Long Track Blues (Sterling A. Brown)

Continuing the series of "stories behind the songs" from my new album, American Songs volume 2, we reach one of my favorite poets: Sterling A. Brown.

If you've missed the stories behind the songs in previous posts and would like to catch up, please use these links:

• Goin' to the West
• Evangeline
• Gum Tree Canoe
  
• Oh Susanna (free download)
• Unclouded Day (free download)
• Oh Sister (free download)

Story behind the song: If you are a regular reader of this blog, you have certainly noticed the name Sterling Brown once or twice before. Sterling A. Brown was born in Washington D.C. in 1901 and died in 1989. He continues to be one of the most influential African-American Poets of all time.

What I love about Sterling Brown's poetry is his sense of rhythm and cadence. He wrote a lot about jazz and blues, and those two musical forms obviously had a great influence on the sound of his poetry...the poems almost sound like they are *meant* to be sung. So Anthony, Carter, and I got together and decided to put "Long Track Blues" to music. Carter did an amazing job with the guitar work...he captured the gutwrenching melancholy perfectly, and it even sometimes sounds like you can hear a train off in the distance.

I love the first and last stanza of "Long Track Blues." The speaker, hanging around the train tracks, longing for the one who left, does the only thing there is to do...gives a blessing: "Lordy, let your green light/Shine down on that babe of mine."

You can hear Sterling Brown read 3 of his poems, including one of my favorites, Southern Road, at the Academy of American Poets website.

A few years ago, Smithsonian Folkways came out with a CD of Sterling Brown reading his own work, including Long Track Blues and another of my favorites, Ma Rainey. If you have a subscription to Rhapsody (which I *love*) you can listen to the whole album here.

Here's a link to the Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown, edited by Michael S. Harper.

Here's a nice tribute written by Sterling Brown's colleague, E. Ethelbert Miller.

Here's an in-depth article from the African American Review about Sterling Brown. Joanne Gabbin, the author, says this about the poet:

His is the voice of the poet that captures the blues moan of lost and long-gone loves, the chant of saints who pray to be in the number, the tragicomic cry in the face of injustice and violence, and the jubilee songs of endurance and perseverance.

Lyrics (Click on the title to listen to a sample):

Long Track Blues (Sterling A. Brown)

Went down to the yards
To see the signal lights come on;
Looked down the track
Where my lovin' babe done gone.

Red light in my block,
Green light down the line;
Lawdy, let yo' green light
Shine down on that babe o' mine.

Heard a train callin'
Blowin' long ways down the track;
Ain't no train due here,
Baby what can you bring back?

Brakeman tell me
Got a powerful ways to go;
He don't know my feelins
Baby, when he's talkin' so.

Lanterns a-swingin',
An' a long freight leaves the yard;
Leaves me here, baby,
But my heart it rides de rod.

Sparks a flyin',
Wheels rumblin' wid a mighty roar;
Then the red tail light,
And the place gets dark once more.

Dog in the freight room
Howlin' like he los' his mind;
Might howl myself,
If I was the howlin' kind.

Norfolk and Western,
Baby, and the C. & O.;
How come they treat
A hardluck feller so?

Red light in my block,
Green light down the line;
Lawdy, let yo' green light
Shine down on that babe o' mine.

Gum Tree Canoe: S. S. Steele, 1847

Carter taught me this next song from American Songs volume 2, and it is quickly becoming one of my favorite traditional songs.

If you've missed the stories behind the songs in previous posts and would like to catch up, please use these links:

• Goin' to the West
• Evangeline
• Oh Susanna (free download)
• Unclouded Day (free download)
• Oh Sister (free download)

Story behind the song: Carter Little sent me this song back in April, and I immediately fell in love with it. It's a song about two slaves who work in the cotton fields near the Tombigbee river, which flows from Mississippi to the Alabama River. In the evenings, to forget the hardships of the day, they go out for a row in their canoe, and one day, they decide to keep going and never come back.

It's a very beautiful and exciting song about emancipation and hope. I love the way the words "true" and "blue" are constantly repeated throughout the song. Both words hold such promise...of open skies and freedom, and the hope that devotion, perseverance, and holding to what is true will eventually set you free.

The song was written in 1847 by S. S. Steele, and you can actually view the original sheet music at Music for the Nation (very cool). Originally, the song was sung in dialect and from a male perspective. Hopefully not too sacreligiously, I changed the true love's name from Julia to Joseph, and sang the song from a female perspective.

