How many times did you leave heaven?

A friend has been singing the song "When Did You Leave Heaven?" at a local jam session off and on for a year or so, and while he is on vacation another friend gave it a try last week, so I decided to let Google and YouTube show me who has recorded it over the years. Amazing.

One of the YouTube comment threads claims it was the first song ever broadcast on television, from a 1937 recording by Lilly Fryer, which I did not find on YouTube. From various web posts, it looks like the song was introduced by Tony Martin in the movie "Sing Baby Sing" in 1936.

I composed this blog post on my phone with the latest version of the Blogger app, a rather clumsy editing process that I belatedly discovered did not make links automatically. I finally came back with a  computer to make YouTube addresses actual links.  (I did make a few of significant names direct links until I started going cross-eyed from doing it on the phone.) Stauffer & Toffel's 1936 German-accented version on Telefunken is culturally and historically fascinating. The song certainly has a way of jumping back and forth across cultural lines.

The dates are according to whoever posted the item at YouTube, or from a Discogs.com search, but may not be the first -- or last -- time the person recorded the song. 

Tony Martin -- 1936

https://youtu.be/gdptKMMHplc

https://youtu.be/Etc-YzgIxI8

Guy (& Carmen, vocal) Lombardo -- 1936
https://youtu.be/SiOQjPpmQLI
https://youtu.be/JiJsd0QVd9E

Red Allen -- 1936
https://youtu.be/JH6lx6E9Ut4

Frances Langford -- 1936
https://youtu.be/wUf9QqPM3RQ

Teddy Stauffer (Billy Toffel, vocal) -- 1936
https://youtu.be/AozkMu5DHHY

Mel Powell orch. (w. Benny Goodman) -- 1942
https://youtu.be/l3M7ojzaoxI

Big Bill Broonzy -- 1956
https://youtu.be/TuM_wimHj6c
https://youtu.be/JxnCQSI8k08

Jimmy Scott -- 1955
https://youtu.be/57OQK-zJhoA
https://youtu.be/SRYJbaxwJ20

Louis Armstrong -- 1957
https://youtu.be/Gz1msJyXY5A

Johnny Guitar Watson -- 1963

https://youtu.be/q73xfc_Zvf0

Nancy Wilson -- 1966
https://youtu.be/JcClSnMiOp0
https://youtu.be/sQ6dQRgwSso

Jim Reeves -- 1966
https://youtu.be/5dr7aSKM2V0

Hank Crawford -- 1967

https://youtu.be/uNsQccm-0wk

Eric Clapton -- 1978
https://youtu.be/qDrMKfYdF-A

Bob Dylan -- 1985
https://youtu.be/9s4Tqfuj_Wo
https://youtu.be/0E4fYKmhhmM

Carla Valenti -- 2004
https://youtu.be/cp_Rx0UZ4YM

Renee Fleming -- 2008
https://youtu.be/HvSmTc9H-o0

Pokey LaFarge -- 2015
https://youtu.be/YlRPF_JFbUo
https://youtu.be/WxgpnDv0Q_s

Four Virginians with a Tiple

Recordings from the days of 78 rpm phonographs continue to find their way to YouTube, where my latest discovery touches three issues that interest me: 

 Old time string band music from Virginia (where I've lived for the past decade);

 The "Martin tiple," a 10-string instrument I have been playing for a few years, related to the ukulele and South American instruments, made in America for half a century and used for a variety of musical styles; 

And the often racist minstrel-show roots of some of the old-time string band music repertoire. In this case, the latter is only present in the form of a fiddle tune title, without the original 1880s lyrics, which mocked a well-to-do gambler and ladies' man.

The "All Music" (http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-four-virginians-mn0001387068/biography) and "Martin Tiple" (http://martintiple.blogspot.com/2011/12/four-virginians.html) history blogs both have pages about the band in question, The Four Virginians, from the Danville area. They were active from 1925 to 1935 and reportedly recorded only six tunes, all for the Okeh record label.

