Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Stavin' Chain


Today we feature another folk Singer . . . Stavin' Chain. The recording of him is another of Lomax's prison recordings. This one was done at the Ramsey State Farm near Otey, Texas in 1939.

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8 comments:

  1. Sorry no comment today.

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  2. The clip sounded more like gospel/blues to me. It reminded me of the song "Midnight Special" done by many including Creedence Clearwater Revival.

    John

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  3. Midnight Special was written by Huddie Ledbetter a/k/a, Leadbelly another Lomax discovery. He also wrote Cotton Fields, also covered by CCR and many many others.
    Legend has it that he was serving a life sentence for murder and charmed the Governor of Alabama into a pardon.
    Perhaps he will show up on the blog before the week is over.

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  4. More about Alan Lomax... I read that he was a consultant to Carl Sagan for the Voyager golden record that was sent into space in 1977 on one of the Voyager space crafts. That record represented the music of Earth and Lomax picked out the samples of Blues, Jazz, Rock n Roll, Clasical, etc. The Voyagers are close to reaching interstellar space.

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  5. I agree that this song reminds me somewhat of Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter) although Ledbetter's music was more sophisticated.

    This particular category of music is somewhat difficult to define. Leadbelly wrote blues and what we now regard as folk. The Midnight Special, which is usually preformed as an eight bar blues, was actually a ten bar tune in his original rendition, showing perhaps how the form hadn't quite defined during his early musical career.

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  6. I wonder how he lost his teeth.

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. any more recordings by him? He sounds interesting.

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