Old Joe Clark's a fine old man, tell you the reason why

He keeps good liquor 'round his house,
Good old rock and rye.
I'd never sung Old Joe Clark until the week I recorded it and it felt like a revelation. That has been the beauty of my life with Pete Seeger's book American Favorite Ballads. I've lived with it for fifty years. It's taught me chords that go together in a song - chords I hadn't known would work in that key. It's taught me how raucous one can get with only two chords, and much more. And singing this brought out a singing style I didn't know I had. What fun! Thanks, Pete.

Frankie and Johnny

Frankie and Johnny is one of the great songs in Pete Seeger's American Favorite Ballads. It's one that can be really jazzed up, blues-ed up. I used what I think of as the 'Jimmie Rodgers Bump' for the intro and in between verses. You'll hear that rhythm a lot in Yodelin' Jimmie Rodgers songs. I changed lyrics substantially within the existing framework of the verses. My changes were made intuitively over the years I've sung this one. Pete said in the introduction to his Oak Publication "you can make it your own by singing it."

Jesse James had a hand and a heart and a brain.

Here's another song from Pete Seeger's American Favorite Ballads, a wonderful songbook still in print (see my post Pete Seeger Lives Here). I sure had fun with this one. Jesse James is that kind of iconic folk hero who goes down in ballads as a hero regardless of the facts. He robs the rich and gives to the poor, we sing. I changed a line to "He took from the 1 and gave to the 99." We need a lot more of that, only in the form of taxation -) The song portrays Jesse as a Robin Hood character. In reality he was something else - a Confederate sympathizer and a killer, but in the song he lives on as a hero. Damn that Robert Ford! Thank you, Billy Gashade!

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ps. I have updated the blog a few below this one - The US is heading for it's own Ukraine-like crisis to provide a link to the most stunning essay I have read in recent memory. It's about violence in America; it's by Chris Hedges and it resonates especially in the light of the US state of Geogia and it's apalling gun law and the anti-government actions of Nevada ranchers to which our government caved in.

The top two blogs on my site are being left as the latest blogs because I've linked them to a Pandora submission of "Pete Seeger Lives Here."

Pete Seeger Lives Here!

Pete Seeger recorded a series of records beginning in, I believe, the 1950s called American Favorite Ballads. Then in 1961 Oak Publications published a songbook by the same name. I recently recorded 18 of the songs at Elephonics Recording Studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jesse Korman is the owner and engineer of this fine studio and he found Jared Putnam, a superb upright acoustic bass player to accompany me. I will be sharing some of these songs here and telling stories about them as I go.
American Favorite Ballads now available from Oak Archives, Music Sales America, distributed by Hal Leonard Corporation. I'm quite sure one could easily find a copy. ISBN 978-0-8256-0094-4
This wonderful book has been an instructor to me - some songs have chord structures I would never have guessed at, others are wonderfully simple learning songs with two chords. It has been a reminder of my childhood - I used to sing these songs in school. And it has been a comfort to me, something I've returned to over and over through the years.
We play it uptempo. I added some scat singing and repeats for fun.