Winnipeg Folk Festival Line-Up 2024

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Richard Barry

Though I will not be attending the Winnipeg Folk Festival this year between July 11-14 at Bird’s Hill Provincial Park, I did take the opportunity to scan the line-up to get a sense of what I might be missing. You can find the full list of performer’s here at the festival’s website.

The headliners are Mt. Joy, Orville Peck, Lucinda Williams, Band of Horses, Shakey Graves, Noah Cyrus, The Tallest Man on Earth, Joy Oladokun, and The War And Treaty. Among others who will be on stage are Grace Potter, Cowboy Junkies, Joy Oladokmn, Bonny Light Horseman, Neil Francis, Noah Reid, SYML, Leith Ross, Moontricks, Gone Gone Beyond, Hemna Deland, Ariel Posen, Nick Shoulders, Steph Strings, Choir! Choir! Choir!, Elisapie, Roman Clarke, Mall Velasquez, Bendigo Fletcher, Medicine Singers, The Grogans, The Fretless, Dirtwire, Jake Blount, and Etran De Lair.

As most of the acts are new to me, it was interesting to peruse the types of music on offer helpfully provided by the festival organizers, including Roots/Rock; Afro-Psychedelic; Indie Rock; Indie Folk-Rock; Folk; Roots; Pop; Pop/Folk; Alt Country; Roots/Trad; Afro-Futurist Roots; American Old Time; Old Time Folk; Egyptian Experimental Electronic; Swamptronica/Electro Twang; Future Folk; Electro-Afro Funk; Singer-Songwriter; Americana/Old Time; Folk/Traditional; Country Rock; Polish Folk; Celtic Fusion; Psychedelic Banjo; Chamber Folk; Garage Surf Rock; Art Punk Jazz Rock; Bluegrass; Alternative R&B; Traditional Chinese Pipa, etc.

From what I can glean, folk festivals cover a lot of territory these days as artistic directors try to be inclusive, a laudable goal, but also attempt to be responsive to newer and younger audiences who have to be enticed to show up if these events are to continue at all. I get that and I’m on board.

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“Taking a Chance On Love” – Ethel Waters and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson (1943)

Posted on May 13, 2024 by Richard Barry
Cabin in the sky

“Taking a Chance on Love” was written by Vernon Duke (music), John La Touche and Ted Fetter, (lyrics), and published in 1940.

It was introduced in 1940 on Broadway in the show Cabin in the Sky, a production notable for its all black cast, and performed by Ethel Waters and Dooley Wilson.

In 1943, a feature film versionwas released, starring Waters and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, in which the song was featured. 

The IMDb describes the plot:

A compulsive gambler dies during a shooting, but he’ll receive a second chance to reform himself and to make up with his worried wife.

One assessment suggests a difference of opinion regarding the racial politics of the production:

Some remember Cabin in the Sky for its intelligent and witty script, which some claimed treated its characters and their race with a dignity rare in American films of the time. Others, like actress Jean Muir, described Cabin in the Sky’s racial politics as “an abomination,” arguing that moviegoers should write to the studios when they saw “old stereotypes of Negro caricature” like those in the film

A Benny Goodman cover featuring Helen Forrest reached #1 in 1943 and the song has since become a jazz standard.

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“Sardine Song” – Old Man Luedecke (2019)

Posted on April 20, 2024 by Richard Barry

Old Man Luedecke, also known as Christopher “Chris” Rudolph Leudecke, is an award-winning, banjo and guitar playing, singer-songwriter from Chester, Nova Scotia. He began releasing albums in 2002 and now has a total of nine, with a tenth, She Told Me Where to Go, due out in May. He is a two-time Juno Award winner in the Roots & Traditional Album of the Year – Solo category and a multiple East Coast Music Award winner.

I took this photo at a show at Hugh’s Room Live in Toronto on April 16th.

“Sardine Song” is off of his 2019 album called Easy Money. Real Jimmy Buffett vibe on this one.

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“Get Off the Track” – Originally performed by the Hutchinson Family Singers (1844)

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Richard Barry

I’m currently working through Charles Hamm’s wonderful Yesterdays: Popular Song in America, which details popular music in U.S. from the earliest days through the 1960s.

Though the book is full of fascinating material, I was struck by a chapter on the Hutchinson Family Singers, a group considered to be the most popular American entertainers in the middle-third part of the 19th century. They popularized close four part harmony and group singing in America performing a range of “political, social, comic, and dramatic works” while developing what is considered by many to be a uniquely American style of music.

