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Henry Thomas (blues Musician)
Henry Thomas (18741930?) was an American country blues singer, songster and musician. Although his recording career, in the late 1920s, was brief, Thomas influenced performers including Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Grateful Dead, and Canned Heat. Often billed as "Ragtime Texas", Thomas's style is an early example of what later became known as Texas blues guitar. Life and career Thomas was born into a family of freed slaves in Big Sandy, Texas in 1874. He began traveling the Texas railroad lines as a hobo after leaving home in his teens. He eventually earned his way as an itinerant songster, entertaining local populaces as well as railway employees. He recorded 24 sides for Vocalion Records between 1927 and 1929, 23 of which were released. They include reels, gospel songs, minstrel songs, ragtime numbers, and blues. Besides guitar, Thomas accompanied himself on quills, a folk instrument fabricated from cane reeds whose sound is similar to the z ...
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Big Sandy, Texas
Big Sandy is a town in Upshur County, Texas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town's population was 1,231. A lake of the same name is cut nearly in half by U.S. Highway 80, the main thoroughfare of Big Sandy. It lies directly west of the larger cities of Gladewater and Longview. The Sabine River flows just south of Big Sandy. In the 19th century, Walters' Bluff Ferry operated on the Sabine, with passage across costing 40 cents per person and up to 75 cents for wagons. Geography Big Sandy is located at (32.584693, –95.112297). According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.7 square miles (4.3 km2), of which, 1.6 square miles (4.2 km2) of it is land and 0.04 square miles (0.1 km2) of it (1.80%) is water. Demographics As of the 2020 United States census, there were 1,231 people, 524 households, and 300 families residing in the town. As of the census of 2000, there were 1,288 people, 532 households, ...
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Gospel Music
Gospel music is a traditional genre of Christian music, and a cornerstone of Christian media. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music varies according to culture and social context. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, and as an entertainment product for the marketplace. Gospel music is characterized by dominant vocals and strong use of harmony with Christian lyrics. Gospel music can be traced to the early 17th century. Hymns and sacred songs were often repeated in a call and response fashion, heavily influenced by ancestral African music. Most of the churches relied on hand-clapping and foot-stomping as rhythmic accompaniment. Most of the singing was done a cappella.Jackson, Joyce Marie. "The changing nature of gospel music: A southern case study." ''African American Review'' 29.2 (1995): 185. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. October 5, 2010. The ...
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Fishing Blues
"Fishing Blues" (also "Fishin' Blues") is a blues song written in 1911 by Chris Smith, who is best known for "Ballin' the Jack". "Fishing Blues" was first recorded in 1928 by "Ragtime Texas" Henry Thomas on vocals and guitar with the introduction and breaks played on quills, a type of panpipe. It is Roud Folk Song Index No. 17692. The song ostensibly describes the pleasures of catching, cooking, and eating your own fish, particularly catfish. The refrain includes: Recordings * 1928Henry Thomas, 10-inch 78rpm single Vocalion 1249 * 1930s{?)Sam Chatmon, included on the 1979 album ''Sam Chatmon's Advice'' * 1964Mike Seeger, on the album ''Mike Seeger'' * 1965The Holy Modal Rounders, on the album ''The Holy Modal Rounders 2'' * 1965The Lovin' Spoonful, on the album ''Do You Believe in Magic'' * 1966Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band, on the album ''See Reverse Side for Title'' * 1968John Martyn, on the album ''The Tumbler'' * 1969Taj Mahal, on the album '' Giant Step/De Ole Folk ...
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Scarecrow Press
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing company National Book Network based in Lanham, Maryland. History The current company took shape when University Press of America acquired Rowman & Littlefield in 1988 and took the Rowman & Littlefield name for the parent company. Since 2013, there has also been an affiliated company based in London called Rowman & Littlefield International. It is editorially independent and publishes only academic books in Philosophy, Politics & International Relations and Cultural Studies. The company sponsors the Rowman & Littlefield Award in Innovative Teaching, the only national teaching award in political science given in the United States. It is awarded annually by the American Political Science Association for people whose innovations have advance ...
