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.

Nadat ik deze post op Birdeyes had gezet kreeg ik van mijn oude makker Bert Nobbe de tip dat er op YouTube een aardige clip was te vinden waaruit de samenwerking van Bill Clifton met Red Rector blijkt (en met Don Stover en Tom Gray). Bill Clifton, Red Rector en Don Stover zijn indertijd als ‘First Generation’ nog in Nederland geweest. Destijds was ik bij het optreden in Harpel. Indrukwekkend was het!

Tony Russell, de schrijver van het boek dat in het voorgaande deel werd geïntroduceerd.

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.

Bill C. Malone (geboren 15 augustus 1934) schreef onder andere het boek ‘Country music USA’ dat ik diverse versies op de markt is gekomen; het was het proefschrift waarop hij indertijd promoveerde. Ik heb de onderstaande versie in de boekenkast staan, maar ik weet dat Kees Jansen weer een andere heeft. Bill C. Malone heeft waarschijnlijk de oorspronkelijke versie van onze ‘Unpublished Bill Clifton interviews’ van Bill Clifton gekregen voorafgaand aan de periode hij zijn boek over Bill Clifton schreef. Ik heb daar hier over geschreven. Wij hadden in 2004 natuurlijk een uitgewerkte set van het basismateriaal aan Bill Clifton gegeven. Het basismateriaal dat Kees Jansen, Bert Nobbe en ik destijds hebben samengesteld werd door Bill C. Malone als ‘zeer waardevol’ benoemd…
Bill C. Malone was born on a cotton-growing tenant farm 20 miles west of Tyler, Texas in 1934 and grew up with music as ‘a constant companion’. After studying at community college, he enrolled in the University of Texas in 1956 and became a well-known singer in the Austin area, due in part to his encyclopedic repertoire of ‘hillbilly’ songs he learned growing up. He performed at Threadgill’s beer joint in Austin and completed his Master’s degree. He was pleased when his faculty advisor suggested he write his doctoral dissertation on something he loved: ‘hillbilly’, for example ‘country music’. His 1965 dissertation was published in 1968 as Country Music, U.S.A. Malone hosts a weekly radio show, Back to the Country, on WORT–FM community radio in Madison, and performs country music with his wife, Bobbie Malone, playing mandolin and guitar. Malone was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984 to assist his research in U.S. history. In 2008, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for American Music.

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.

Harry C. McAuliffe werd geboren op 9 mei 1899 als Harry C. Aliffe. Tony Russell had het dus inderdaad bij het goede eind in zijn boek (zie het vorige deeltje). Waarschijnlijk kende Bill Clifton de man bij zijn artiestennaam. Als je iets meer research doet blijkt dat Harry C. McAuliffe meerdere pseudoniemen had… Het grootste gedeelte van de muzikale carriere van Harry C. McAuliffe speelde zich af tussen 1929 en het begin van de zestiger jaren van de vorige eeuw. In de dertiger en veertiger jaren van de vorige eeuw werkte hij bij het radiostation WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia. Harry C. McAuliffe overleed op 13 oktober 1966 en is onder andere de schrijver van de song ‘Sunny side of the mountain’. De eerste opname van deze song is van Hank Snow (uitgebracht op 20 december 1944) en is hieronder te beluisteren.
Harry C. McAuliffe

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’.

Vorige post Volgende post

Onderaan de post is een blokje waar u een reactie achter kunt laten. Ik stel dat zeer op prijs! U wordt gevraagd om een mailadres. Dit mailadres wordt niet gepubliceerd, maar stelt mij – als beheerder van deze site – in staat om te reageren op uw reactie.