I Ain't Got No Home

Here's a Woody Guthrie song. I've been quite disturbed and angry about the entire subprime, mortgage, credit card debt thing for a while now. Learning of each new way that corporations, lenders, mortgage companies, and banks all raked in fat profits through loans, issuing unwarranted credit, and miscellaneous "financial products" to individuals who are now losing their homes and lives, and seeing how big corporations get bailed out when they get into trouble gets me frustrated. Of course, I'm tied into the whole capitalist economy as well out of necessity (I've got a bank account and a credit card) and that makes me feel pretty helpless.

So, I've turned to a Woody Guthrie song that he wrote during the Great Depression: "I Ain't Got No Home". I know that the "consumer" (i.e. us) bears a lot of responsibility in all this. But consumer culture is also the result of an intricately choreographed capitalist system where corporations make lots of money too.

This first clip is (one verse of) the gospel song that Guthrie based his song on. I sing the version that I remember from the old red book that we used to use in youth group (I believe it was called "Like a Melody II").


Here's Woody's song. I've put in two verses of my own to offer a point of view on the contemporary situation.


I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round,
Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town.
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor;
My crops I lay into the banker's store.
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been working, mister, since the day I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore

[Here are my 'new' verses]
Each day I read the news, it's always on my mind,
"Foreclosure", it makes for really great headlines,
People losing lives because of mortgage fraud
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore

They say there's a credit crunch coming round the bend,
They say "Blame the consumer, he was spending with no end."
But who was profiting from interest rates galore?
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore
[Back to Woody ...]

Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

There is a Fountain

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted something here. I've been busy re-organizing limitlim.blogspot.com., trashing out ideas for my dissertation, and surviving on my own since Edna's back home. However, I've also wanted to post more Mississippi John Hurt stuff, and haven't really mastered some of the songs that I want to post up here. I'm ok playing them but it's the singing that's tricky. Anyway, in the spirit of posting up gospel music, here's one that I worked on a while back.

The hymn, "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood", has been something I've sung for as long as I could remember. I can't be sure when I first learned it, but it probably goes back to ACS Monday morning chapels as well. We sang this a lot in Church as well, during communion. It's always been a rather staid and solemn song - we're talking about the the blood of Christ here, so I suppose the reverence is warranted. (Aside, if you ever encounter 'Zounds' in Shakespeare, remember that it's a blaspheming curse that is a rendering of 'God's wounds'). Anyway, I've done a version that I'm quite happy with where I play parts of the melody and attempt to sing a harmonic part. MJH would do something like this - he'd let the guitar complete the melodic line, but normally wouldn't sing any other part over that. The hymn would be confortable in "G" for me but I've singing it much lower, in "E", so that I can't reach the lower parts of the melody and can let my guitar fill in the blanks. So I'm taking something from him and trying to work it into this old-time fingerstyle version of the hymn.



There is a fountain filled with blood
drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains,
lose all their guilty stains;
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see
that fountain in his day;
and there may I, though vile as he,
wash all my sins away.
Wash all my sins away,
wash all my sins away;
and there may I, though vile as he,
wash all my sins away.

Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood
shall never lose its power
till all the ransomed church of God
be saved, to sin no more.
Be saved, to sin no more,
be saved, to sin no more;
till all the ransomed church of God
be saved, to sin no more.

E'er since, by faith, I saw the stream
thy flowing wounds supply,
redeeming love has been my theme,
and shall be till I die.
And shall be till I die,
and shall be till I die;
redeeming love has been my theme,
and shall be till I die.

Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I'll sing thy power to save,
when this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave.
Lies silent in the grave,
lies silent in the grave;
when this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave.

Blessed be the Name / Everlasting Arms

Here's a medley of tunes, one that Mississippi John Hurt played and another played in his alternating bass style. The first is "Blessed be the Name". MJH played lots of gospel songs and this was one of them. There's something mischievous going on in his rendition though, cause he uses the verse to go through a whole litany of people who could potentially be irritating. Anyway, here are the lyrics:

CHORUS
Blessed be the name, blessed be the name,
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be the name, blessed be the name,
Blessed be the name of the Lord

VERSE
If you don't like your preacher,
Don't carry his name abroad,
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Keep him in you bosom
And carry him home to God,
O blessed be the name of the Lord!



The second part of the tune is an old time hymn, "Everlasting Arms". I've known this one since I was a child (those Monday morning chapels in ACS get a lot of music into you ...) but I recently heard this again on Mike Seeger's indispensible album, Early Southern Guitar Sounds. Here's what Seeger says about the style of this tune:

On the first occasion I heard Elizabeth cotten play the guitar, she played a gospel song in square "church" style, then, without stopping, played the tune once again in her parlor ragtime style. I, too, play this song in those two variations.

