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!
La Bruja is a song and traditional dance in the Huapango tradition from the state of Vera Cruz. The dance usually involves a number of women with lighted candles on their heads.
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
This song was recorded by Ida Cox in 1924, Ida was one of great, if lesser known, female blues singers in the era of Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Sippie Wallace.
Mean Old Bedbug Blues
A blues from Bessie Smith
Each of these are classic blues performance in their own right and provide an interesting contrast between country blues and early jazz band styles. I always favored Bessie's rendition. I think her slower tempo with piano and guitar accompaniment captured the true creepiness of bedbugs.
Uncle Joe Gimme Mo
Calypso from Trinidad
This great Trinidadian Calypso song comes from an early recording by Wilmuth Houdini. I love the way these Calypsonians took "uncle joe and his old ban-jo", a common stereotype in minstrel shows, and transformed him into a rock star.
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.
I Ride an Old Paint
My favorite cowboy song
This is, of course, one of the great standard cowboy songs. My father used to sing me to sleep with it. Well, that was my Daddy. There were far less appropriate songs he sung to his kids.
Froggy Went a Courtin'
A classic children's song with old and new verses for kids and bigger folk.
My grandmother sang this song to me and most verses here are just as she sang them. I added a few more verses gleaned from David Highland's collection of over 170 verses on his delightful "Frog went a Courtin'" web site. And I made up a couple of new ones myself.
Young Collins
A strange old ballad learned from Peggy Seeger
Here's another spooky and strange old English ballad (Child 85). Fair Ellen it seems is an enchantress. And poor Young Collins dies after making love to her. As everyone knows this is likely to happen to young men who play around with supernatural women. Didn’t your mother tell you not to frolic with them fairy folk?
Widdicombe Fair
A bad end comes to those who mistreat poor old horses
Here is a famously celebrated English ballad. I think it qualifies as a murder ballad, though the victim be equine, as well as a ghost story.
Johnson Boys
A civil war song from the North and the South
Depending on which version of this song you hear either the Johnson boys were Civil War heroes (Flatt and Scruggs, NLCR) or complete idiots (Frank Proffit, J.E. Mainer). One theory has it that the heroic version was popular with sourthern troops and the idiot version came from northern soldiers who satirized the song.
Fod!
A really silly song
This song is a load of fun from Kenton County, Kentucky. I learned it from Mike and Peggy Seeger's 'Fly Down Little Bird' album. The first couple of verses remind me of "Rattlesnake Mountain and it is darned near as silly as that song.
Dear Okie
A dustbowl song by a cowboy singer
From Texas radio songster Doye O'Dell with help fellow Cowboy actor Rudy Sooter. Doye grew up on a Texas cotton spread in the dustbowl era. He started a radio career with WDAG in Amarillo and then the famous Mexican border station XCPM. He finally landed his own NBC radio show produced in New York.
Cotton Mill Colic
A labor song from the North Carolina mills
Here's a mill song from the 1920's, as recorded by North Carolina singer and textile worker David McCarn for Victor in Memphis Tennessee,May 1930. I learned it from the singing of the brothers Seeger (Mike and Pete - separately).
Swannanoa Tunnel
A mountain railroad song
The Swannanoa Tunnel was constructed in Western North Carolina by more than 1800 workers. Some 500 of them were convict laborers, mostly African-Americans, who were transported from the eastern part of the state. The work started in 1855 and took 24 years to finish. In this time countless workers lost their lives.
No Es Culpa Mía
A tejano song of heartbreak
It has been said that the language of love can only be sung. And nobody understood this better than the great Mexican and Tejano singers like Lydia Mendoza.
Choucoune
A song from Haiti
This Haitian song started as a poem written by Oswald Durand in 1883. He wrote the poem while jailed for criticizing political leaders in Cap-Haitien. Inspired by a lovely bird that lit on his cell window he was reminded of a girl whom he had met and admired. You may recognize the melody as 'Yellow Bird'