ULRICUS - Instrumentenbau - Wilfried Ulrich

Link here: http://www.ulrich-instrumente.de/index.html

In page on the Hummel:

Die Hummel war ein weit verbreitetes Volksmusikinstrument im 19. Jahrhundert - nicht nur in Norddeutschland. Durch die immer mitschwingenden dicken Begleitseiten, die an das Summen der Hummeln erinnerten, entstand der lautmalerische Name für die Instrumente. In Schweden heißt das Instrument Hummla, in den Niederlanden Hommel oder Noardske Balke, in Belgien Vlier und in Frankreich Epinette, in Tschechien Kobza. (vergleichbar Scheitholt)

Die Melodiesaiten wurden mit dem linken Zeigefinger oder einem Spielstab niedergedrückt, während die rechte Hand die Saiten mit einem Plättchen oder Federkiel traktierte. ...

Appalachia: A note for flatlanders (moved from faculty website)

Since the Appalachian dulcimer is played by people from New England to California these days, the following note is offered as a public service. People who live in Appalachia have their own way of saying the word. There's even a poem sometimes offered for the edification of flatlanders. It goes like this:

"Snake," said Eve,
"If you try to deceive,
I'll throw this apple atcha."

-- Loyal Jones and Billy Edd Wheeler. Laughter in Appalachia. Little Rock: August House, 1987. 90

HUM 223 (fall 09): New textbook in roots music course

Ordered today at the BenU-Springfield bookstore:

It's "The Black and White of American Popular Music" by Vera Lee. Here are the product details from Amazon:

Paperback: 376 pages 
Publisher: Schenkman Books (February 14, 2007) 
Language: English 
ISBN-10: 0870470779 
ISBN-13: 978-0870470776 
Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches 
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces 

Replaces "American Music: A Panorama" by Lorenzo Candelaria and Daniel Kingman. We'll still use "Deep Blues" by Robert Palmer.

 

'Boys of Bluehill' has a (sort of) Chicago connection

This from Andrew Kuntz' Fiddler's Companion (scroll down to the song). :

BOYS OF BLUEHILL, THE (Buacailli Ua Cnoc-Gorm). AKA ‑ "Beaux of Oak Hill," “Boys of North Tyne,” "Lads of North Tyne," "Silver Lake" (Pa.), "Jenny Baker," "Lonesome Katy,” “Two Sisters,” “Twin Sisters." Irish, Reel or Hornpipe. D Major. Standard tuning. AABB (most versions): AA’B (Moylan). [Capt. Francis] O’Neill (who said the melody was unknown to Chicago Irish musicians beforehand) had the tune from a seventeen year old fiddler named George West, who, though gifted musically, was somewhat indigent and did not own a fiddle. He had formed a symbiotic musical relationship of sorts with one O’Malley, who did own a fiddle and who eked out a meagre living playing house parties despite the loss of a finger from his left hand. O’Malley, however, invariably could only make it to midnight before he became too inebriated to bow, at which time West took over his fiddle and finished the night’s engagement. “Thus lived the careless, improvident but talented Georgie, until an incident in his life rendered a trip to the far West advisable." Early American recorded versions on 78 RPM’s give the title as “Boys from the Hill” and “Slieve Gorm.” Fiddler Tommy Dandurand (Chicago/Kankakee, Illinois) recorded the melody as “Beau of Oak Hill” in 1927, and it is this title that is familiar to many American fiddlers not influenced directly by Irish repertoire (of which “Boys of Bluehill” is a staple hornpipe).

"The tune is perhaps older in American tradition than in Irish," adds Kuntz, "although its provenance is unknown, although in American tradition it is almost always played as a reel rather than a hornpipe." He cites a printed version as “The Two Sisters” in George P. Knauff’s Virginia Reels (1839) and variants from southwestern Virginia, North Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and the Ozarks. An Ohio variant dates to 1842.

Recordings:

• On YouTube hear a funky guitar version by a British expat living in France, "heavily inspired by -- copied from -- the version by the Breton guitarist Dan Ar Braz." Very nice.
  
