blue yodel no. 1 (T for texas)

[datasuspect]

some good ol' jimmie rodgers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIBmGZxAhg

waiting for a train

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbzc77Tz6PA

[greendog]

1. Blue Yodel No. 9

Good 'ol Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqc209-rwNI&feature=related

[datasuspect]

2. that's a good clip

it makes me think about the "happy" nostalgia filter that we sometimes look at history through. as though the past were antiseptic or somehow better.

but in listening to archival recordings of blues music, country music, or roots music in general, the reality is much different.

especially when you look into newspaper articles, popular accounts, or oral histories of an era like the depression.

the sense i get is that life was pretty hard boiled for many people and the same calamities we have now they had then.

actually, i think society is more sanitized and safer now then it was in the past.

thanks for posting that.

[greendog]

3. And the origin of "yodel singing" in country music isn't what most would expect either.

Here's Hank William's "Lovesick Blues" from the original recording by Emmett Miller.

Miller's forgotten now but was pretty big in his day. He was the last superstar of blackface minstrelsy.

The images and context in this video are pretty uncomfortable but the singing is (I think) brilliant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQezLV4yOug&feature=related