Category Archives: Music

Master tape of the week: Chester Randle’s Soul Sender’s

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A recent patron inquiry about Chester Randle’s Soul Sender’s got us digging through the masters in the Goldband Recording Corporation Collection, 1930-1995 (#20245) to find this open reel tape of Soul Sender’s alternate takes and practice jams.  These tracks are rough and the arrangements are only just coming together, but Randle’s heavily distorted guitar cuts through the mud-sludge bass while Milford Scott’s hammond B-3 organ practically pours over the raw funk of Bill Parker’s drumbeat.  The full weight of Lake Charles’ humid swamp air lays heavy on this boogie.  Sounds great to us.

There are three different versions of each “Sweet Potato” and “Soul Brother’s Testify” on FT-6694.  Unlike the final versions, these rehearsal tapes do not feature horns as part of the ensemble.  It’s great to hear the band try on licks and solos, developing the lyrics and arrangements, and laying down some seriously noisy sounds.  These tracks eventually saw release on Eddie Shuler’s ANLA imprint. “Soul Brother’s Testify, parts 1 and 2,” (ANLA 102) is a sought after release by funk and soul record collectors and the opening breakbeat has been heavily sampled by hip hop artists.  For more information on ANLA releases in the collection see the Goldband finding aid, the SFC Goldband online exhibit, and the list below, but for now, some music.

- “Sweet Potato,” take 3, intro

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- “Sweet Potato,” take 2, guitar solo

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- “Soul Brother’s Testify,” take 3, intro

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- “Soul Brother’s Testify,” take 3, end

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The Soul Sender’s ensemble appears on recordings under a few different names with only slight variation–The Original Soul Sender’s, Charles Randle’s Soul Sender’s, sometimes without apostrophes.  Guitarist Charles Randle performed with Bill Parker, Milford Scott, and likely the unknown musicians as well, in a variety of groups like Clarence Garlow & His Accordion and the Chester Randle Orchestra.  Bill Parker was himself a local R&B star in the early 1960s with his Showboat Band, a group that also occasionally featured young guitarist Chester Randle.  Parker recorded numerous other sides for ANLA and Goldband and eventually founded his own Showboat Records.

Eddie Shuler started ANLA in the 1960s to feature soul and R&B artists from South Louisiana and East Texas as an extension of the blues, cajun, swamp pop, and zydeco music he released on his Goldband Record label.  Shuler founded Goldband in the 1940s initially to release country, cajun, and western swing records, including those by his own band, the All Star Reveliers.  In the early 1950s, Shuler bought an old holiness Church at 313 Church Street in north Lake Charles, Louisiana and developed the Goldband Complex, including a recording studio, record shop, and Shuler’s television repair business, Eddie’s Quick Service TV.

Shuler recorded regional artists for a regional market, distributing the recordings from the back of his car to record stores and to jukebox operators who placed the records on jukeboxes leased to local clubs, dancehalls, and restaurants.  Shuler had an ear for talent and for the changing tastes of his audience, building an impressive roster of artists over the years, including the first recordings of legendary Cajun accordionist Iry LeJune, the first hit record by then 13 year old Dolly Parton, Rockin’ Sidney, Boozoo Chavis, Cookie and the Cupcakes, and Cleveland Crochet, whose 1961 recording “Sugar Bee” became the first Cajun tune to break the Billboard Top 100.  Shuler’s accomplishments and struggles in the music industry are too many to list here, but for one of the best written histories the music of South Louisiana, see John Broven’s 1983 book South to Louisiana: the music of the Cajun bayous.

Original/Chester Randle’s Soul Senders materials in the Southern Folklife Collection include both 45 rpm records and open reel tape.  Follow the following link for more information on the materials listed below, Goldband Recording Corporation Collection, 1930-1995 (#20245):

45-8083, ANLA AL-102, “Soul Brother’s Testify”/”Soul Brother’s Testify”

45-8085 ANLA AL-118. “Low Blow, Part I”/”Low Blow, Part II”

45-8088 ANLA AN-105. “Take a Little Nip”/”Why did I let you go,”

Open reels: FT-6694; FT-6695; FT-7031; FT-7758; FT-7774; FT-7861; FT-7896; FT-7933; and FT-7968.

Photo of the Week: Let the sunshine in with Louis Armstrong

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One way to brighten up a gray day is to find this possibly autographed promotional photo of the great Satchmo himself, Louis Armstrong.  We like to think Mr. Armstrong conceived of the photo design himself: serenading his own smiling face, as bright as the sun, playing music and riding a trumpet surfing the sound waves pouring from his own disembodied hands.  This delightful photo came to the Southern Folklife Collection as part of the John Garst Collection (# 20136).