• Also on YouTube, a 1977 clip of James Galway and Matt Molloy playing it on TG4 television in Ireland.
  
• And, at Archive.org, a 78rpm recording of Leo Rowsome on Uilleann pipes and Frank O'Higgins on fiddle playing a medley of "Boys of Bluehill" and "Fisher's Hornpipe" (actually another tune called "Minstrel's Fancy") in Dublin in 1933.

There's a fascinating biography of Captain O'Neill in the program notes for "The Police Chief Who Saved Irish Music" on WTTW public television of Chicago. Lengthy excerpts available online from Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913).

Links to 'Escomb Prayer'

Discussed in Robert Jonas' article "Blowing Zen in Belfast" and included on his CD New Life From Ruins: Zen Celtic Sacred Songs and Meditations ... text is available online in a blog called theology, life and faith in the UK by Maggi Dawn, a British free-lancer with credits on spiritual topics.

As the rain hides the stars,
As the Autumn mist hides the hills,
As the clouds veil the blue of the sky,
So the dark happenings of my lot
Hide the shining of thy face from me.

Yet, if I may hold thy hand in the darkness,
It is enough.
Since I know, that though I may stumble in my going
Thou dost not fall.

Gray cat on a Tennessee farm armchair

Porkchop from old blog profile

Copied here so I don't lose it while I switch to a new home PC ...

Misc. links to psalmodikon articles in Denmark, Sweden, Maine and southeastern Minnesota

1. 2. Kirsten Ostenfeld. "Psalmodikon - et dansk musikpædagogisk eksperiment." http://dvm.nu/files/musik_forskning/1978/mf1978_03.pdf.
ca. 30 pages. Published in 1978.

2. Hans Lundgren. "Östervålapräst grundade församling i USA" Upsala Nya Tidning Jan. 8, 2009. Article on 200th anniversary of Lars Esbjorn's birth in Swedish newspaper. Excerpts:

Esbjörn tog psalmodikon med sig till USA, ett slags folklig föregångare till gitarren. Johan Dillner hade uppfunnit ett siffernotsystem så att vem som helst kunde spela på instrumentet. L.P Esbjörn transkriberade också noter för psalmodikon. Musiken förbättrade sången och spred psalmerna.
Håkan Nilsson, dagens kyrkoherde i Östervåla, fascineras av den dådkraftige Esbjörn:
- Han förtjänar verkligen att lyftas fram. När han kom tillbaka till Sverige år 1863 var han en stor man också inom kyrkan. Han hade tänkt sig återvända till Dellenbygdens blå berg, men dåvarande kyrkoherden i Östervåla, just Johan Dillner, dog och Esbjörn ersatte honom.
* * *
I Östervåla har för övrigt gator uppkallats efter de två samt kyrkoherden Forssell.
200-årsfirandet av Esbjörns födelse har redan inletts i Östervåla. På hans grav på gamla kyrkogården brinner ljus varje dag och under sommaren skall där finnas färska blommor hela tiden. Officiellt startar firandet söndagen den 6 april med en kontraktshögmässa till hans minne.
- Intresserade inbjuds det veckoslutet bygga sitt psalmodikon med en expert som kursledare, säger Håkan Nilsson.
I sommar besöker ett 70-tal studenter från Augustanasynodens collegekör Sverige. De kommer till Östervåla kyrka och Uppsala domkyrka i början på juni. I början på juli besöker biskopen Ragnar Persenius Östervåla.

