#mike seeger

[murderballadeer]

i'm aware this isn't funny but i saw the version of this with george & ira gershwin and had this thought so i had to make it

[banjofilia]

[odk-2]

Elizabeth Cotten - New Year's Eve (1978) Elizabeth Cotten from: "Elizabeth Cotten, Volume 3: When I'm Gone" (Compilation LP)

Instrumental | Acoustic | Folk | Cotten Picking * *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cotten#Guitar_style

JukeHostUK (left click = play) (320kbps)

Personnel: Elizabeth Cotten: Guitar

Recorded by Mike Seeger

Recorded: @ Elizabeth Cotten's Home in Syracuse, New York USA on December 9, 1978

Album Released: 1979

Smithsonian Folkways Records

[nedison]

Spending Saturday with Dock.

🪕

[paintingsandrecords]

a silvery marmoset; ink and watercolor

last eighteen day’s listening:

tsunami - be like that/newspaper

new lost city ramblers - the new lost city ramblers

pete seeger/almanac singers - the original talking union and other union songs

various - dr. demento’s mementos

steve martin and the steep canyon rangers - the long awaited album

slickee boys - mersey, mersey me

frank turner - undefeated

general patton vs. the x-ecutioners - general patton vs. the x-ecutioners

blake babies - earwig

lovage - music to make love to your old lady by

juliana hatfield - bed

descendents - 9th & walnut

priests - bodies and control and money and power

inquisition - revolution live

[muirneach]

folk enjoyer

[philgbtqochs]

old man pussy got me acting unwise

[beatleshistoryblog]

LECTURE 17: APOTHEOSIS: Early Bob Dylan in film footage of a televised performance of “Blowin’ in the Wind” from March 1963. Still heavily influenced by Oklahoma folk singer Woody Gurthrie at this point, young Dylan wrote a number of memorable folk songs that overshadowed anything that his predecessors had created. His elders, including Pete Seeger, had high hopes for Dylan. But Dylan was not one to remain caged by anybody or any cause. He burst out of his cocoon in 1965 a folk rock musician, backed by his friend, Blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield, and he cast aside the traditional folk scene to reach a level of greatness he could only achieve by breaking free of their influence. 

[murderballadeer]

parents who are in the folk scene are the worst every time i think i'm so cool for discovering some obscure artist and i bring it up to my dad he's like yeah i've met them

[banjofilia]

Bernunzio Music: From the first run of 100 banjos built by Chuck Ogsbury in 1960, this is an Ode Style 21 longneck, serial number "I" or "1” (it is plausible that this could be the first built, though we can’t really know this for sure). At this time Chuck had yet to build his first "real" shop, and was still "learning the ropes" with Tony Jacobs, "a seventy-year-old wood worker" who had a shop in the North end of Denver (https://www.omebanjos.com/about/history-part-2/). Not only is this banjo truly a "historic" Ode, the back of its head has been signed by undoubtedly the most significant members in the Old Time, Folk, and Banjo universe; Mike Seeger, John Cohen, "Honest" Tom Paley, Pete Seeger, Eric Weissberg, Bill Monroe, Pete Wernick, Tony Trischka, and more. The rim assembly is the earliest all aluminum variety, with original tailpiece and metal hardware; some tarnish to plating overall. The three piece neck was made with beautiful highly flamed maple, with a walnut center strip; no Grade stamp is present on the peghead; guitarish shaped peghead, with rosewood fingerboard (32.5" scale), with abalone fretboard dots; equipped with original geared tuners. Extra holes present from a past Keith tuner situation, and a chip present on the side of the nut; ding on top of peghead, of course. A pre-truss rod instrument, there is significant forward bow, though it could certainly be capo'd and played in a longneck style.

[kvetchlandia]

I Spent...

some time today looking at a few preview clips from James Mangold's "A Complete Unknown," his film about the young Bob Dylan. I have mixed feelings about Mangold as a director, but the few released clips look decent, so maybe the film, which is due out in December, will be OK (or even better than that, I hope). Anyway, Timothée Chalamet plays Dylan. Chalamet is a fine actor and the costume designers certainly got the look and style of the young Dylan down...although, imho, Chalamet isn't anywhere near as stunning looking as the young Dylan was. Dakota Fanning, who's also a fine actor, plays a fictitious character named Sylvie Russo. I guess the estate of Suze Rotolo wouldn't allow her name to be used in the film, but the Russo character seems to be a thinly disguised version of Rotolo. It'll be interesting to see how Mangold, not a very political director, handles the persona of a character based on Suze, a very political red-diaper baby, and a young woman whose politics were extremely influential on the young Dylan. Edward Norton as Pete Seeger seems like a stretch to me, but again, Norton's a good actor, so maybe he can pull it off? I don't know the actor who plays Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). It's kinda weird that the film seems to have Al Kooper in it, but not Mike Bloomfield. Since Bloomfield was central to Dylan's going electric, that seems an odd decision, but I guess we shall see. I was happy to see that Mangold and Jay Cocks (his co-screenwriter) included Dave Van Ronk in the film. I mean, what's the Village folk scene of the early 60s without Dave? Just for fun, Mangold and Cocks also bring us Maria Muldaur, Bobby Neuwirth, Mavis Staples and (this oughtta be good) another fictitious character, Gena Rotolo, I'm assuming based upon Suze Rotolo's older sister, Carla, who Dylan hated and wrote quite scathingly about in his song "Ballad in Plain D." I guess all this is my way of saying that I now have something to keep on living for until December. I hope it's good.