Hamm describes their emergence as involving two stories: one “concerning the development of performers and composers of popular song comparable to Europeans,” and the other “the use of popular song other than for entertainment for the first time in America.”

The 1830s, ’40s, ’50s were troubled, turbulent, dramatic, disturbing, memorable decades [in America]; popular song, in becoming part of these events, took on quite a different character from what it had been before.

Popular Song in America, p. 141.

Over time, the Hutchinsons became passionate about the abolition of slavery. One of their songs, written and performed by the group, “Get Off the Track,” was a particularly powerful expression of their anti-slavery position, so much so that publishers were reluctant to touch it, though it eventually was published. A lithograph cover of the sheet music shows a railway coach labelled “Immediate Emancipation” with banners attached with the names of two prominent anti-slavery journals of the day.

Though a very popular group, the Hutchinsons did not avoid controversy or worry excessively about the damage their vocal opposition to slavery might do to their popularity instead staying:

As long as nothing was said, we could take our choice; but if we were told we must not sing a song that expressed our convictions, we then felt that we must cry aloud and spare not.

Popular Song in America, p. 51.

In a time before modern mass media, it is impossible to know precisely how significant an impact widely heard popular performances had on the political climate of the day. One imagines it would have been considerable.

The Youtube clip below is lovely, though I have no idea of the identity of the performers. In any case, thank you, whoever you are.

“Get Off the Track”

Ho! the Car Emancipation,
Rides majestic thro’ our nation,
Bearing on its Train, the story,
Liberty, A Nation’s Glory.
Roll it along, Roll it along, Roll it along,
thro’s the Nation Freedom’s Car, Emancipation,
Roll it along, Roll it along,
Roll it along, thro’ the Nation,
Freedom’s Car. Emancipation.

First of all the train, and greater,
Speeds the dauntless Liberator
Onward cheered amid hosannas,
And the waving of Free Banners.
Roll it along! Spread your Banners
While the people shout hosannas.

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Canadian Folk Music Awards – 2024

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Richard Barry

I was in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador for the annual Canadian Folk Music Awards, which took place over two night, Saturday and Sunday, May 7th and 8th. I’ll be writing about it at Roots Music Canada in a day or two. Meanwhile, here’s a shot I took of the hosts Tom Power and Amelia Bartellas who did a fantastic job of holding things together. In fact, the whole event was outstanding.

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“Love is Pleasing” – Karan Casey (2008)

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Richard Barry

This one is in Alan Lomax’s famous Folk Songs of North America. As he notes, many traditional songs popularized by American singers ran “west across the ocean.”

Thus in the 1940s Jean Ritchie, the Kentucky folk singer, met an Irish Kitchen maid just come over to New York City, who had this lovely Irish variant [on a familiar theme]. Jean learned the song almost without thinking, and the rest of us, also without reflection, accepted it as one of our own.

I’ve posted below a perhaps more modern take by Karan Casey, an Irish singer known to many as having once been with the band Solas. The Ritchie version is the bonus track.

By the way, if you are interested in reading more about British Isles traditional music and its migration to America, have a look at a book by Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr, Wayfaring Stranger: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia.

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“Sir John”- Blue Mitchell (1959)

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Richard Barry
big 6

Richard Allen “Blue” Mitchell was on the planet from 1930 to 1979. He was an American jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock, and funk trumpet player. If I can still count, he had 27 albums as a leader, and a bunch more as a sideman. He recorded for Riverside, Blue Note and Mainstream Records.

Big 6 appears to be his first album as a leader, released April 2, 1959 in the hard bop category. Personnel, in addition to Mitchell, are: Curtis Fuller (trombone); Johnny Griffin (tenor saxophone); Wynton Kelly (piano); Wilbur Ware (bass); and Philly Joe Jones (drums).

The AllMusic biography says this, which may explain why I had never heard of him.

Owner of a direct, lightly swinging, somewhat plain-wrapped tone that fit right in with the Blue Note label’s hard bop ethos of the 1960s, Blue Mitchell tends to be overlooked today perhaps because he never really stood out vividly from the crowd, despite his undeniable talent.

Another reason he may be less well known as a jazz trumpeter is that he played, as noted above, in a number of styles.

Probably aware that opportunities for playing straight-ahead jazz were dwindling, Mitchell became a prolific pop and soul session man in the late ’60s, and he toured with Ray Charles from 1969 to 1971 and blues/rock guitarist John Mayall in 1971-1973. Having settled in Los Angeles, he also played big-band dates with Louie Bellson, Bill Holman, and Bill Berry; made a number of funk and pop/jazz LPs in the late ’70s; served as principal soloist for Tony Bennett and Lena Horne.