Finding the photo made us think about a concert recording of Louis Armstrong and his All Stars made on May 8, 1954 at Memorial Hall on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Digitized in the the SFC studios in 2006, the original recording is stored in the UNC Music Library.

Featuring Billy Kyle on piano, Kenny Johns on drums, Barney Bigard on clarinet, Trummy Young on trombone,  Arvell Shaw on bass, and guest vocalist Velma Middleton, the recording shows a band in top form.  Armstrong is the consummate bandleader, laughing and cracking jokes, and the band and the audience both follow suit making for an enthusiastic and raucous performance.  It was a good day to be in Chapel Hill.  The concert mixes jazz standards and pop tunes into Armstrong’s own signature New Orleans musical gumbo, kicking off with a wonderfully woozy version with “When it’s Sleepy Time Down South” and including a swinging version of the then brand new rock and roll hit, “Blueberry Hill.”  Enjoy the collection of audio selections from the concert below, including the intro to “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” and Armstrong’s unforgettable vocals on the hit “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.”

– Louis Armstrong & his All Stars: Introduction, 8 May 1954

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– Louis Armstrong & his All Stars: “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue”

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– Louis Armstrong & his All Stars: Intro, “A Kiss to Build a Dream On”

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– Louis Armstrong & his All Stars: Vocals, “A Kiss to Build a Dream On”

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Collection Spotlight: Glenn Campbell on transcription disc

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Capitol Records released Glenn Campbell’s hit song, “Galveston,” on March 17, 1969 so we pulled out a version  from the Lawrence Welk radio series, Guest Spot, show number LW70-36, distributed to radio stations as transcription discs.  Guest Spot was one of many syndicated radio shows sponsored by the

Liner notes (click to zoom)

United States Armed Forces, the U. S. Navy and Naval Reserves for this series.

The copy in the Southern Folklife Collection, call no. TR-12/504, is part of the extensive and always fascinating Eugene Earle Collection (#20376). Track list and liner notes are included to the left.  The modulation in the last verse and the sound of the telecaster in the guitar solo where the string sounds so loose that it might fall off just gets us every time.  The first clip below is the introduction to the show itself, the second is a sample of “Galveston.”

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Two New Radio Streams: North Carolina and Memphis

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Continuing the musical tour of the South begun with our “New Orleans” stream, the Southern Folklife Collection presents two brand new radio streams:

North Carolina, featuring the classic old-time, folk, and blues of our home state. Including tracks from North Carolina greats like Charlie Poole, Doc Watson, and many other musicians who have called NC home.

and

Memphis, featuring rockabilly, country,  blues and R&B from the Sun and Stax labels, plus other Memphis-based country, blues and R&B classics.

Click links to listen (the streams work best with iTunes, Winamp, or VLC media players): you can always find the links at their permanent home at the “Streaming Radio” tab at the top of this page. The purpose of our radio stream is to make our holdings available for educational use. As always, happy listening!

Hank Cochran’s “She’s Got You”

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The late great singer-songwriter Hank Cochran penned many country hits over the course of a half-century long career in Nashville, including  “Make The World Go Away” (for both Ray Price and Eddy Arnold) and “It’s Not Love (But It’s Not Bad)” (for Merle Haggard), but his most lasting contribution to the country songbook may have been “She’s Got You”, written specifically for Patsy Cline in 1961 as a follow-up to “I Fall to Pieces”, a song Cochran had written in collaboration with Harlan Howard.

According to Mark Bego’s I Fall To Pieces: The Music And Life Of Patsy Cline, Cline had trouble completing her December 17, 1961 recording session “because she was so emotionally involved with the lyrics of ‘She’s Got You’ that she kept breaking down and sobbing in the middle of it.” Cline reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown the very next day, so it’s safe to assume she had some other issues at the time. Nonetheless, “She’s Got You” is sad enough one can certainly imagine it bringing a singer to tears.

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(clip from SFC CD-4761)

The song has since been covered by Dottie West, Loretta Lynn, and LeeAnn Rimes as well as by a number of male artists, who tended to change the initial pronoun in the interest of heteronormativity. A couple of the more recent variations come from singers more closely associated with British new wave and Mississippi rhythm and blues, respectively. Elvis Costello recorded a version for his 1981 country-themed album Almost Blue (clip from SFC CD-4826):

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And Little Milton included “He’s Got You” on 2000′s Feel It (clip from SFC CD-2520):

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Tuli Kupferberg, 1923-2010

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We were saddened to hear this morning that poet/musician/activist Tuli Kupferberg, one of the founding members of the folk-rock band the Fugs, died yesterday in Manhattan. He was 86 years old.

