Posted by UNCLECOOL3
on 10/24/2009, 2:36 pm, in reply to "Re: Weekend Videos: KT+Johnny Cash+Waylon Jennings+Wyclef Jean+More - "Delia's Gone""
FOLKS:
IT SEEMS LIKE FOREVER NOW BUT, SEVERAL YEARS AGO I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO EXPERIENCE A CONCERT AT AN INDIAN CASINO ABOUT 40 MILES SOUTH OF BISMARCK, ND...THE HEADLINERS, WILLIE & WAYLON. THIS WAS JUST BEFORE (A WEEK BEFORE) WAYLON LOST HIS LEG. HE WAS HELPED ONTO THE STAGE & TO A STOOL (HE SAT FOR HIS SET) AND WAS HELPED OFF STAGE AFTER HE INTRO'D WILLIE.
FOR WILLIE'S ENCORE SONG "ON THE ROAD AGAIN" WILLIE CALLED WAYLON BACK ON STAGE...BACK TO THE STOOL. THEN THE FUN BEGAN. TWO OLD FRIENDS JUST HAVING FUN. WILLIE BENT OVER AND SHARED THE MIC WITH HIS FRIEND ON THE FINAL CHORUS OF THAT TRADEMARK SONG...THE FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE BETWEEN THOSE TWO GUYS REALLY CAME THROUGH THE MUSIC AND INTO THE CROWD THAT NIGHT IN THAT SMALL AUDITORIUM. EVERYONE COULD FEEL IT. IT WAS A WEEK AFTER THAT SHOW WAYLON LOST HIS LEG...AND, IF MEMORY IS CORRECT, NOT LONG AFTER THAT WAYLON PASSED.
THE WAYLON AND THE CASH VIDEO PROVE THESE GUYS WERE THE REAL DEAL. I HAD NOT SEEN THE CASH VIDEO TILL NOW...WOW! YOU'RE SPOT ON WITH THE COMMENT ON HOW WAYLON COULD SING - AS ILL AS HE WAS THAT NIGHT IN BISMARCK, ND...HE BLEW THE ROOF OFF THE PLACE WITH EVERY NOTE HE SANG. DID I MENTION THAT NIGHT...WAYLON (A SICK MAN) AND WILLIE, PLAYED FOR NEARLY THREE (3) HOURS!!! JUST A COUPLE OF OLD PROS I GUESS.
SHARING SOME OLD MEMORIES...AN OLD GUY WHOS BEEN AROUND...LATER,
UNCLECOOL
--Previous Message--
: As a teen in 1966 was when I found Wayon Jennings. I bought his first RCA album new at
: that time. I followed his career until his death in 2002. There will never be
: another voice who couldcome close to his. This man was indeed a singer.
:
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:
:
: --Previous Message--
: On Christmas Eve of the year 1900, according to several shadowy but
: semi-authenticated
: sources, a fourteen-year-old African American girl named Delia Green was murdered by
: her boyfriend, fifteen-year-old Mose Houston (or Huston), in Savannah, GA for
: reasons that time has obscured. According to the same fragmentary records, young
: Houston was convicted of the murder but in an act of clemency unusual for the South
: at the time and likely due to his age was sentenced to life in prison. He was
: paroled some decades later and vanished into obscurity.
:
: This incident may have - or may not have - been the inspiration of a song (or
: songs) that come down to us as "Delia's Gone" and that provide a fine
: example of what we call the folk process.
:
: With some songs, ethnologists and musicologists have a fairly easy time tracing
: roots and branches. There is, for example, a direct and easily hearable connection
: between the 17th century Irish lament "The Bard of Armagh" and the
: grandaddy of all American cowboy songs, "The Streets of Laredo," because
: the melodies are virtually identical; it's more of a challenge to hear the
: connection between "Bard" and the old Basin Street blues number "St.