Accompanied by a picture of the band, with the tiple used as a rhythm instrument, YouTube has five of the recordings: three square dance tunes with dance calls (one of them with a nineteenth-century minstrel show "coon song" title), and two sentimental songs.

You can hear the jangling treble sound of the tiple (not as high or clean as a bluegrass mandolin "chop") on most of the recordings. It plays full chords while the fiddle plays the melody and the two guitars play rhythm and bass runs. Unlike many old time string bands, the four Virginians did not include a mandolin, banjo or bass. 

"Two little lads"
https://youtu.be/RInuYDVVIlU

"One is my mother"
https://youtu.be/yypYMo6Zm80

"Promenade all"
https://youtu.be/VOxIZ9FMOxE

"Swing your partner"
https://youtu.be/j0P82u-R42E

"New coon in town"
https://youtu.be/w0d7XNl8KoY

Jennings Leonard is identified as the tiple player by numerous websites, including a discography of historical records at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

http://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/talent/detail/99938/Jennings_Leonard_instrumentalist_tiple

The other published sources identify the remaining band members as:
Fiddle – Richard Bigger
Guitar – Fred Richards
Vocals and Guitar – Elvin Bigger

Google search reveals several books that mention the band, including these:

Title one : Virginia's Blues, Country, and Gospel Records, 1902-1943: An Annotated Discography, by Kip Lornell

Title two : Linthead stomp: the creation of country music in the Piedmont South, by Patrick Huber

(The first draft of this post was made with an Android smartphone and its Blogger app. I should eventually get back to edit it and make the web links more attractive and functional.)

Oldtime Songs as Oldtime Radio Drama

Ever wish one of your favorite old songs could go on for a half hour? Or want to know the story-behind-the-story of a ballad? Would you mind if the stretch added a new cause to a historic Virginia train wreck, or made the South Pacific the new setting of a song that had migrated from Scotland to North Carolina?

While I've been using this blog for intermittent posts about folk, blues and old-time stringband music, in my other incarnation over at http://jheroes.com ("Newspaper Heroes on the Air") I write about the portrayal of journalists in the radio dramatic series of the thirty-some years before television killed radio drama as a major element in American popular culture.

Here's a crossover between my blogs: One of the radio dramatic programs that sometimes had journalist characters in its plots also had a "folk song revival" theme in a group of 1950s episodes based on traditional ballads and blues. Posting a journalism-related episode of "Suspense" to jheroes reminded me that a few of its tales of death and disaster came from old songs.

"Suspense" was a highly rated and expertly produced series for 20 years, specializing in tension,  adventure and murder, from "Othello" to "Frankenstein" and "Leinengen vs. the Ants." As a result, the Old Time Radio Researchers Group has a substantial collection of episodes (more than 900 of them!), which it shares with the public through the Internet Archive (archive.org).

Below are direct links to the folk-song episodes I've noticed, produced and directed by Elliott Lewis, with scripts by several writers, including Morton Fine and David Friedkin, according to radio historian J. David Goldin's listings and announcements during the programs. Click to download the MP3s or open them in your browser. 

The Wreck of the Old 97 (March 17, 1952) 

Frankie and Johnny (May 5, 1952) 

My True Love's Hair (Oct. 19, 1953)

Frankie and Johnny (Feb. 3, 1957)

The Death of Barbara Allen (Oct. 20, 1952)

The Saint James Infirmary Blues (Feb. 23, 1953)

Tom Dooley (March 30, 1953)

Tom Dooley (Dec. 7, 1958)

--------------------------

While it's not folksong-based, music fans also might be intrigued by the vaudeville title "Never Follow a Banjo Act," with Ethel Merman.

I'm particularly fascinated by the fact that "Suspense" put its dramatization of "Tom Dooley" on the radio years before The Kingston Trio's arrangement of the song became a national hit. A version of the song had been recorded as early as 1929 (by Grayson and Whitter), but re-entered the "folk song revival" consciousness when collected by folklorists Frank & Anne Warner from Frank Proffitt in North Carolina in 1938 and published in John & Alan Lomax's book Folksong U.S.A. in 1947.  It was recorded by Warner in 1952 (and eventually by Proffitt on Folk Legacy Records in 1962).