3. Matthew Shippee, contractor, Maine Arts Commission, Traditional Arts Division, "Report On Discovery Research Fieldwork in the Swedish Colony" June 2001. Cultural Directory, Maine Swedish Colony. http://www.geocities.com/mscguide/shippee/">http://www.geocities.com/mscguide/shippee/ Excerpt quotes Alma Huddleston, who plays piano or keyboard to accompany singing in Covenant church:

Alma's regular repertoire consists of some Swedish hymns which have become so popular in other Christian churches that most people don't know them as "Swedish" hymns. These include: "How Great Thou Art," "Day by Day," and "Children of the Heavenly Father." These and most hymns sung at the church are in English. Alma says that, in contrast with even 10-20 years ago, now she only plays other "really traditional Swedish hymns" two or three times per month. She speculates that the reason for this is lack of familiarity with the language and music. "If people at church can't sing the songs we don't want to play them," she says. And, she adds, "Even at Midsommar, when we sing both the American and Swedish Anthems, the Swedish one gets quieter and quieter every year because fewer people know it."

It is a telling sign of the times to hear Alma lament that, "I play the old Swedish hymns at funerals more than any place else now. A lot of the old people and their families want that music."

Still, Alma feels that Swedish music will continue to have some presence in the church. She says she finds the rewards for playing it are great, even in the face of a fading tradition: "When we do sing those old hymns in church I love it. I really love to hear the older people sing them because you can tell how meaningful it is to them."

A psalmodikon is on dispaly in the New Sweden Museum. "It is roughly 40 inches long and has markings indicating finger positions. It most closely resembles a dulcimer, but with only one string."

4. On a website maintained by the "Friends of Wasioja," a local historical society in southeastern Minnesota, an account of an "old-fashioned Christmas service at "the historical Baptist Church" in Wasioja, Minn., preserved and maintained by the Dodge County Historical Society. Cite as from Don Green, "Christmas at the Wasioja Baptist Church," Dec. 19, 2008. Unheated building with 10 inches of fresh snow on the ground. Greene writes:

Marlyn Schroeder from Mantorville brought her grandfather's psalmodikon and did a solo, Jeg Er Sa Glad. It was very unique, and she shared the history of this instrument. It is a single-stringed musical instrument. It was developed in Scandinavia for simplifying music in churches and schools. Beginning in the early 1800s, it was adopted by many rural churches in Scandinavia; later, immigrants brought the instrument to the United States. At the time, many congregations could not afford organs. Dance instruments were considered inappropriate for sacred settings, so violins were not allowed. The psalmodikon, on the other hand, was inexpensive to build, was not used for dancing, took up little space, and could be played by people with little musical training. Its slow, melodic quality worked well with the hymns of the period. Examples of older printed music from these churches often have numbers written over the words. These corresponded to numbers painted on the fret board of the psalmodikon. This allowed players who could not read standard musical notation to accompany hymns. As churches saved money for organs, psalmodikons became less common. By the late 20th century, they were rarely seen outside of museums. Marlyn also brought her violin and was accompaniment for the carols, and also played a violin solo, Ashokon, a Civil War melody.

Not a bad summary. Nice color.

Praetorius pix / scheitholt / hommel (w/ sound file)

Creative Commons pix of diverse violins from Praetorius' "Syntagma Musicum" (1618) showing scheitholt and the "pochette" violin mentioned in Ralph Lee Smith's book on Kentucky songcatchers.

---

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER LIBRARY BULLETIN
Volume X · Spring 1955 · Number 3
Michael Praetorius and his Syntagma Musicum
-- RUTH WATANABE

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=2470

---

Music in the Daily Life of Vermeer: The Hommel
by Adelheid Rech

Very informative on a website about the painter Vermeer about the Flemish hommel. Links to a very brief mp3 file of a scheitholt played by a Helga Wagner (see note below). Quotes follow:

The hommel was primarily played in the privacy of the family circle of the lower classes. The great majority of the players were farmers, craftsmen or itinerant tradesmen who played at the fairs, and in years to come, factory workers. It is indeed the only folk instrument played by women, and more than half of the hommel-players still known by name today, are women. Unfortunately, not a single hommel has ever been detected in paintings of any kind.

