In laatste alinea van het voorgaande deel in deze serie sprak Bill Clifton over Red Rector (ook al jarenlang één van mijn muzikale helden). De laatste opmerking die Bill maakte was dat A.P. Carter en Red Rector op dezelfde datum hun verjaardag vierden, zonder te vertellen welke datum dat dan wel was. Met dat gegeven begint dit deeltje; er wordt dus antwoord op deze prangende vraag gegeven… Wederom veel lees- en/of luisterplezier gewenst! En… Laat het even weten als u op- of aanmerkingen heeft op deze post…
Origin of Songs (continued)
Transcription:
And that was December 15. But Red often listened to the radio when he was growing up too and at the same time I was growing up. We heard a lot of the same singers who were never recorded before but they used to sing on radio. And back in those days you had to move from one station to the other so you’d get new audiences to sing to, earn a little bit of money at the gate. So we heard a lot of the same people in different places. He heard them in western North Carolina or East Tennessee and I heard them in Virginia and Maryland. So we knew these songs and began to sing them together without really knowing if anybody had recorded them or not. Now, I can look them up now in Tony’s book. I haven’t looked them up but at the time we recorded some of those songs we felt that it was the first time they had been on records because nobody had ever made a recording of them. Now I may be wrong, maybe when I look in Tony’s book I’ll find out everything we’ve done is from somebody, somewhere. It wouldn’t surprise me, yeah.

It must have been a very painstaking job to find all those records, all those masters. But it’s worth the while I think. Oh, it’s worth it to everybody else. I know Bill Malone said the same thing when he saw that book from Tony. He said: ‘I wish I could’ve had that before I wrote the ‘Country Music USA’ book’, you know. Because, there’s a lot of things that he didn’t know and it’s in there. And it’s all documented and documented very well, extremely well. Dates, times, master numbers, everything.
Personnel? And personnel, yeah. Or is it not the personnel. Maybe not the personnel. I’m not sure about that. I have to rethink; I’m not sure about that.

That would be very interesting. Because when we asked Bill Malone, two years ago, what would be a good side of the country music still to document he said: ‘well, the sidemen; all these people that played in these bands that were not the stars’. That probably is not in Tony’s book, now that I think about it. I don’t think he was able to get all that Information. When I looked at it I just looked to see if those songs had ever been recorded and if so; when and by whom. Like Big Slim, The Lone Cowboy, is the one that I remember hearing sing it. Well, he was working for WWVA in Wheeling while I was able to listen to it as a kid. And I remember him singing that song and he and Hank Snow got together a lot on tours in Canada. And so I knew that Hank Snow had learned a lot of things from, well, his name was McAuliffe, Harry McAuliffe. That was his real name but he called himself ‘The Big Slim, The Lone Cowboy’. And I knew his name was Harry McAuliffe and when I looked in Tony’s book I looked for Big Slim, The Lone Cowboy and I didn’t find anything listed. Because I never heard of him recording anything and that didn’t surprise me. And then I thought: ‘well, maybe under Harry McAuliffe’. So I looked for that and that wasn’t listed. And then I started I started reading the book, beginning with the ‘A’s’ and I got to something ‘Aliffe’. And I can’t remember how it was listed, ‘Slim Aliffe’ or what. And it turned out to be that’s who it was.

And he did record it? No, he did not record it but he had recorded six sides in like 1936. And I never knew he’d recorded anything. But he only did that and nothing else as far as I know. But Tony had not picked that up as Big Slim or as Harry McAuliffe in the index so I just had to find it. But it’s there, if you want to look for it.
We were just talking about you collecting songs… Well, my collecting has been mainly from recordings or songbooks and then trying to find the tune to it if I don’t know the tune. And I never have learned how to read music so even if I find the sheet music to a song it doesn’t mean a thing to me. I just have to find somebody who will sing it to me and so I’m always looking for a recording of a song if I find a good song in a folder or an old songbook or in a flea market. Sometimes you go to a flea market and there’s a lot of old sheet music just lying around. And you pick it up and you think: ‘well that looks like a good song’, and you read the words and, sure enough, they are good words. And I have quite a few of those lying around that I’ve never gotten around to listening to them yet. I have the music to them. So somebody, someday I hope will do that. I mean I will pass them on to somebody and hope that somebody else will …
They didn’t get lost in the floods? Yeah, that’s right. They didn’t get lost in the floods. I had those in a safer place. I lost some but not the ones that I treasure and think ’that’s a song that I want to do someday if I can figure out the tune to it’.
Weer mooi Harry. Onze noam ligt nou wel in sommige bibliotheken in de VS en is definitief in de geschiedenis van onze keboj muziek. Nog eem 2 videotips Harry. Van Red Rector is er een opnoame mit Bill, Don Stover, Art Stamper en Tom Gray. En van Bill is er dei mooie clip bie het graf van A.P. Carter. Zoveul moois is er!!
Dat van die clip met Red Rector, Bill Clifton & Don Stover wist ik niet. Daar ga ik even naar kijken. Dat filmpje van Bill bij het graf van A.P. Carter ken ik. Die ga ik in deze serie vast en zeker ook nog wel gebruiken – maar daar was het nog niet van gekomen zullen we maar zeggen. Al met al ben ik héél erg tevreden over de ‘Unpublished Bill Clifton interviews’ serie. Het wordt verschrikkelijk veel gelezen; ondertussen al ruim 30.000 keer (aantal stukjes x aantal dat elk stukje gelezen is). Veel meer dan ik had durven dromen. ‘k Vraag me af of Bill C. Malone überhaupt wel 30.000 exemplaren van zijn boek heeft verkocht…
Ik heb staark het gevuil Harry dat onze raize noar journalistieke onsterfelijkheid is begonnen. Proost op onszulf zollen moar zeggen. Doe en P een goie joarwisseling wenst. En veul gezondhaid en veule mooie artikelen het volgend joar. Ria en ik binnen het er over ains dast doe iets heul moois hin zetst mit Birdeyes!!