The Suspense radioplay based on the song was first heard in 1953, then recast and broadcast in 1958, using that year's Kingston Trio hit recording.  According to J. David Goldin's "RadioGoldindex" of "Suspense" episode information, Harry Stanton was the vocalist on the 1952 broadcasts of both "Tom Dooley" and "Old 97."

Louise Louis was vocalist on "Barbara Allen." Big band singing stars who crossed over to film and television were also part of the casts: Dinah Shore played the lead and sang the song in "Frankie and Johnny" and Rosemary Clooney was listed among the cast for "Saint James Infirmary." Margaret Whiting was Frankie in the 1957 broadcast.

The story "My True Love's Hair," uses the song "Dark Is the Color of My True Love's Hair," popular among American folksong singers in the 1950s. However, the radio play adds a murder to the simple song of lovers parting that was heard in North Carolina and published in 1917 as part of English Folksongs Collected in the Southern Appalachians by Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp. Verses of the song are sung by Ernest Newton during the broadcast, and phrases from the lyric are worked into the dialogue, spoken by lead actor Jeff Chandler -- but the setting is far from Appalachia or the British Isles. Radio historian J. David Goldin calls the tale "A spectacularly beautiful and well-written sound portrait of the South Seas." In contrast, the version collected by Campbell and Sharp mentions the river Clyde in Scotland. The song had been commercially recorded a half-dozen times before the Suspense broadcast, first with a new melody by the Kentucky composer and folk singer John Jacob Niles in 1941, and later by Burl Ives, Jean Ritchie and others. 

According to Goldin's logs, along with his "Tom Dooley" performance, Harry Stanton was among the cast members for a different radio series' musical drama, the Lux Radio production of "Dixie," an hour-long, thoroughly  fictionalized and whitewashed dramatization of the life of minstrel banjo pioneer Dan Emmett. Based on the movie by the same name and broadcast Dec. 20, 1943, the radioplay has the film's star Bing Crosby in the lead. You can almost smell the blackface burnt cork in one of Hollywood's regrettable acts of nostalgia for the days of on-stage racism and a romanticized 1800s Southland. Newton and Stanton both appeared in other Lux productions.

Instead of admitting that imitating black musicians was the inspiration for white minstrels' "blacking up," the story has the absurd excuse of Emmett and another performer originally using blackface makeup to cover up black eyes and bruises from a fight. (Crosby vs. Barry Sullivan as "Mr. Bones.") Their act is mostly joke-telling with "Amos and Andy" accents. Minstrel-style music is barely heard amidst the Crosby crooning. And, no, Dan Emmett didn't write the Crosby classic "Sunday, Monday or Always" that opens the program. In fact, some researchers believe the title song "Dixie"  actually came to Emmett from the Snowdens, a black family in Ohio.

Oldtime Music Beyond Facebook

A friend just posted a request for more old-time and bluegrass music festival posts in a Facebook group... one of many that try to meet that need.

My reply... (Also an excuse to try updating this blog with a copy of a Facebook post, using only my phone. Until I go through one at a time to turn them into hyperlinks, link addresses may require copying and pasting, not just clicking. Hard to tell on this tiny screen.)

Feeling your pain... I just don't trust Facebook for reliable calendar-type information. So much duplication, but so much confusion about when and how things appear in groups, notices & on your/my timeline!

But even the "open web" calendars by non-profits have holes in them. Not sure Hoppin John Convention http://hoppinjohn.org (or the 50-band Shakori Hills concert/fest at same venue a month later?) is on any of the NC lists below.... as well as being exempt for the Va and WVa lists!

Here are a few items from my jumbled venue,  event and organization bookmark list. But I don't envy any of the list keepers!
:-(

Va.

https://www.myswva.org/tcr

http://FloydCountryStore.com

http://www.virginia.org/directory/Events/?regionid=8&categories=91&start=8-29-2016&end=9-12-2016

West Va.