: James Infirmary," though nearly every discussion of the latter song says it's
: so. And thus it is with hundreds of the folk songs collected and categorized by
: giants of the field like Francis James Child and the redoubtable Lomax family.
:
: Like many genuine songs that we now identify as traditional, no one knows exactly
: where or when people began to sing mournfully about the recently departed Delia. Not
: surprisingly, one version seems to have been in circulation in Atlanta and
: Charleston, SC (and please, in honor of Mike Askins, do not pronounce the
: "r" - it's "Chall-ston") around 1910, and a decade later a
: substantially different and more ambiguous arrangement pops up in New Orleans. The
: older one features lyrics similar to Johnny Cash's below - a "Tony shot his
: Delia/ On a Saturday night" - Cash changes it to first person "I");
: the Louisiana number identifies Delia as either a gambler or trusted friend whose
: death is a cause for sorrow, rather more like Dylan's, and which Waylon Jennings
: shows cross-pollinates with another New Orleans number. Some experts believe that it
: was just the natural diversification of song variants that we can see in, say,
: "The Gypsy Laddie" becoming "Black Jack Davey" and finally
: morphing into the very different "Gyspy Rover" while others maintain that
: there were two different root songs - and maybe two different but equally
: unfortunate Delias.
:
: Whatever the case, one of the really early recordings is from the Library of
: Congress recording of Blind Willie McTell (who inspired Britain's Ralph May to
: change his name to Ralph McTell, composer of "The Streets of London") from
: around 1933:
:
:
:
: Now the Kingston Trio didn't venture too frequently into blues-flavored numbers,
: though when they did (think "Leave My Woman Alone" or "This Mornin',
: This Evenin' So Soon" or "The Wanderer") they could be very
: effective. The Trio's version separates the singer from responsibility for the
: girl's death, leaving him in a pain that can only be alleviated by drinking -
: "one more round." The instrumental accompaniment here features one of the
: stronger and more emphatic contributions of KT bassist Dean Reilly - there was an
: odd comfort and symmetry in knowing now that the last time that Nick, Bob, and John
: ever played together in August 2007 in Scottsdale that they were joined by a
: vigorous and beaming 80-year-old Dean:
:
:
:
: The highest profile modern rendition of "Delia" belongs to Johnny Cash.
: There is a fine performance video of JC singing it in 1969 on his TV show, but I
: found this MTV-era video from the Americanh Recordings sessions of 1994 to be more
: satisfying - just Johnny in fine voice accompanied only by his own guitar work,
: reminding us of what a fine rhythm player he was. JC's lyrics are bloodier than the
: Trio's and give another possible meaning to "one more round." This is Cash
: at his folkiest:
:
:
:
: The above -mentioned Mike Askins mentioned how much he loved "Hee Haw" (me
: too, Mike), and Waylon Jennings' rendition of "Delia" is a reminder of how
: much good music the show featured. Jennings is clearly doing the New Orleans
: version, which is conflated with another very familiar N.O. classic:
:
:
:
: Reggae/blues/rap/all-purpose superstar Wyclef Jean gives an island flavor to Cash's
: arrangement:
:
:
:
: For a completely different take, our late friend Travis Edmondson and Bud Dashiell
: do that inimitable up-tempo Spanish-flavored guitar accompaniment that only they
: could pull off - Travis especially here with his rhythmic tapping of the sound board
: leaves you astonished - from one of Hefner's shows in the 60s:
:
:
:
: Now I happen to be in the minority around here, I think, in that I really like Bob
: Dylan's singing when, as they say in sports, he stays within himself, which he does
: very effectively in folk blues numbers like this - rather closer to Willie McTell's:
:
:
:
: This is one of those weeks when I really, really enjoy this Comparative Videos
: project - every version is a gem....
:
: Appendix
:
: ... which is why I'm separating this one from the rest - an ironic parody in really
: poor taste about a recent death called "Jacko's Gone" by one Graeme Dirt:
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