The hommel may occasionally have been employed for the accompaniment of the congregational singing. The earlier municipal museum of Ypres (West Flanders), unfortunately destroyed during First World War, once housed a large hommel from the 17th century that substituted a church organ.³

But the hommel also served the military. In 1771 J. W. Lustig mentioned the hommel as an instrument for "soldatenmuziek" ("soldiers' music"). It was especially popular among Belgian front soldiers in First World War.⁴

During the first half of the 19th century the hommel had gradually fallen out of use and was only sporadically played in Frisia and northern Holland, mainly by elderly people. In his article "De hommel of Noordsche Balk," 5 J. C. Boers reports the story of an old woman from the isle of Föhr (North-Germany) who related that her hommel came from Holland (Frisia) where elder[l]y men or women accompanied home singing and "Sunday afternoon psalms" up to the 1870s.

* * *
The hommel is played with a noter held in the left hand, a stick of hard wood, 5-7 cm long, for the fretting, and by plucking the melody string/s and drones with a plectrum⁷held in the right hand. Instead of the noter some players use the fingers of the left hand to stop the melody string/s on the frets and pluck with the fingers and occasionally the thumb of the right hand.

Noting (fretting) and plucking are generally done simultaneously; rapid melodic passages and grace notes are played with one single stroke (glissando). While playing, the instrument is usually placed on a table top or chest; the musician sits down or plays standing. Occasionally the hommel is played while held across the lap or knees.

By Googling "Helga Wagner" I found a webpage featuring antique musical instruments made by "Klangwelt" in Süsterseel, Germany 

Musikinstrumente aus aller Welt und aus eigener Werkstatt 

including the scheitholt, the Finnish kantele and the dulcimer  

Turlough O'Carolan, music and MIDI files

http://www.oldmusicproject.com/OCC.html


From the "Tribute to Turlough O'Carolan" by Bridget Haggerty on the website Irish Culture and Customs:

In Carolan's time, there were three musical traditions in Ireland
- art music, folk music, and the harper tradition. The harper
tradition served as a link between art and folk music and was
the main conduit for the oral tradition. Carolan created a
unique style by combining these art forms, and then adding
elements inspired by Italian music which was then fashionable
in Ireland. He was a great admirer of Vivaldi and Corelli,
whose modern music he would have heard in the homes of
his noble Irish patrons, and this admiration is reflected in
the melodic construction and forms of many of his pieces. ...

When he was in Dublin, Carolan was the frequent guest of
Dr. Patrick Delany, Professor of Oratory at Trinity College,
in whose honour he composed a tune. Through Delany he came
in contact with Jonathan Swift. Swift and O'Carolan
collaborated in translating a poem by Carolan's friend,
Hugh Magauran, 'Pléaraca na Ruarcach' or 'O'Rourke's Feast,'
for which Carolan wrote the music.

The website has 213 of Carolan's tunes, from "Lady Athenry" to "Squire Wood's Lamentation (on the Refusal of his Halfpence)." Another website, The IrishPage.Com, has a page on "O'Rourke's Feast" complete with the story of the song, a MIDI file (apparently lacking on the Old Music Project) and Dean Swift's translation, which begins:

O'Rourke's noble fare - Will ne'er be forgot
By those who were there - Or those who were not.
His revels to keep, - We sup and we dine
On seven score sheep, Fat bullocks and swine
Usequebaugh to our feast - In pails was brought up,
A hundred at least, - And the madder our cup,
O there is the sport! - We rise with the light
In disorderly sort, - From snoring all night.

And so on. Nice song. Worth a listen. The website is a project of Jack & Vivian Hennessey

Gracia Grindal lecture on Hemlandssånger

Two listings of what appears to be the same talk ...