This is a tune written by Mitchell on the Big 6 album called “Sir John.” Good player.

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“Cheek to Cheek” – Fred Astaire (1935)

Posted on March 21, 2024 by Richard Barry
Top Hat

Irving Berlin wrote “Cheek to Cheek” for the 1935 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers vehicle Top Hat. As you can see in the video below, Astaire sings the song to Rogers as they dance, of course.

This was a good song for Astaire as his recording of it spent five weeks at #1 in 1935 on Your Hit Parade and was named the #1 song of the year. It was also nominated for the Best Song Academy Award for 1936, but lost to “Lullaby of Broadway.” Can’t have everything.

The Jazz Standards website ranks this one at #187 of standards all-time and writes this about the Astaire/Rogers movies:

The American public went crazy for the duo of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid-1930s. Their RKO musicals were the perfect escapist fare, showing how the “other half lived” during the tough days of the Depression. Astaire (dressed to the nines, suave and debonair) and Rogers (coquettish and elegantly clad in evening attire) along with superb music and choreography made these films sure-fire hits.

For the musicians in the room, they also write this:

“Cheek to Cheek” took some time to become comfortable to jazz musicians. Its unusual 72-bar length and A-A-B-C-A structure proved a bit daunting for some players, but the more advanced ones found the tune the perfect challenge with its engaging melodic and chordal structure.

The Discogs website lists countless covers: Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Bing Crosby, Pharoah Sanders, Joshua Redman, Charlie Mingus, and on and on. More recently  Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga took a run at it on an album of jazz classics with this as the title track.  

Not the best voice in the biz but Fred could sure work a song.

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“Back at the Chicken Shack” – Jimmy Smith (1963)

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Richard Barry
smth organ

Jimmy Smith (1925-2005) helped to popularize the Hammond B-3 electric organ and had significant success with a series of instrumental jazz albums. He was also responsible for forging a connection between ’60s soul and jazz.

Mark Deming at AllMusic:

Jimmy Smith wasn’t the first organ player in jazz, but no one had a greater influence with the instrument than he did; Smith coaxed a rich, grooving tone from the Hammond B-3, and his sound and style made him a top instrumentalist in the 1950s and ’60s, while a number of rock and R&B keyboardists would learn valuable lessons from Smith’s example.

Smith recorded more than 30 albums for Blue Note between 1956 and 1963 working with artists like Kenny Burrell, Stanley Turrentine, and Jackie McLean.  In 1963, Smith signed a new record deal with Verve.

Smith’s first album for Verve, Bashin’: The Unpredictable Jimmy Smith, was a critical and commercial success, and the track “Walk on the Wild Side” became a minor hit. Smith maintained his busy performing and recording schedule throughout the 1960s, and in 1966 he cut a pair of celebrated album with guitarist Wes Montgomery. In 1972, Smith’s contract with Verve expired, and tired of his demanding tour schedule, he and his wife opened a supper club in California’s San Fernando Valley.

In 2004, he was honored as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Personell for Back at the Chicken Shack: Jimmy Smith (organ); Kenny Burrell (guitar); Stanley Turrentine (tenor saxophone); Donald Bailey (drums).

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“Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” – Bing Crosby (1932)

Posted on March 19, 2024 by Richard Barry
Borther

With all the talk of income inequality and diminishing life chances for more and more Americans, this song came to mind.

“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” was written in 1930 by lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and composer Jay Gorney. It was featured in the 1932 musical “New Americana,” a broadway show that failed. Incredibly, the song almost didn’t make it to the stage or radio as Republicans considered it anti-capitalist propaganda and wanted to suppress it. Let me see, 1932. What could have been going on then to cause people to look at capitalism critically?

Fortunately, the censors did not get their way as the song was certainly one of the most prominent of the Depression Era. No doubt it counts as a protest song as it describes a worker who helped build the country and fought in WWI but can’t find work in hard times.

The best know versions of the time belong to Al Jolson, Rudy Vallee, and Bing Crosby. As for timing, both Vallee and Crosby released versions in 1932 just before FDR became president, each scoring a number one hit, not that FDR  needed the help.

In the 1970, the New York Times asked Harburg to update the lyrics for the politics of the moment. This is what he came up with:

Once we had Roosevelt
Praise the Lord
Life had meaning and hope
Now we have Nixon, Agnew, and Ford
Brother, can you spare a rope?

I’m sure others could bring the lyrics even further up to date.

Here’s the Crosby version obviously in the style of the early thirties and less what we came to expect of Bing later. He would have been just under 30 when he recorded this.

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