Http://mountainmusictrail.com

N.C.

http://hoppinjohn.org

http://www.blueridgemusicnc.com/find-music/all-events

https://nationalfolkfestival.com

https://www.pinecone.org

Tenn.

 https://www.tnvacation.com/vendors/appalachian-cultural-music-association-mountain-music-museum

http://www.etsu.edu/cas/das/bluegrass/

 http://festivalnet.com/music_festivals.html/Tennessee-music-festivals

That last one is an membership & ad-supported national monster that I just stumbled on...

But it it doesn't miss http://Louiebluie.org  Sept. 24, even if it doesn't have an obvious link to the event's own site!

Oldtime Country Music at archive.org

The Internet Archive may not be the first place you look for old-time country sounds, but some old-time radio and 78 rpm record collectors have digitized an amazing amount of 20th century American  culture.

I'll come back and edit this, but wanted to put a few links out where new old-time music friends can find them today.

Sorry if there are spelling errors, and if you have to cut and paste the links into a browser. The first draft of this was done with my left thumb on a smartphone during a singing class at Augusta Heritage Center. (https://augustaheritagecenter.org)

Most of these are radio. Some are 1950s TV. The Delmore brothers sell their gospel song book, the Willis Brothers  swing "Hillbilly Heaven." All Star Western Theatre combines accordion and guitar western harmonizing with short dramatic productions with cowboy movie stars of the forties. Pat Daniels Hillbilly Boys sold Hillbilly flour with Texas Swing, while Hank Williams sold Mother's Best flour with his country blues. Plenty here to explore.

https://archive.org/details/otr_countrymusictime

https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Delmore_Brothers_Singles

https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Certified_Delmore_Brothers

https://archive.org/details/GrandOldOpry-28april1956

https://archive.org/details/HankPennyHisRadioCowboys-01-10

https://archive.org/details/charlottecountry00holt Booklet PDF

https://archive.org/details/RanchParty1957

https://archive.org/details/0029OldTimeRadioReunion

https://archive.org/details/otr_countrymusictime

https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Mothers_Best_Flour_Singles

https://archive.org/details/OTRR_The_Hillbilly_Boys_Singles (Pat O'Daniel & the...), 74 episodes

https://archive.org/details/OTRR_All_Star_Western_Theatre_Singles

https://archive.org/details/otr_geneautry

https://archive.org/details/RoyRogers01-10

Some songs from Augusta

After singing along with these songs in Paul Brown's workshops at Davis & Elkins College's Augusta Heritage old-time music week,  I compulsively went off looking for alternative versions, additional lyrics,  and YouTube videos.

Cumberland Gap
https://youtu.be/t4Jawe-M2yc

Deadheads and suckers
https://youtu.be/N1byRXjV2LU

Tempy Roll Down Your Bangs
http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=18014

Railroad Bill (with brakemans vest, nancy hanks verse)
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/09/riley-puckett-railroad-bill-information.html

Trouble in Mind
https://youtu.be/8a54Nz6aYYY

My home is across the blue ridge mountains
https://youtu.be/Z7i1CQv74aE

Walking in my sleep
https://youtu.be/LoRFJd47rtU

Poor Ellen Smith
murder case, Winston Salem c.1897

http://www.murderbygaslight.com/2010/07/poor-ellen-smith.html

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/us/02land.html?pagewanted=all&referrer=

It's a tiple

I finally made a short video of my other ukulele-family instrument, a 10-string "tiple." I'd like to think it was by popular request... a request usually phrased as "What the hell is that thing?"

The Martin guitar company made tiples for 50 years or more, using the same combinations of woods they used for guitars -- all mahogany models (15 or 17), or mahogany or rosewood tiples with spruce tops (18 or 28) -- but I see no immediate threat of a revival in tiple playing... However, something inspired the Ohana ukulele company to produce this version. In Colombia there is a larger instrument by the same name, with some marvelous players. Other Latin American countries use the same word to describe somewhat different instruments. YouTube may find you examples. Here's mine:

(Video oops... for some reason, when I talk about the tuning and play the four open notes, I say "from top to bottom" while picking the strings from bottom to top! Sorry if that confuses anyone. More on tuning below.)