1. Gracia Grindal, "Swedish-American Spiritual Songbooks and Their Origins," Lecture given at Swedish Songfest, Luther Seminary, October 1992. http://hymnuts.luthersem.edu/lecture.htm

Excerpt: The Swedish pastors who were to take their places as the founders of the Augustana Synod, brought [Oscar] Ahnfelt's books with them and quickly began disseminating the tunes and texts among the Swedish pioneers by singing them for a variety of church occasions. Tufve Nilsson Hasselquist, the still point at the center of Augustana's history, is said to have sung them in church as he walked down the aisle, wearing a white linen coat. In 1856 he published a collection of 50 of Ahnfelt's song, which he called Femtio Andeliga Sånger, the first book of songs published by Swedes in America. Its popularity is attested to by the fact it was sold out by 1859. In addition to publishing the book he also published selections from the book in his monthly paper Det Rätta Hemlandet, which had as a Bible verse under the title Jeremiah 51:50 "Remember the Lord from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your mind." What better for a title for the book of songs later to be published than Hemlandssånger which it received in 1860 when Jonas Engberg of Chicago, published a book of 240 spiritual songs which he named Hemlandssånger. These were published, with psalmodikon markings, almost in their entirety, on the front page of every issue of Det Rätta Hemlandet until all of the tunes for the book had been published in 1863. Interesting to note, is that the tradition of publishing psalmodikon markings had begun with the 1846 version of the Wallin hymnal Den Svenska Psalmboken med alla psalmers melodier för första gånger fyrstämmigt tecknade med siffor, enligt Kongeliga Musikaliska Akademies meloditabell och Haeffners koralbok which certainly Esbjörn had with him as well as Syréen's songs. The publishing of these songs in such a manner tells us that the Swedish immigrants had taken to heart the teaching of Johan Dillner, who used the instrument to teach his choir the four parts of harmony in the Wallin hymnal. One still can find these primitive instruments in old barns out on Swedish and Norwegian farms in this area, much misunderstood, but a deeply significant part of the Swedish song tradition in this country. ...

2. "The Swedish-American Lutheran Tradition of Hymns and Song." Lecture given in October 1992 at the 100th anniversary of Hemlandssånger. http://hymnuts.luthersem.edu/hcompan/hymnal/hemlandsanger.htm

Same text, but with nice pix of the book and the title Hemlandssånger in italics throughout.

Clawhammer banjo - sound clips of lots of North Carolina fiddle tunes

ZEPP Country Music, Inc., Wendell, N.C.

http://zeppmusic.com/

Inludes Snake River Reel, Cumberland Gap, Over the Waterfall, Road to Lisdoonvarna (well, they're not all N.C. tunes), Rock the Cradle Joe, Bonaparte's Retreat ... lots more

Music resources - Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship website at Calvin College has a very good directory of music links and resources mostly, but by no means all, from a Reformed perspective. 

Included:

Copyright Help
Guide to Copyright Information 
from the Church Music Publishers Association 
How to Copyright Right
from Reformed Worship magazine
Thou Shall Not Steal
from Reformed Worship magazine

But there's a lot more.

Link to WNYC show on Bernstein's 'Mass'

Broadcast Oct. 1, 2008, on WNYC radio an hour-long show on Bernstein's "Mass". Here's the blurb: "Composer Daniel Felsenfeld re-examines Leonard Bernstein's controversial "Mass." Also, highlights from the New York Festival of Song's recent Bernstein Celebration." Well worth a listen.
WNYC also has streaming audio. And a local news website with two-minute top-of-the-news updates throughout the day.

'Smoke Signals'/soundtrack CD; HUM 221 syllabus?

Note to self: Assign screenplay for "Smoke Signals" instead of "Here First" in next year's HUM 221 syllabus (which is past due for a reworking anyway). especially since we aren't really doing much with "Here First" anyway; focus the course more on the question how do Native American artists balance artistic expression, Native cultural identity and the need to make a buck with their art?

Turns out the soundtrack was as well received as the movie, and the movie won the Filmmakers Trophy and the Audience Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Adds Evan Cater's All Music Guide review on the Answers.com website:

Like the film itself, which went on to be an unlikely box office success, the soundtrack provided a major market showcase for Native American talent. In addition to excerpts from B.C. Smith's original score, the CD features music from Native American artists Ulali, Jim Boyd, Jon Sirois, Andre Picara, Jr., Patrick Watt, and the Eaglebear Singers. Smith's score incorporates elements of traditional Native American music, placing it alongside Michael Nyman-esque orchestral compositions and snatches of contemporary rock.