The Fugs released their first album, The Village Fugs (later reissued as The Fugs First Album), on Broadside and Folkways records in 1965. Fellow poet and founding member Ed Sanders wrote in1993,

We came to the attention of Folkways owner Moe Asch through the good efforts of legendary artist, filmmaker, and musical anthropologist Harry Smith… To float the project past Mr. Asch, Harry told him we were the Fugs Jug Band.”

While the Fugs remained largely unknown to mainstream audiences, the band had a lasting influence on popular music, introducing the explicit profanity, sexual references, and leftist politics that would later become a staple of punk rock. Kupferberg wrote many of the band’s funniest and most politically cutting songs, including “Kill for Peace” and “CIA Man” (recently featured in the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers’ movie Burn After Reading).

The SFC’s  Broadside Collection contains many unreleased solo recordings Tuli Kupferberg made for Broadside in the 1970s, including the clip below, “Take-a-this-pizza”:

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Clip from FT-9458 in the Broadside Collection.

This Land Is Your Land

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Happy birthday to the United States of America, an institution that turns 234 years old this week. Let’s celebrate with some clips of America’s favorite patriotic folk song, “This Land Is Your Land”.

Here’s the first verse of Woody Guthrie’s original 1944 recording (a verse that would become the chorus in all future versions):

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(clip from SFC CD-654, This Land Is Your Land: The Asch Recordings)

The “As I went walking that ribbon of highway” verse, as sung by Pete Seeger in 1958:

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(clip from SFC CD-2041, American Favorite Ballads)

The “I roamed and rambled” verse, by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in 1962:

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(clip from SFC FC-4520, Folk Songs of Our Land)

The “When the sun comes shining” verse, sung by Lee Greenwood (the guy who gave us “God Bless the USA”): 

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(clip from SFC CD-3650, American Patriot)

And North Carolina native Mojo Nixon puts a punk rock spin on the frequently dropped “Private Property” verse:

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(clip from SFC CD-1355, Root Hog or Die)

Mr. Garfield and Charles Guiteau

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On June 30th, 1882, the assassin Charles Guiteau was hanged in Washington, DC, almost a year to the day after his fatal shooting of President James A. Garfield. In March of 1949, North Carolina musician and folk song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford traveled to Washington to record for the Library of Congress, and the many songs he recorded there included two topical ballads concerning the assassination of Garfield and execution of Guiteau. The epic narrative of the assassination “Mr. Garfield”, recorded on March 23rd, would later be popularized by Johnny Cash (you can watch him perform it on The Johnny Cash Show here). Lunsford  introduces it:

I first heard it about 1903 when I visited the home of Mr. A.W. Williams, who lived on the edge of Henderson County, North Carolina… Anderson Williams, a young man, picked it and played it on the banjo… Once after I heard one stanza by another person. That’s the only two people I ever heard sing the song, besides myself.”

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The very next day Lunsford recorded  a ballad sung from the perspective of the condemned man:

This is another  assassination song, known as “Charles Guiteau”. I’ve known this all my life.”

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Clips from Emrich Duncan’s Songs and Ballads of American History and the Assassination of Presidents (SFC FC-545 and CD-906).

Iry LeJeune Recordings Added to National Recording Registry

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The Library of Congress has named two recordings by Cajun accordionist and singer Iry LeJeune to the National Recording Registry. “Evangeline Special” and “Love Bridge Waltz” were both recorded for Goldband Records in 1948 and the original master tapes are housed in the SFC’s Goldband Records Collection.

From  the Library of Congress press release:

“The post-World War II revival of traditional Cajun music began with accordionist Iry LeJeune’s first single, his influential recordings of “Evangeline Special” and “Love Bridge Waltz.” Le Jeune’s emotional and deeply personal style was immensely popular with Louisiana Cajuns returning home from the war, eager to hear their own music again. His recordings marked a distinct move away from the style influenced by Western Swing that had dominated commercial Cajun recordings for over a decade and a return to the older sound of Cajun music. This sound featured the accordion, prominently and unrestrained, and a blues-influenced singing in French. LeJeune is regarded as one of the best Cajun accordionists and singers of all time.”

Listen below to clips of both songs:

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Clips from SFC CD-713, The Legendary Iry Lejeune.

Photo of the Week: The Farr Brothers

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Texas-born brothers Hugh Farr, Glen Farr, and Karl Farr (along with their brother-in-law Billy Weir, wearing the hat), photographed in 1927 in Van Nuys, California. Hugh and Karl would later join Roy Rogers in the Sons of the Pioneers and record an obviously autobiographical fiddle tune called “The Texas Crapshooter”:

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Clip from TR-873 in the Sons of the Pioneers Transcription Disc Collection.