Newest Songs
Hell Bound Train
A cautionary tale of damnation and redemption

You know about the train that was "bound for glory". Well, this train was going the other way on the opposite track.
Jolly Roving Tar
A sea song from Newfoundland

I found this jolly sea song from Newfoundland on one of the old 'American Folksay' albums produced on Stinson records by Moses Asch, performed by Frank Warner.
No Peas No Rice
A Bahamian jazz song

A Bahamian song recorded in the 1930s by big band leaders such as Mart Brit and Count Basie and in the Bahamas by Blind Blake Alfonso Higgs.
Thorneymore Woods
A song of the noble poacher, and mean gamekeepers

An English poaching ballad as performed by Louis Killen.
La Bruja
Vampire story from Vera Cruz, Mexico. Boo!

The Devil and Bailiff McGlynn
The devil takes his due

What a fine old Irish tale. But it derives from a history that is not so jolly - the mass evictions and house levelings that took place during the Irish famine of the mid-nineteenth century. No wonder the mother in the story cries "May the devil take that awful Bailiff!".
Spotted Cow
A naughty little English folk song

Here is a traditional English song, at least I think so, I heard it from Steel Eye Span, that parcel of rogues who brought fuzz-tone electric guitar to English folk music.
Italian Carol
A christmas song from Italy

An Italian carol adapted by Pete Seeger from an old tradition in Naples in which shepherds come down from the Calabrian mountains for a festive stay in that city during the Christmas celebration.
Wild Women Don't Have No Blues
A blues for strong women

Mean Old Bedbug Blues
A blues from Bessie Smith

Uncle Joe Gimme Mo
Calypso from Trinidad

Monsieur Banjo
A creole song for kids

This children's song in Louisiana Creole. My version is an adaptation of Pete Seeger's English language version on 'American Favorite Ballads' and a French language version from the Magnolia Sisters on their delightful children's album 'Lapin Lapin'
Featured Songs
Hopalong Peter
An old time banjo song

This was recorded by J.E. Mainer's Mountaineers in the 1930's. I learned it from the NLCR.
Thinking Tonight of my Blue Eyes
A fine old love song from the Carter Family

Two Hobo Songs
Hobo songs from Jimmy Rogers, Cisco Houston and Blind Boy Grunt

Two songs written on the same sad theme. The first by Jimmy Rogers. The second was recorded in the 1960's on Broadside Ballads. The singer was billed as Blind Boy Grunt and he sounded remarkably like Bob Dylan who was under contract at Columbia at the time.
Ella Speed
A great old ragtime blues from Leadbelly

This was among the songs from a ten-inch Capitol LP recorded by Leadbelly in Hollywood in 1944. Paul Mason Howard accompanies Leadbelly on the "Dulceola" (the blues zither!) absolutely rocked.
Pretty Polly and False William
A different telling of Pretty Polly

Lewis Collins
A fine old guitar finger picking piece from Mississippi John Hurt

Devilish Mary
An anti-courtship song

Long John
Running away from the chain gang

Willie the Weeper
A jazz tune about the perils of opium smoking

The Drovers Dream
A sheep drover's night visitation

One Misty Moisty Morning
A jolly wedding song

This song comes from a seventeenth century broadside "The Wiltshire Wedding betwixt Daniel Doo well and Doll the Dairy Maid, with the Consent of her Old Father Leather-Coat, and her dear and tender Mother Plod-well." The tune is shared with another mischievous ditty , "The Friar and the Nun."
Nottamun Town
A strange nonsense tune from Jean Ritchie