And this:

All of this wide-ranging diversity does make for a somewhat disjointed listen, but it is undeniably well-suited to a movie about the struggle of the indigenous peoples to accept, embrace, and preserve their heritage in the face of the dominating influence of mainstream American culture

Here's a pretty perceptive customer review on the Amazon.com website on the movie:

Like the movie, the soundtrack seems to be a wonderfully original piece that mostly has moments of soulful beauty, grace and humor, with some purely dorky "you can tell this is my very first time doing this" moments. The electric guitar pieces didn't really fit in the movie - they seemed to be communicating the obvious in a way that was really detracting to the quality of the scenes, and they don't stand well on their own on the CD. But those songs are few and, as soundtracks go, this is really beautiful overall. The vocalists are original and really good, and make you want to find out more about them and their work. And if you loved the movie, you will probably really appreciate the CD. I highly recommend it.

"Perceptive," as aways, means I agree with it.

Nordic Fest in Iowa

Midwest Weekends, a website by former St. Paul Pioneer-Press travel writer Beth Gauper, has an article on Nordic Fest. "Every year," she says, "the 8,700 people of Decorah, Iowa, put on a jubilee of Old World heritage that brings up to 75,000 to the picturesque hills of northeast Iowa and serves as a kind of homecoming for Norwegians from many states." A snippet that conveys a lot of atmosphere:

In the elementary school nearby, rosemaler Kari Pettersen of Drammen, Norway, brushed a swirl of blue paint onto an oxblood-red bowl, watched by an audience as hushed as a golf-tournament gallery. We watched a puppet show, then joined the crowd on the ball field outside, where men were heaving boulders in the Nordic Rock Throw.

We had grilled-steak sandwiches and Spring Grove lemonade at the local cattlemen's tent, served by the Winneshiek County Beef Queen; all the food stands are run by local groups, with not a corn dog or mini-doughnut in sight.

On Water Street, we bought a plate of krumkake and listened to music: The Bo Juniorspelemannslag from Telemark, Norway, playing hardanger fiddle, with one young woman singing a haunting folk song accompanied by flute. The Aalesund Spelemanslag, playing the wedding march they play for tourists on the west coast of Norway. The North Sea Square Dancers, with limber young men enacting a courtship ritual by kicking a felt hat off the end of a pole held by a young woman.

That night, we didn't go to the torchlight parade, street dance, giant bonfire or fireworks over the Upper Iowa River. We'd run out of steam.

The next morning, in the dorm lounge [at Decorah's Luther College, which rents out rooms for the weekend], I talked with Ann Denhoun of Fort Calhoun, Neb., who comes to Nordic Fest every year with her husband.

"The first year, we were so overwhelmed by all the stimuli,'' she said. "We went home, and it took us weeks to absorb everything we'd seen.''

This year's Nordic Fest is July 23-25.

Western Carolina Dulcimer Week

WCU Mountain Dulcimer Week

[http://www.wcu.edu/5046.asp]

* * *

Post-Registration Information
[http://www.wcu.edu/6287.asp]

Selected files for use after completion of Mountain Dulcimer Week registration:

• Typical Jam Session Tunes
• Dulcimer Marketplace Vendors
• Electives Enrollment Form
• Elective Descriptions
• Etiquette and Technology Guidelines and What to Bring
  

Website for luthiers

http://www.frets.com/ mostly about guitars but some basics for all stringed instruments. By Frank Ford, luthier and founder of Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alton, Calif.

Link here for the index page with many, many links on building, maintenance, including the pages on action, frets, strings and diagnosing string buzz I was looking for when I Googled into the website 

RE: Alan Lomax website, Sidney Bechet, DVDs for HUM 223

The website is called Cultural Equity and it contains links to a lot of Alan Lomax' work ... a welter of stuff ...