[1264doghouse]

Mike Seeger

[justforbooks]

The actor Lou Gossett Jr, who has died aged 87, is best known for his performance in An Officer and A Gentleman (1982) as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley, whose tough training transforms recruit Richard Gere into the man of the film’s title. He was the first black winner of an Academy Award for best supporting actor, and only the third black actor (after Hattie McDaniel and Sidney Poitier) to take home any Oscar.

The director, Taylor Hackford, said he cast Gossett in a role written for a white actor, following a familiar Hollywood trope played by John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Victor McLaglen or R Lee Ermey, because while researching he realised the tension of “black enlisted men having make-or-break control over whether white college graduates would become officers”. Gossett had already won an Emmy award playing a different sort of mentor, the slave Fiddler who teaches Kunta Kinte the ropes in Roots (1977), but he was still a relatively unknown 46-year-old when he got his breakthrough role, despite a long history of success on stage and in music as well as on screen.

Born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Louis was the son of Helen (nee Wray), a nurse, and Louis Sr, a porter. As a child he suffered from polio, but became a high school athlete before a basketball injury led to his joining the drama club. His teacher encouraged him to audition professionally, and at 17 he was on Broadway playing a troubled child in Take a Giant Step, which won him a Donaldson award for best newcomer.

He won a drama scholarship to New York University, but continued working, in The Desk Set (1955), and made his television debut in two episodes of the NBC anthology show The Big Story. In 1959 he was cast with Poitier and Ruby Dee in Raisin in the Sun, and made his film debut reprising his role in 1961. On Broadway that year he played in Jean Genet’s The Blacks, in an all-star cast with James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Roscoe Lee Brown, Godfrey Cambridge and a young Maya Angelou; it was the decade’s longest-running show.

Gossett was also active in the Greenwich Village folk music scene. He released his first single Hooka Dooka, Green Green in 1964, followed by See See Rider, and co-wrote the anti-war hit Handsome Johnny with Richie Havens. In 1967 he released another single, a drums and horns version of Pete Seeger’s anti-war hymn Where Have All the Flowers Gone. He was in the gospel musical Tambourines to Glory (1963) and in producer Mike Todd’s America, Be Seated at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

His plays became more limited: The Zulu and the Zayda and My Sweet Charlie; the very short run of Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights, in which he played a black man owning a white slave; and a revival of Golden Boy (1964), with Sammy Davis Jr. His final Broadway part was as the murdered Congolese leader Patrice Lamumba, in Conor Cruise O’Brien’s Murderous Angels (1971). Gossett had played roles in New York-set TV series such as The Naked City, but he began to make a mark in Hollywood, despite LAPD officers having handcuffed him to a tree, on “suspicion”, in 1966.

On TV he starred in The Young Rebels (1970-71) set in the American revolution. In film, he was good as a desperate tenant in Hal Ashby’s Landlord (1970) and brilliant with James Garner in Skin Game (1971), taking part in a con trick in which Garner sells him repeatedly into slavery then helps him to escape.

In 1977, alongside Roots, he attracted attention as a memorable villain in Peter Yates’s hit The Deep, and got artistic revenge on the LAPD in Robert Aldrich’s The Choirboys. The TV movie of The Lazarus Syndrome (1979) became a series in which Gossett played a realistic hospital chief of staff set against an idealistic younger doctor. He played the black baseball star Satchel Paige in the TV movie Don’t Look Back (1981); years later he had a small part as another Negro League star, Cool Papa Bell, in The Perfect Game (2009).

After his Oscar, he played another assassinated African leader, in the TV mini-series Sadat, reportedly approved for the role by Anwar Sadat’s widow Jihan. Though he remained a busy working actor, good starring roles in major productions eluded him, as producers fell back on his drill sergeant image. He was Colonel “Chappy” Sinclair in Iron Eagle (1986) and its three dismal sequels.

But in 1989 he starred in Dick Wolf’s TV series Gideon Oliver, as an anthropology professor solving crimes in New York. And he won a best supporting actor Golden Globe for his role in the TV movie The Josephine Baker Story (1991). He revisited the stage in the film adaptation of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class (1994).

Gossett twice received the NAACP’s Image Award, and another Emmy for producing a children’s special, In His Father’s Shoes (1997). In 2006 he founded the Eracism Foundation, providing programmes to foster “cultural diversity, historical enrichment and anti-violence initiatives”. Despite an illness eventually linked to toxic mould in his Santa Monica home, he kept working with a recurring part in Stargate SG-1 (2005-06). A diagnosis of prostate cancer in 2010 hardly slowed him down.