Although Seeger describes the style as "parlor ragtime", I see lots of similarities to MJH's alternating bass technique. I tried to record it like Mike Seeger plays it, with a more straightforward version the first time round and then a more intricate version later, but things got jumbled up!

Little Rabbit

There are lots of folk tunes that have cute names and "Little Rabbit" is one of them. (The other name of this tune is something distinctly more subversive: "John Brown's Dream"). The tune is actually quite intriguing. Instead of having a verse-chorus structure, it is made up of five parts, each a melodic variation on the same basic chord structure. Anyway, I've decided to record this tune by using the multi-track function in Garage Band. What I've done is to play the tune once through, then overdubbed that with a second rendition of the tune, but starting it only eight measures later. It turned out pretty decently.


Here's the tune clawhammered and fiddled and played at a speed that I can only aspire to!

Angeline the Baker / Needle Case

Here are two banjo tunes that I've decided to post up here, even if the playing isn't as refined as I'd like it to be. The first, "Angeline the Baker", is especially appropriate as I've lately been experimenting with baking bread a lot. There's another song called "Angelina Baker" and I'm not sure about the relationship between the two. "Angelina Baker" seems to be a lot more complex and yet there seem to be some connections in the lyrics between the two. It might well be that "Angeline the Baker" is a modification of the chorus of "Angelina Baker".



Angeline, the baker, Angeline, the baker,
Angeline, the baker, I love you Angeline.

Angeline, the baker, she's so long and tall,
she sleeps out in the kitchen with her feet out in the hall.

Angeline the baker, her age is forty three,
She chases boys around the house, but she ain't gonna get me.

This second tune's just an instrumental. I've put it here because it's in the same "double C" tuning as "Angeline the Baker" and it's a really pretty tune. Adding to the authenticity of the "do-it-yourself" recording experience, there's a noticeable whirr in the background of this recording. That's my laptop protesting.


And here's a really inspiring rendition of "Angeline the Baker":

Lonesome Valley

I'm going to stick with a Mississippi John Hurt theme for a bit. There's actually a really great story about how MJH was re-discovered in the 60s, even if there's an element of exploitation involved in it. During the revival of interest in the blues in the 60s, young white folk music enthusiasts started listening and learning from recordings made in the 20s. Amongst these was an MJH recording, which Folkways had re-released in the early 50s. Jas Obrecht tells of how MJH was literally found through his music:

Unbeknownst to Hurt, Folkways Records re-released two of his old 78 songs in the early 50s ... and he had a circle of admirers. Most figured he was long dead, but Tom Hoskins, a young White musician living in Washington, D.C., had his doubts. After hearing a tape of "Avalon Blues" in 1963 [1], Hoskins headed for Mississippi with an old atlas that showed Avalon along a secondary road [2]. Locals directed him to the third mailbox up the hill where, sure enough, dwelled Mr. Hurt. At the time, Hurt was working on the cattle ranch cutting hay and helping with the cotton and corn harvests. Hoskins was thrilled to learn that Hurt's musical skills were intact, and talked him into coming to Washington, D.C. to begin a new career. "I though he was the police," Hurt remembered. "When he asked me to come North, I figured if I told him 'no', he'd take me anyway, so I said 'yes'."

[1] The lyric goes: "Avalon, my home town, always on my mind ..."
[2] Apparently current maps no longer showed the existence of Avalon.

So, the most appropriate thing to play on this post would be "Avalon Blues" but I haven't mastered that one yet. In the meantime, here's "Walk that Lonesome Valley", which has some nice position playing. I actually managed to learn this one from watch the video (posted below). MJH's playing makes something that took me a while for me to learn how to execute look effortless!



You've got to walk, that lonesome valley
You've got to walk, it for yourself.
Ain't nobody else, can walk it for you,
You've got to walk that valley for yourself

Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me

Here's a really interesting country blues by Mississippi John Hurt. I like Hurt's music because it's quiet and unassuming but always masterfully played. His alternating bass finger-picking style, which is really quite different from the harder driving delta blues of the likes of Son House or Robert Johnson that I was first exposed to, is the one that I predominantly play nowadays and I'm gradually getting a sense of the possibilities that his style opened up. I like this piece because it's such as melancholic but playful blues lyric. And of course, it reminds me of Eliot's "Prufrock". I don't sing all the verses but here's the MJH tune, "Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me".



Blues all on the ocean, blues all in the air.
Can't stay here no longer, I have no steamship fare.
When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

I do not work for pleasure, earthly peace I'll see no more.
The only reason I work at all, is drive the world from my door.
When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

My wife controls our happy home, a sweetheart I can not find.
The only thing I can call my own, is a troubled and a worried mind.
When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

Blues all in my body, my darling has forsaken me.
If I ever see her face again, I have to swim across the sea.
When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

Blues all on the ocean, blues all in the air.
Can't stay here no longer, I have no steamship fare.
When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.