Lyrics (the way I sing them...visit Digital Tradition for the original lyrics in dialect and further notes on the song) Click on the title to listen to a sample
Gum Tree Canoe: S. S. Steele, 1847

On the Tombigbee River so bright I was born
In a hut made of husks of the tall yellow corn
It was there I first met with my Joseph so true
And he'd row me around in his gum tree canoe

Sing row away row o'er the water so blue
Like a feather we'll float in our gum tree canoe

All day in the field the soft cotton I'd hoe
I'd think of my Joseph and sing as I go
I'll catch him a bird with a wing of true blue
And at night we will row in our gum tree canoe

Sing row away row o'er the water so blue
Like a feather we'll float in our gum tree canoe

With my hands on the banjo and toe on the oar
I sing to the sound of the river's soft roar
While the stars they look down on my Joseph so true
And dance in his eye in our gum tree canoe

Sing row away row o'er the water so blue
Like a feather we'll float in our gum tree canoe

One day the old river took us so far away
That we couldn't get back, so we thought we'd just stay
We spied a tall ship with a flag of true blue
And she took us in tow in our gum tree canoe

Sing row away row o'er the water so blue
Like a feather we'll float in our gum tree canoe

Goin' to the West: Traditional

For the next few weeks, I'll tell you a little bit about the rest of the songs that I chose for my new album, American Songs vol. 2, and I might as well begin at the beginning...

(If you haven't already, please check out posts and free downloads of Oh Susanna, Unclouded Day, and Oh Sister.)


Story behind the song: Carter Little taught me "Goin' to the West" 10 years ago when we were in college, and it seemed like a perfect place to begin our first album together.

The song was composed sometime around 1880 when people were migrating in mass numbers across the country to new land in places like Texas and California. When I was a kid, I used to try to imagine what it would be like, traveling for weeks and months across the plains in a covered wagon. The exhilaration and excitement of the open road and new beginnings. And also the overwhelming exhaustion and fear.

I can only imagine that the story in "Goin' to the West" must have replayed over and over again in the 1800's. Originally sung from the male perspective, it is the story of a man whose wife has refused to go West. She is bound and determined to stay put, safe and sound "in the land you love." And he, in the traditional American way, has that deep longing, that intense need to keep going, keep searching for a better land, a better life.

If you listen to a lot of traditional music, you might know versions by the legendary Bill Staines, Peggy Seeger, and/or Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin.

Lyrics (Click on the title to listen to a sample):
Goin' to the West (traditional)

In this fair land I'll stay no more
Here labor is in vain
I'll leave the mountains of my youth
And seek the fertile plains
I'm going to the West

chorus:
You say you will not go with me
You turn your eyes away
You say you will not follow me
No matter what I say
I'm going to the West
I'm going to the West

Three years have gone since we first met
Since I became your bride
Now I must journey far away
Without you by my side
I'm going to the West

I'll leave you here in this land you love
Met, seen, so bright and fair
Where fragrant flowers are bloomin'
And music fills the air
I'm going to the West

Thanks to The Mudcat Cafe, an amazing online resource for traditional folk music.

Carter Little: Dare to Be Small

My friend Carter arrived last night from Nashville, and we're getting ready to go into the studio to finish up my most recent project, American Songs vol. 2. It's an absolute luxury to have Carter on the project...his effortless skills on guitar and soaring, melancholy-tinged vocals add so much texture to these traditional songs. I can't wait for you to hear it!

In the meantime, if you'd like to check out Carter's impressive solo debut album, Dare to Be Small, it's available on Amazon and iTunes. I'm partial to the hauntingly pretty songs Delicate and Fall.

You can also listen to a streaming version of songs from the album (including Fall, plus some bonus songs and some songs from Saddlesong, Carter's 2002 collaboration with his brother), sign up for his mailing list, view pictures, watch videos, read lyrics, and all that cool jazz on his website: www.carterlittle.net.

In the press, Carter has been compared to Wilco, Elliot Smith, Damien Rice, Michael Stipe, Roy Orbison, and my very favorite: "John Mayer without the icky factor" (that brilliant line is from Better Propaganda).

My Country Roots: MP3 Handbook

I'm back in cyberspace...hope you have all been keeping well while I've been away! One of the books I perused over my vacation is my friend Carter Little's (written with Alice Randall & Courtney Little) newly published My Country Roots: The Ultimate MP3 Guide to America's Original Outsider Music.

If you're at all into country music, you'll get a kick out of this book. It's a quirky, fun collection of 100 pre-designed playlists for your mp3. Playlists have roughly 11 songs each, and include:

Honky Tonk Angels (with Loretta Lynn's I'm a Honky Tonk Girl)

Ramblers (with Johnny Cash's version of one of my favorites--Wayfaring Stranger)

Rednecks (with Gillian Welch's Red Clay Halo)

Love & Money (with Linda Ronstadt's version of Silver Threads and Golden Needles)

Cheating (with Hank Williams' classic, Your Cheating Heart)

Coffee, Cigarrettes, & Sugar (with Doc & Merle Watson's fun novelty piece Smoke Smoke Smoke)

Simple Wisdom (with Lee Ann Womack's tearjerker, I Hope You Dance)

As George Jones writes in the forward to this book:

There is nothing in the world like country music. A great country song will tear your heart out. Country songs go with you to work, sit with you when you're crying, slide in the room when you're loving, and hang around in your heart when the loving leaves. A great country record can help turn a body on and will help hold a life together when everything falls apart.

My Country Roots is a fun introduction to country music, and for country fans, I'm pretty sure you won't be able to stop yourself from adding your favorites to the playlists and creating your own!