Most recently, he played Will “Hooded Justice” Reeves in the TV series Watchmen (2019), in the series Kingdom Business, about the gospel music industry, and in the 2023 musical remake of The Color Purple.

His first marriage, to Hattie Glascoe, in 1967, was annulled after five months; his second, to Christina Mangosing, lasted for two years from 1973; and his third, to Cyndi (Cynthia) James, from 1987 to 1992. He is survived by two sons, Satie, from his second marriage, and Sharron, from his third.

🔔 Louis Cameron Gossett Jr, actor, born 27 May 1936; died 28 March 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[folk-enjoyer]

Song of The Day

"Shake Sugaree" Elizabeth Cotten and Brenda Evans, 1960s Shake Sugaree was written sometime in the 1960s by Elizabeth Cotten's Great-Grandchildren. She explains, "Each child got a verse." The song is sung here by Brenda Evans, who was 12 years old then, and was recorded by Mike Seeger. This song could have been the inspiration for the song "Sugaree" by the Grateful Dead, but the band has denied this. Jerry Garcia was a big fan of her work and performed and the band performed some of her songs. I'm not really familiar with these people though, so I'm not sure. Brenda Evans would continue to be a musician, and I think, was a member of the band "The Undisputed Truth" for a time. And would continue to make and perform music in the 1970s.

[thislovintime]

Peter Tork - “Cindy” - live in Japan, October 1968. No copyright infringement intended.

“Despite the time since I was in Greenwich Village folk music is still terribly immediate to me. I’m a great admirer of Pete Seeger and Tim Buckley, and whenever I get a spare minute on the film set I play my guitar. It’s very flattering of you to say that my solo banjo piece at the Wembley show was one of the highlights. It’s a facet of me that I would like to flower — though I don’t know when it will.” - Peter, Disc and Music Echo, January 13, 1968

“It was an ear-splitting melange of mass hysteria... of waving kerchiefs, outstretched arms and the clanging of vocal chords. [...] [Davy] sang, strutted and danced. Mike Nesmith, maintaining his dour expression, twanged away on lead guitar and sang a few folksy numbers. [Micky] Dolenz flailed away at the drums and screamed into a microphone. Peter, the bearded one, bounced, flounced and jumped around and, at times, contributed some weird bleeps from the organ. Tork also contributed an electric banjo bit.” - Elson Irwin reviews The Monkees concert; Stars and Stripes, October 5, 1968

[broadsidemagazine]

"Birth of a Broadside", written by Josh Dunson

Broadside's home is a small little room that's got chairs and a sofa with a tape recorder finishing off the bottom wall space. First people Sis Cunningham welcomed in after me was two-thirds of the New World Singers. Gil Turner took out his 12-stringer, borrowed a flat pick, Sis took out the mike for the tape recorder, and out came a talking blues Gil just wrote about the newspaper strike that had us all quietly laughing. We didn’t want to laugh louder than quietly because that might get on the tape.

Before the song’s over, in walks Bob Dylan and Suzy [Suze Rotolo], who sometimes illustrate's Bob's songs. The last verse that Gil was singing had how he was going to see his friend, Bob Dylan, who is a walking newspaper and will give him the lowdown on what's happening in the world. Bob thought it was a great song just from hearing the last verse.

Then, Gil took out his 6-string Gibson, handed it over to Bob Dylan saying how Bob’s new song “Masters Of War” was a powerful and a great one, one of the best Bob had ever written. I kept on thinking he had written a lot of good ones, some that had real lyric poetry like “Blowin’ In The Wind” and “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” (which makes you think right away of Lorca), and I waited for the images of rain, and thunder, and lightning to come out in great spectacles.

But no, this time there was a different kind of poetry, one of great anger, accusation, just saying what the masters of war are, straight forward and without compromising one inch in its short sharp direct intensity. I got a hunch this is the most difficult Dylan song for others to sing right, 'cause it can so easily be over sung, made a melodrama. But when Bob sings it, it rings honest and true. I hope a record is made of Bob singing this song and that a lot of people will listen to the quiet voice that Bob sings this song in because there is a dignity in the words that comes from when they have been thought about for a long, long time.

And right after that, not waiting for a chance to get two breaths, Bob came along with “Playboys & Playgirls Ain't Gonna Run My World," a group song that like Pete Seeger said later in the evening "is going to be sung by a million people in the next year.” Its tune catches whole crowds easy, and the words come right along from the feeling, Hell man, I was born here and I live here, but I’m not goin’ to let rats knock things down where I was born, where I live.

In the meantime, Phil Ochs, his sidekick, and the third third of the New World Singers, Happy Traum, came in. Boy, this room was so jammed packed with people that there was real foot and banjo and guitar shifting necessary to get Phil Ochs close enough to the mike to record his three new songs. Phil Ochs. What a guy! