Root Hog Or Die

Channel Description:

Latest Articles in this Channel:

04/01/09--07:58: Archie Green, 1917-2009. (chan 2828951)

Published in the April 1 edition of the Louisville Eccentric Weekly (LEO). In mid-December, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi received a memorandum from a constituent on Caselli Street in San Francisco. President-Elect Obama had been publicly ginning up support for the stimulus package he would submit to Capitol Hill immediately after his inauguration, and [...]


roothogordie

archiecaselli

miner066

archieforweb520

08/22/09--12:17: Farewell, Mike Seeger (chan 2828951)

I’m sitting on a draft of about 1200 words devoted to my feelings regarding Mike Seeger, scrambled together shortly after his passing, of multiple myeloma, on August 7. But I’ll admit that there’s no way to adequately express his influence on my appreciation of traditional American music, both because the words that I did attempt [...]


roothogordie

Mike Seeger at the Lincoln Memorial, c. 1950.

mike2

10/31/09--16:28: “Face A Frowning World: An E.C. Ball Memorial Album” (chan 2828951)

The stoic couple that grace the masthead of this blog are E.C. and Orna Ball, a pair of singers and musicians who are responsible, to these ears, for some of the most affecting music ever to come out of the Southern Appalachian mountains — or anywhere else, for that matter. On December 8th, the Tompkins [...]


roothogordie

ec cover

P-8 EC Ball portrait

Slide IV-A-317 Orna and EC Ball in their home in Rugby, VA

PS-7 Ec and Orna Ball

11/25/09--21:48: Sid Hemphill and Mr. Carrier’s Line (chan 2828951)

Sid Hemphill was a multi-instrumentalist, band-leader, and patriarch of a prodigiously musical family in the Mississippi Hill Country. Blind Sid played fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo, fife, quills, organ, and every type of drum that the region’s picnics and dances required, and he sang – perhaps shouted is a better word for what he did with [...]


roothogordie

Sid Hemphill

Rosalie Hill and Sidney Hemphill Carter

ROUN1515_Cover

Sid Hemphill and Lucius Smith

12/12/09--10:35: R.I.P. Phyllis Workman Boyens Liptak (chan 2828951)

Phyllis Workman Boyens Liptak, daughter of Nimrod and Molly Workman, and a fine singer and composer died Wednesday, December 9, at the age of 62. She appeared with Nimrod on an LP called “Passing Through the Garden,” the first release on the June Appal label, in 1974. I had the great pleasure of working briefly [...]


roothogordie

01/27/10--20:41: Parental Advisory: Explicitly Austrian Content (chan 2828951)

I write somewhere around here that I’m disinclined to use this forum for the reviewing of records, as it seems like the internet is comprised solely of pornography and record reviews, but one of the latest Arhoolie releases has struck me as something so exciting, fresh, and sui generis and, being so surprised that I [...]


roothogordie

Uncensored Folk Music of Austria

02/09/10--11:09: Topical Songs: celebrating the world’s oldest independent label (chan 2828951)

England’s Topic Records turned seventy in 2009, making it, according to most expert accountings, the world’s oldest independent record label. Founded in 1939 by an offshoot of the British Marxist Party called the Workers’ Musical Association, it has evolved, over the forty years Tony Engle has stood at its helm, into the world’s premiere outlet [...]


roothogordie

70-years-of-Topic-150px

Topic1

Topic2

img

img-1

img-2

img-3

img

img-1

05/27/10--14:19: Goddamn, hell, it’s Hamper McBee. (chan 2828951)

There are no words to describe my excitement about the third release on our Twos & Fews recording imprint, out June 29. Recorded by the late, peerless country music scholar Charles K. Wolfe and the filmmaker Sol Korine in late ’77 and early ’78, “The Good Old-Fashioned Way: Hamper McBee of Monteagle, Tennessee” may well [...]


roothogordie

Hamper in the leaves

Hamper McBee: The Good Old-Fashioned Way

Hamper 2

hamper barrel 2

Hamper on barrell 1

08/11/10--14:00: Alan Lomax’s Southern Journey at 50 (and 51) (chan 2828951)

In October I will have worked for the Alan Lomax Archive for ten years. (I remark to friends with some regularity about this being my only job as an adult, putting in context, perhaps, some dimension of my peculiarity.) I started at the age of 22, having been hired after three afternoons’ worth of volunteerism [...]


06/22/11--09:55: The 1931 Louisville Sessions (chan 2828951)

On the afternoon of June 12, 1931, the two biggest acts in country music, Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, magically visited each other in their respective homes of Kerrville, Texas, and Maces Springs, Virginia — a feat accomplished by the wizardry of Ralph Peer and his Victor Talking Machine Company. These recorded “visits” were [...]


roothogordie

Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family in Louisville. Note the "For Rent" sign and Louisville exchange.

My Good Gal's Gone Blues