Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

After the first instalment of the country history series, it was suggested that I should have at least two compilations for each article. When I floated the idea on this blog”s Facebook page, a number of people approved of the idea. So here”s a second disc  for the Pioneer Years ““ 1920s selection.

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In the first part of the history, we noted the first ever country recording: Sally Gooden by Eck Robertson, put to record on 30 June 1922 in New York. Ragtime Annie comes from the same session, recorded the following day, this time without the civil war veteran Henry C Gilliland, who played on Sally Gooden.

We also noted that a year later, Fiddlin” John Carson scored the first country hit song with Little Old Cabin In The Lane. Carson features here again, and so does his daughter, Moonshine Kate (right), who had been touring with Carson since she was 15. It is a bit of a disappointment to report that Mr Carson was not some kind of proto hippie: Moonshine Kate was a stage name for Rosa Lee Carson, born in 1909. She died in 1992.

Samantha Bumgarner (one suspects a bureaucrat”s carelessness to be responsible for that name) probably was the first woman to record a country record. Her Shout Lou was recorded in 1924. Bumgarner, who was born in 1878, performed on the country and folk circuit until shortly before her death in 1961.

The first mix featured Uncle Jimmy Thompson, who in the mid-1920s already was in his 70s. Likewise, the fiddler Mellie Dunham started his recording career as a septuagenarian. Dunham was born in 1853 in Maine ““not a traditional centre for Old Time Music (or any music, for that matter). He must have been at least faintly conscious of the Civil War, and probably was in his 50s when he saw the first automobiles (country fan Henry Ford later invited Dunham to his residence for a performance). That alone is intriguing, I think. Better still, by profession Dunham was a maker of snowshoes, and as part of that vocation he manufactured 60 pairs of snowshoes for Peary”s Arctic expedition.

Prince Albert Hunt is credited with having been the progenitor of Western Swing. He was not the only one, nor perhaps the first, to infuse jazz and blues into his Old Time Music sound, but as a Texan he might have had more influence than the others on Bob Wills, the king of western swing and leader of the Texas Playboys. Blues In The Bottle was recorded in 1928 in San Antonio (whence I presume Wills” San Antone Rose hailed). Hunt was shot dead, apparently by a jealous husband outside a bar in Dallas in 1931. He was just 31.

Dan Hornsby , a music producer as well a singer-songwriter who frequently collaborated with Gid Tannen and his Skillet Lickers, gives a contemporary account of a minor disaster that made the news in the US in August 1928 after a building in Shelby, North Carolina collapsed, killing six and injuring 12.

This compilation features what may well be the first in the car songs genre. Oscar Ford“s song about his namesake”s Model A car preceded Frank Hutchison“s The Chevrolet Six y a few months (ford recorded his song on 11 April 1929; Hutchison his on July 9). Both preceded the Beach Boys by three decades and Springsteen by almost four.

And sensitive vegetarians might want to stay away from Gid Tannen“s Hog Killing Day, amusing though it is.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Eck Robertson – Ragtime Annie
2. Wendell Hall – It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’
3. Fiddlin’ John Carson feat. the Virginia Reelers – Arkansas Traveller
4. Samantha Bumgarner – Shout Lou
5. Kelly Harrell – I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again
6. Ernest Thompson – Are You From Dixie?
7. Charlie Poole and his North Carolina Ramblers – The Highway Man
8. Mellie Dunham and his Orchestra – Mountain Rangers
9. Harry McClintock – Hallelujah! I’m A Bum
10. Aiken County String Band – High Sheriff
11. Arthur Tanner and his Corn Shuckers – Knoxville Girl
12. Uncle Dave Macon – Rabbit In The Pea Patch
13. Jimmie Rodgers – Ben Dewberry’s Final Run
14. Prince Albert Hunt – Blues In The Bottle
15. Deford Bailey – John Henry
16. Gid Tanner’s Skillet Lickers – Hog Killing Day Pt 2
17. Uncle Eck Dunford – Old Shoes & Leggins
18. Dan Hornsby – The Shelby Disaster
19. John Dilleshaw – Farmer’s Blues
20. Carter Family – I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes
21. Tom Darby & Jimmie Tarlton – I Left Her At The River
22. Roy Harper & Earl Shirkey – The Bootleggers Dream Of Home
23. Oscar Ford – Henry Ford’s Model A
24. Frank Hutchison – The Chevrolet Six
25. Vernon Dalhart – Farm Relief Song
26. Moonshine Kate – My Man’s A Jolly Railroad Man

(includes front and back covers. PW here)

GET IT: https://rapidgator.net/file/65fdcc18f2d3a095087a66748a4c73ae/Cntry20s-2.rar.html

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Previously in A History of Country
More CD-mixes