I didn’t mean to take a week off from the blog, but I had a few days off for my birthday then I went to Cincinnati to see the Reds play (and lose) over the weekend. But I’m back with a fresh stock of blues discs thanks to Shake It Records. By “thanks” I mean they allowed me to spend more money than I wanted to, before finding out they have Document Records 3 for $28. I think my mouth hit the floor.

Jake Jones and The Gold Front Boys were a Dallas Based blues band featuring Jones on the mic backed by unknowns on banjo, guitar and clarinet. The clarinet in this song is star, matching Jones’ plaintive cry perfectly. This isn’t the first (or second) blues song to use the ocean as a metaphor for a relationship, but it does manage to avoid using the same “stuck between the devil and the deep blues sea” type lines as most of the other nautical blues songs.

Jake Jones and The Gold Front Boys – Southern Sea Blues (1929)

The site was down for a good part yesterday as my host for whatever reason botched some move of their mysql server taking a bunch of sites down. Everything should be back to normal now. I was going to think of some clever 6/6/06 post today, but I mean, everyone is doing that. So here is my post from yesterday that didn’t make it up.

Here are the two sides Kid Bailey (as discussed here) recorded in 1929 in Memphis. I hear the resemblance to Willie Brown, especially in Rowdy Blues, but the voice and phrasing doesn’t seem like they are coming from the same guy.

Kid Bailey – Mississippi Bottom Blues (1929)

Kid Bailey – Rowdy Blues (1929)

I stumbled upon Folktunes.org a few nights ago and is a good way to search the Internet Archive without searching through thousands of Jam Band live shows. On the front page (as of this morning) are some great blues and bluegrass tracks.

Everything seems to be running smoothly on the new server. I still haven’t figured out how to password protect the directories, so that’s next on my list. Once that happens, the Stagolee archive will be returning because if I took the time to upload all those songs at 20 kbps they need to be downloaded.

I haven’t posted too many work songs in the almost 2 (!!) years I’ve been running this site, which is pretty unfortunate, but take this song as my apology. Recorded by Alan Lomax in 1934 at the Darrington State Farm in Texas. This features Lightnin’ Washington leading a group of convicts in Black Gal a version of Nine Pound Hammer though it’s more than twice removed from any traditional versions of that song.

Lightnin’ Washington and Group – Black Gal (1934)

By now everything should be up and running. Known problems: all the donor stuff is down, but should return shortly. I’ve notice a short delay when loading the page, I’m not sure if it’s the server or what, maybe its just me and all the rain we’ve been having. Let me know if anything else is broke or just running poorly. Thanks for reading and hanging around these past few weeks.

update: my email is fixed. pkpatnaik at prewarblues.org