l'grand bois tout seule.
Moi, j'm'en vas dans l'grand bois.
Moi, j'm'en vas dans l'grand bois.
Avec ma fille.

Many thanks to Neal Pomea for providing this transcription.

Unlike many of the Cajun selections on the original Anthology, which are primitive in the extreme, "Dans Le Grand Bois" reflects the influence of non-Cajun music, particularly country and western swing.

Pete/Edwin Duhon's lead vocal includes the distinctive vocal yelp towards the end of each line, so often associated with Cajun music.

According to Henry Wright, a fellow old time music enthusiast who also happens to be fluent in French (although admittedly not Cajun French),

The...lyrics seem to evoke a visit or a date in the woods. The parts I can make out, other than the title, which he repeats many times, are "la-bas" (over there), "ma petite fille" (my little girl) and "touts seuls" (all alone). To me this suggest the singer is telling us about a date or rendez-vous with a woman in a secluded spot, perhaps in or near the bayou, taking into account that it is a Cajun song.

Not having studied the language since high school, my French is extremely rusty. However, I do remember enough to recognize j'connais, which, as I recall, means I know; connais being the first person singular form of connaître, meaning to know or to be familiar with. The expression to know in English can have a sexual connotation (albeit in a fairly archaic manner). It seems to me, then, that if j'connais has a similar sexual connotation in French, that Dans Le Grand Bois is nothing less than a song about having sexual relations in the woods.

If "Dans Le Grand Bois" had appeared on the original Anthology, it would have appeared on the "Songs" volume. It would certainly not be the first or only salacious song included in Smith's collection.

The Shameless Plug Department: You can still become a fan of "Where Dead Voices Gather" on Facebook, however, and follow us on Twitter. Where Dead Voices Gather: Using today's technology to promote yesterday's music!

Remember that I still host "Doin' The Thing," a weekly jazz program on KRML 1410 AM and 94.7 FM in Carmel, California. The show airs from 8 PM to 10PM (Pacific Time) on Sunday nights. You can also listen online by visiting the KRML website at 8 PM Pacific, 11 PM Eastern Time. Please tune in and give me feedback!

Here's some film footage of the Hackberry Ramblers performing and talking about their history in the 1991 documentary, Marc and Ann, a film about Marc and Ann Savoy.



Download and listen to Hackberry Ramblers - "Dans Le Grand Bois (In The Forest)"

"Barbecue Bust" - Mississippi Jook Band

Set Four: The "Lost" Volume; Disc Two; Track Twelve: "Barbecue Bust" performed by Mississippi Jook Band. Recorded in Hattiesburg, Mississippi on July 20, 1936.

The Mississippi Jook Band was a one-off studio band consisting of Roosevelt Graves (guitar and kazoo), Uaroy Graves (tambourine) and Cooney Vaughn (piano). They recorded a handful of sides during this July, 1936 session, including this recording of "Barbecue Bust," recorded only thirteen days after "I'll Be Rested When The Roll Is Called" heard earlier on this disc.

For biographical information on Roosevelt and Uaroy Graves, see the entry for "I'll Be Rested When The Roll Is Called."

No biographical information is available on Cooney Vaughn. In his notes, Dick Spottswood quotes blues historian Gayle Dean Wardlow, who notes that Vaughn is "remembered as a pop performer, not a blues entertainer."

The group's name is a reference to "jook joints" or "juke joints," informal establishments where ordinary people (usually African Americans in the Deep South) congregated to drink, dance, gamble, and otherwise socialize. The term "juke" is believed to derive from the Gullah word "joog," which means "rowdy" or "disorderly." Such establishments first appeared on plantations in the Antebellum South as a place where slaves could socialize and unwind after a long week of work. The practice carried over into the post-Civil War era, often appearing in labor camps, and continued into Prohibition. It has been argued that juke joints represented the first "private space" accorded to blacks in the United States.

Juke joints demanded music, of course. Solo musicians and small groups would provide music for all night dancing (musicians such as Son House and Charlie Patton were veterans of the juke joints). When mechanization and recorded music proved a cheaper way to provide music, the juke joints lent their name to the automatic record playing machines installed in bars and other such establishments, which came to be known as "juke boxes."

"Barbecue Bust" is an almost entirely instrumental piece and is one of the only instrumental performances on the fourth volume of the Anthology. Had it appeared on the original three-volume Anthology, "Barbecue Bust" would have undoubtedly been featured on the first disc of the "Social Music" volume, along with other examples of dance music.

"Barbecue Bust" is an uptempo number, with strong ties to jazz and boogie woogie. The music is occasionally punctuated with cries and exhortations (at a couple of points, Cooney Vaughn is called upon by name). During the last verse, Roosevelt Graves engages in some scat singing. By 1936, scat singing could hardly be called "new," but it serves to solidly place this recording during the jazz age. In addition, Roosevelt Graves plays the kazoo during the first few verses, clearly emulating a jazz cornet. Cooney Vaughn's barrel-house piano ploughs a path through the song, despite being under-miked. Uaroy Graves, while not as prominent in this recording as he had been in "I'll Be Rested When The Roll Is Called", nevertheless lays down a driving rhythm that keeps this recording rolling straight through to the final bar.

"Barbecue Bust" gives us a glimpse of something close to the contemporary black music of the rural south during the late '30s. It is raucous and strident and anything but polite. It is also thoroughly of its time, which further serves to distinguish this volume from the rest of the Anthology.

"Barbecue Bust," like the previous entry, was recorded in Mississippi.

The Shameless Plug Department: You can still become a fan of "Where Dead Voices Gather" on Facebook, however, and follow us on Twitter. Where Dead Voices Gather: Using today's technology to promote yesterday's music!

Remember that I still host "Doin' The Thing," a weekly jazz program on KRML 1410 AM and 94.7 FM in Carmel, California. The show airs from 8 PM to 10PM (Pacific Time) on Sunday nights. You can also listen online by visiting the KRML website at 8 PM Pacific, 11 PM Eastern Time. Please tune in and give me feedback!

Speaking of boogie woogie piano, here's one of the grand masters, Meade Lux Lewis, in a "soundie" likely made during the 1940s...



Download and listen to Mississippi Jook Band - "Barbecue Bust"