Martin-style tiples were also made by companies from Regal and Harmony to D'Angelico. I haven't retrieved a copy of Mike Longworth's Martin Guitar history recently, but the folks at Mandolin Brothers did -- when they had a tiple for sale some years ago -- and said, "The Martin Tiple, Longworth says, was designed around 1920 from a somewhat larger prototype imported from Argentina by Mr. William J. Smith who owned a New York City music company that bore his name." They also included more details about the specific model, a rosewood-and-spruce T-28. Various folks at Wikipedia have been chronicling a the instruments called "tiple" in the Spanish-speaking world. I've even added some of the information there on the "tiple NorteAmericano." 

For a couple of years while the bookmarking service "Delicious" was in regular operation, I saved almost 50 bookmarks to Web pages about the instrument (including parts of the blog http://martintiple.blogspot.com/) and YouTube videos of tiple players including the Spirits of Rhythm, the Cats & the Fiddle, Ed Askew, and more (at del.icio.us/bstepno/tiple) but the service has changed hands and has gone in and out of operation, while the internet archive preserved only a few of the links. So I have added a few more links below and will write other blog posts about interesting tiples now and then.

Repairman Jake Wildwood in Vermont has posted numerous blog essays on tiples he has patched up and played over the years, including tiples made by Martin, Regal, Harmony and more -- and sometimes he includes audio or video clips. 

Here's my favorite tiple video... How "The Cats and the Fiddle" kept their instruments in tune with all the flipping and twirling in this movie amazes me. Perhaps Ohana needs to study 1930s Martins a bit more. 

https://youtu.be/SEQ9Sz0UCl8

The tuning is similar to a uke (or a guitar capoed at the fifth fret), but in four courses --
Gg-cCc-eEe-aa -- with the big letters indicating strings tuned an octave lower than the ones they are paired or tripled up with.

By the way, the second tune I play on that YouTube demo is one of my favorites, "I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate," using a chord progression folks of a certain age will recognize as pretty similar to Country Joe MacDonald's "Feel like I'm fixin' to die rag."

So far the high point of my tiplista career was in 2015 introducing ukulele-playing songwriter Nellie McKay (be still my heart.) to the instrument in the Abingdon, Va., Barter Theater lobby after a Mountain Stage live-concert recording session. I think I have a picture of her playing it around here somewhere. With luck I'll find it and add it here. With even more luck, I'll get to see her again before long. I haven't seen any evidence that Nellie has acquired a tiple of her own, but YouTube does have a clip of her playing a more conventional 8-string uke, linked here for comparison with the 10-string tiple sound.

In 2017 I added a few links to a Southern Virginia band with a rhythm tiple in a separate post here:

http://boblog.blogspot.com/2017/05/four-virginians-with-tiple.html

Here's another knowledgeable post about tiples, with some interesting discussion:

http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2013/02/08/ever-heard-of-a-martin-tiple

And a reissue of recordings by "Big Boy" Teddy Edwards, Chicago blues singer who recorded some solo tiple-accompanied vocals in the 1930s:
https://thedocumentrecordsstore.com/product/DOCD-5440/

Here's a sample of Edwards' style on YouTube: https://youtu.be/LL5_NE0cKec

A couple of decades later, Timmie Rogers recorded a couple of TV scenes with a tiple that probably has been seen and heard by thousands, maybe millions, thanks to years of syndicated reruns of "Sanford and Son," where he played Smiley Rogers, a friend and singing duet partner of Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx)... 

https://youtu.be/arWaKKIVaRc

https://youtu.be/sHlNHGb1oAc

Finally, here is the only classical piece of music I've heard orchestrated for an ensemble that includes a tiple: Gymnopédie No. 1 - Eric Satie, arranged and performed by Russick Smith for cello, double bass, mandolin, tiple, resonator guitar, and banjo: https://youtu.be/3rRU6Zs4kIw