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Anthology Of American Folk Music
''Anthology of American Folk Music'' is a three-album compilation, released in 1952 by Folkways Records, of eighty-four recordings of American folk, blues and country music made and issued from 1926 to 1933 by a variety of performers. The album was compiled from experimental film maker Harry Smith's own personal collection of 78 rpm records. Upon its release the Anthology did not gain recognition as it had sold relatively poorly and had no notable early coverage besides a minor 1958 mention in ''Sing Out!.'' The album is now, however, generally regarded as a landmark release in the history of the album as well as an influential release during the 1950s and 1960s for the American folk music revival. In 2003, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked the album at number 276 on their list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and, in 2005, the album was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. Background Harry Smith was a West Coast filmmaker, magickian, bohemian, ...
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Harry Everett Smith
Harry Everett Smith (May 29, 1923 – November 27, 1991) was an American polymath, who was credited variously as an artist, experimental filmmaker, bohemian, mystic, record collector, hoarder, student of anthropology and a Neo-Gnostic bishop. Smith was an important figure in the Beat Generation scene in New York City, and his activities, such as his use of mind-altering substances and interest in esoteric spirituality, anticipated aspects of the Hippie movement. Besides his films, such as his full length cutout animated film ''Heaven and Earth Magic'' (1962), Smith is also remembered for his influential '' Anthology of American Folk Music'', drawn from his extensive collection of out-of-print commercial 78 rpm recordings. Throughout his life Smith was an inveterate collector. Other than records, he collected included string figures, paper airplanes, Seminole textiles, and Ukrainian Easter eggs. Biography Harry Smith was born in Portland, Oregon, and spent his earl ...
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Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance
"Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance" is a song recorded by blues musician Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas in 1927, under the title "Honey, Won't You Allow Me One More Chance". It was covered by Bob Dylan on his album '' The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'', which came out on May 27, 1963. In 1962, Origin Jazz Library Origin Jazz Library is an independent record label established by Bill Givens and Pete Whelan in 1960 to reissue blues from the 1920s and 1930s. Today the label specializes in reissues of jazz, western swing, folk music, and ragtime. Origin's fi ... released the album ''Henry Thomas Sings the Texas Blues''. It included his "Honey, Won't You Allow Me One More Chance", which was presumably the source of Dylan's version. Todd Harvey, in his book ''The Formative Dylan: Transmission and Stylistic Influences, 19611963'', analyzes how Dylan dropped Thomas's verses, and adapted his choruses, utilizing Thomas's AAAC rhyming structure and four 4-bar phrases in 2/4 time. Harvey w ...
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The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on May 27, 1963 by Columbia Records. Whereas his self-titled debut album ''Bob Dylan'' had contained only two original songs, this album represented the beginning of Dylan's writing contemporary words to traditional melodies. Eleven of the thirteen songs on the album are Dylan's original compositions. It opens with "Blowin' in the Wind", which became an anthem of the 1960s, and an international hit for folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary soon after the release of the album. The album featured several other songs which came to be regarded as among Dylan's best compositions and classics of the 1960s folk scene: "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right". Dylan's lyrics embraced news stories drawn from headlines about the Civil Rights Movement and he articulated anxieties about the fear of nuclear warfare. Ba ...
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American Folk Music Revival
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Billie Holiday, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music. Overview Early years The folk revival in New York City was rooted in the resurgent interest in square dancing and folk dancing there in the 1940s as espoused by instructors such as Margot Mayo, which gave musicians such as Pete Seeger popular exposure. The folk revival more generally as a popular and commercial phenomenon begins with the career of The Weavers, formed in November 194 ...
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Mack McCormick
Robert Burton "Mack" McCormick (August 3, 1930 – November 18, 2015) was an American musicologist and folklorist. Biography McCormick was born in 1930 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was brought up by his mother, in Alabama, Colorado, West Virginia and Texas, as she traveled to find work as a hospital technician. Career He dropped out of high school to work at a ballroom in Cedar Point, Ohio, running errands for the musicians performing there. He later worked as an electrician, cook, carnival worker and taxi driver. In 1946, he met record store owner and discographer Orin Blackstone in New Orleans and began assisting him in researching and compiling Blackstone's multivolume ''Index to Jazz''. McCormick became Texas correspondent for ''Down Beat'' in 1949. He developed an interest in blues and began traveling and researching the lives and origins of undocumented blues musicians around the country and learning about folk traditions and customs. In the late 1950s, McCormick ...
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Banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans in the United States. The banjo is frequently associated with folk, bluegrass and country music, and has also been used in some rock, pop and hip-hop. Several rock bands, such as the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead, have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in Black American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American styles of music, such as bluegrass and old-time music. It is also very frequently used in Dixieland jazz, as well as in Caribbean genres like biguine, calypso and mento. Histo ...
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