re: Old Timey -- a thread for pre-rock country, folk, and blues

Lomax's Prison Recordings - Black Woman

Lomax's Prison Recordings - Rosie

Lomax's Prison Recordings - Stackolee (this is the one I couldn't find)

Al Dexter - "Pistol Packin' Mama" (1943)

"Pistol Packin' Mama" is notable as one of the first songs, after "You Are My Sunshine" had blazed the trail a couple of years earlier, to cross over from country music onto the pop charts. Bing Crosby's cover would go to #1 and sell over two million copies.

The song was so popular the Duke of Windsor was caught humming the tune in public, and Irving Berlin wrote in his score for Annie Get Your Gun: "But men don't buy pajamas, for pistol packin' mamas, oh you can't get a man with a gun...". Life magazine would eventually refer to the song as "a national earache".

It made a lot of people who'd never paid much attention to country music aware of the genre.


Al Dexter:



The song was so immensely popular it inspired a film the same year it was released:



A WWII airplane:

A couple of Calypso standards:

King Radio - "Mathilda" (1938)

King Radio - "Man Smart Woman Smarter" (1936) -- Some may know this song as a concert staple of the Grateful Dead. I first heard it in a cover by Robert Palmer. Roseanne Cash did a country version around the same time, but I don't think it works sung by a woman.

"Man Smart Woman Smarter" had been popularized in the US by Harry Belafonte in the early '50s. This version was covered a few years later by... Desi Arnaz in one of the last I Love Lucy episodes.


King Radio

I actually posted the Carter Family's version of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" on page 5 (also Wikipedia claims it's from 1936, not 1927)

There's a PBS American Masters documentary on the Carter Family you can read about here

The Carter Family - "No Depression In Heaven"

This song would give a name to a musical movement more than 50 years after its release

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Thanks for sharing

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Thank you

It's nice getting a reply to this thread every few months

Has anyone posted these?

Charley Patton

Sweet Emma

Bo Carter

Ida Cox

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Whoa Nellie -- I thought there were only two extant photographs of Robert Johnson. When was this discovered?

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Thomas Dorsey (July 1, 1899 – January 23, 1993) was known as "the father of black gospel music" and was at one time so closely associated with the field that songs written in the new style were sometimes known as "dorseys". Earlier in his life he was a leading blues pianist known as Georgia Tom.

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Thomas Dorsey in his "Georgia Tom" days:



After hearing the call:

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As formulated by Dorsey, gospel music combines Christian praise with the rhythms of jazz and the blues. His conception also deviates from what had been, to that time, standard hymnal practice by referring explicitly to the self, and the self's relation to faith and God, rather than the individual subsumed into the group via belief.

Dorsey, who was born in Villa Rica, Georgia, was the music director at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago from 1932 until the late 1970s. His best known composition, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", was performed by Mahalia Jackson and was a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.. Another composition, "Peace in the Valley", was a hit for Red Foley in 1951 and has been performed by dozens of other artists, including Queen of Gospel Albertina Walker, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Dorsey died in Chicago, aged 93.

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"If You See My Savior"

The Flying Clouds Of Detroit - "Peace In The Valley" (1946)

Hank Williams Sr - "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"

The original rockstar.

John McCormack - It's A Long Way To Tipperary

John McCormack - I Hear You Calling Me

John McCormack - My Wild Irish Rose

Grande Maestro: John McCormack - Il mio tesoro

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Lawrence Tibbett and John McCormack got into a friendly argument about their respective B-flats. "I can sing a better B-flat than you can" Tibbett proclaimed and produced a sample. McCormack grinned and replied "Maybe so...but I get more money for my B-flats than you do." This ended the argument.

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Famous for his extraordinary breath control, he could sing 64 notes on one breath in Mozart's Il mio tesoro from Don Giovanni, and his Handelian singing was just as impressive in this regard.

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McCormack made hundreds of recordings... also broadcast regularly by radio and performed in a few sound films, among them the first British colour film, Wings of the Morning (1937), and Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941), where he had a small uncredited part.

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...had apartments in London and New York. He hoped that one of his racehorses, such as Golden Lullaby, would win the Epsom Derby, but he was unlucky.

McCormack also bought Runyon Canyon in Hollywood in 1930 from Carman Runyon.

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...made many friends in Hollywood, among them Will Rogers, John Barrymore, Basil Rathbone, Charles E. Toberman and the Dohenys.

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Boardwalk got me on this kick, DWI.

Dock Boggs - Country Blues {original 1927 recording}

Dock Boggs - Oh Death

Dock Boggs - false hearted lovers blues {original 1927 recording}

Dock Boggs - Sugar Baby {original 1927 recording}


the artist formerly known as Clarence Ashley

mighty fine a pickin and a sangin