Popular Music in Jacksonian America -
An Antidote for Nostalgia
This is a three-LP set. I saw it in a thrift store and thought it looked pretty nifty. And it was, but also sad.
These songs cover ranges of popular music of North and South, and therefore show how the degradation of humanity (aka slavery) was a commonplace of everyday life. We need to be able to acknowledge the sad parts of our history along with the glorious parts. I leave further thoughts or comments to you.
I am happy that projects like this set try to simply show what was what, and we can see the depressing and sorrow-making aspects of the subject matter on our own. We have two CDs and a scan of the entire booklet that came with the set.
Popular Music in Jacksonian America, Disc 1:
Music of the Stage and Concert Hall
01. The Celebrated Sontag Polka Song (2:48)
02. The Dashing White Sergeant (3:12)
03. Yes! Tis the Indian Drum (2:28)
04. The Hunters of Kentucky (2:15)
05. Home! Sweet Home (2:50)
06. The Slave Ship (5:54)
07. My Old Kentucky Home (1:17)
Early Blackface Minstrelsy
08. Nigger on de Wood Pile (0:35)
09. The Way George Christy Got Through College (1:26)
10. What Did You Come From (1:12)
11. Lubly Fan Will You Cum Out to Night (1:40)
12. Nelly Was a Lady (2:46)
13. De Boatman's Dance (1:38)
14. Root Hog or Die (0:57)
15. Old King Crow (2:03)
16. Old Folks at Home (3:18)
17. Old Dan Tucker (1:40)
18. Dixie's Land (2:26)
Songs of the Hutchinson Family
19. Flow Gently Sweet Afton (2:15)
20. A Life on the Ocean Wave (2:06)
21. The Indian's Lament (2:53)
22. The Batchelor’s Lament (2:52)
23. Kind Words Can Never Die (3:07)
24. Get Off the Track! (2:10)
25. Gentle Annie (2:37)
Popular Music in Jacksonian America, Disc 2:
Sentimental Ballads
01. Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms (2:22)
02. The Orphan Ballad Singers (3:47)
03. The Old Arm Chair (3:46)
04. The Old Oaken Bucket (2:03)
05. The Messenger Bird (3:05)
06. Darling Nelly Gray (4:06)
07. Ah! May the Red Rose Live Always (1:26)
Amateurs and Music Societies
08. My Country 'Tis of Thee (0:38)
09. Mountain Song (1:09)
10. 'Tis the Last Rose of Summer (1:44)
11. Happy Are We Darkies So Gay (1:18)
12. Temperance Hymn (1:06)
13. The Hazel Dell (2:53)
14. Rural Felicity (0:27)
15. From Greenland's Icy Mountains (2:42)
16. Nearer My God to Thee (1:11)
17. Oh! Susanna (2:41)
18. Old Uncle Ned (4:10)
Shape-Note Singing
19. Holy Manna (2:03)
20. Hail! Columbia (1:04)
21. Hebrew Children (1:06)
22. Resignation (0:55)
23. Solemn Thought (1:06)
24. The Indian's Petition (0:58)
25. War Department (0:37)
26. Wondrous Love (2:39)
27. The Romish Lady (3:18)
28. The Dove of Peace (2:14)
29. Lover of the Lord (0:34)
30. Hallelujah (2:10)
31. New Britain (2:22)
Popular Music in Jacksonian America Booklet -- This is a 16-page scan including essays and lyrics.
I think the Yankee Doodle Society did a good job.
See you next Monday. Happy Presidents' Day!
What were the recording dates for these? Any other documentation that was with the LP set?
ReplyDeleteTHANX.............!
Thank you for this. I donated my copy, as part of my LP collection, to Tijuana's Centro de Artes Musicales some years ago and never took the next step of digitizing the discs.
ReplyDeleteTo answer Timmy's question, the sixteen-page booklet should be sufficient documentation but (as a member of the recording's uncredited "amateur chorus") I don't mind telling a few tales out of school.
The Yankee Doodle Society was not so much a band as it was a production company created by Clare Spark and Joseph Byrd. If I remember correctly, they were married at the time. Clare tells her version of it on her eponymous website; Joseph's version of some details can be found in his Wikipedia article.
The album was created in modules over the course of four years, such as time and grant money permitted. Personnel were pick-ups from the Los Angeles area – studio musicians, members of the L.A. Philharmonic, and various friends of Joseph, who was working at that time writing and producing music for Hollywood and television commercials.
Work on this album began right after Joseph produced Ry Cooder's "Jazz" album, which should explain why most critics disparage it for being unlike the rest of Cooder's work. By playing PMiJA back to back with "Jazz", however, you might come see the shallowness, ignorance, and egotism of that disparagement. (tl;dr If you like this, you'll love Cooder's "Jazz".)
Thanks for that info, Real Tijuana!
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