I surfed into it inadvertently, when I was Googling early jazz clarinet master Sidney Bechet and found what has to be the best online biography of the man. [See note on Bechet below.] But the website itself is something that merits further study. From the "about" page:

The Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), at the Fine Arts Campus of New York City's Hunter College, was chartered as a charitable organization in the State of New York in 1983. It was founded by Alan Lomax as a center for the exploration and preservation of the world's expressive traditions. 

MISSION
ACE's mission is to facilitate cultural equity, the right of every culture to express and develop its distinctive heritage. Cultural equity is the end result of collecting, archiving, repatriating, and revitalizing the full range and diversity of the expressive traditions of the world's people — stories, music, dance, cooking, costume. Alan Lomax hoped that cultural equity would become one of the fundamental principles of human rights and made it the keystone of own career. He used an approach to research and public use he called cultural feedback, which is intended to provide equity for the people whose music and oral traditions were until recently unrecorded and unrecognized. ACE realizes its mission through a configuration of feedback projects that creatively use and expand upon Alan Lomax's collected works and research on music and other forms of expressive culture. These include:

• The digitization of a vast majority of Alan Lomax's media and scholarly files in an evolving website which is open to the public.
• The commercial distribution of sound and video recordings from Lomax's collections linked to the payment of royalties to the original performers or their descendants.
• The repatriation of media collections to libraries situated in the areas where they were collected.
• Making the research paradigms, findings, and data of Lomax's Performance Style & Culture research accessible to musicologists, movement specialists, and evolutionary anthropologists.

Also on the website links to recordings and videos, Including two DVDs from the American Patchwork series that would be perfect for the blues course in the fall:

• The Land Where the Blues Began
  Produced in 1979 with the support of Mississippi Educational Television, Alan Lomax, John Bishop, & Worth Long explore the enduring African-American performance traditions of the Mississippi Delta. Featuring bluesmen R. L. Burnside and Jack Owens; tall-tale tellers, fife and drum bands, and diddley-bow players; and former prisoners, railroad workers, and roustabouts singing field hollers, work chants, and levee camp songs. This DVD is a 1990 re-edit of the original program for inclusion in the American Patchwork series. An expanded version of the original is being prepared for DVD. [$24.95]
  
• Jazz Parades: Feet Don't Fail Me Now
  A celebration of New Orleans' musical culture — from its piano bars and barrelhouses to brass bands and street parades, with their colorful, riotous, and symbolic second lines, in which the community plays an essential part in the performance. Shot in the thick of funeral parades and nightclubs, with performances by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and Danny Barker, Feet Don't Fail Me Now tells the story of New Orleans' utterly unique and valuable jazz heritage. [$24.95]

A note on how Bechet's name is pronounced (which I also surfed into), linked here so I don't forget it and/or lose it. From an aside in the [London] Independent, "... Louis Armstrong's great contemporary Sidney Bechet was pronounced in the French style by the Americans (As Sidney Beshay) but the French, wishing to say things in the American style, assumed that the Americans had got it wrong as usual and called him Sidney Beshette." Miles Kington, "The strange case of Dr Jeekyll and Mr Lewis, The Independent, Dec 28, 1994  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19941228/ai_n14864921/ If that's true, and I have no reason to doubt it, it is significant because Bechet spent so much of his career in France.

Grateful Dead, Barton Hall, Cornell U., Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University, May 8, 1977

Grateful Dead Live at Barton Hall, Cornell University on 1977-05-08 (May 8, 1977)



http://www.archive.org/details/gd1977-05-08.mtx.seamons.97274.sbeok.flac16

Set 1

New Minglewood Blues
Loser
El Paso
They Love Each Other
Jack Straw
Deal
Lazy Lightnin' ->
Supplication
Brown Eyed Women
Mama Tried
Row Jimmy
Dancing In The Street

Set 2

Scarlet Begonias ->
Fire On The Mountain
Estimated Prophet
Saint Stephen ->
Not Fade Away ->
Saint Stephen ->
Morning Dew

Encore
One More Saturday Night