Music for the Weekend

Posted every Friday, American music from the 1920s and 30s, that illustrate America’s own process of development. Occasional recordings from Beijing.

Music for the Weekend: Earl Scruggs

March 30, 2012

Earl Scruggs, possibly the best banjo player ever, died this week at 88 years old. I saw him play once at a bluegrass festival about 3 years ago. He had a backup band do most of the work, while he hunched over the banjo, barely moving, played the most incredible bluegrass I had ever heard. [...]

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Music for the Weekend: Eliza Rickman

March 9, 2012

Eliza Rickman’s first full length CD just came out, and I recommend it to everyone. The album contains a mixture of compositions from her earlier EP, mostly composed on Toy Piano, and a number of newly recorded songs with full piano and strings backing. The latter songs are where the album really stands out, and [...]

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Music for the Weekend: Charley Patton

March 3, 2012

Jesus is a Dying Bed Maker. After the jump. Did you like this? Share it:

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Music for the Weekend: Possibly the best music label that ever existed

February 26, 2012

Sublime Frequencies I bought the Ethnic Minority Music of Northwestern Xinjiang, which was exceptional. The full catalogue seems nothing short of extraordinary. A sample CD description: A mind-blowing set of Pakistani instrumentals spanning the period between 1966 and 1976. It’s all here: rock and roll beat, surf, folk traditional mixed with pop, film tunes, electric [...]

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Music for the Weekend: The Memphis Flu

June 24, 2011

Christian Music from the 192os and 1930 features a fairly large number of “flu songs,” mostly concentrated on the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza epidemic, the most deadly epidemic disease in history, which killed 50 million people, or 3% of the world’s population. 675 thousand of those were in the United States, making up 0.8% of the [...]

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Music for the Weekend: John Hardy

June 17, 2011

I’ve been listening to the Carter Family, and have found that despite the general family values image that they present, almost all of their songs are quite good, and they have a fair amount of the mountain music melodrama. John Hardy (after the jump) is one of their more famous songs. It’s a traditional murder [...]

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Music for the Weekend – Joanna Newsom

April 29, 2011

My niece, Sadie Louise Chen, was born two weeks ago. (please click through)   Did you like this? Share it:

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Music for the Weekend: Wild Bill Jones

April 15, 2011

I had this song stuck in my head. So I pass that on. While this edition was recorded in the 60s, the song is really really old. It was recorded as early as 1924 by Eva Davis, and even then the story doesn’t really make much sense (as much as I can understand it), indicating [...]

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Music for the Weekend: Ewan Maccoll

April 1, 2011

British singer this week, though he was married to an American and lived in America much of his life. The Flying Cloud is a ballad about an Irish man who goes on a slaving voyage to West Africa, and later turns to piracy in the Caribbean. The song was long more popular in America than [...]

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Music for the Weekend: Knoxville girl

March 18, 2011

I’ve never heard of Wilburn Brothers outside of this song, but it is the oldest version I have found so far of the classic murder ballad “Knoxville Girl.” There’s an indication in this clip though that its a much older song (after the jump). Nick Cave also does a great cover of the song. Update: Almost [...]

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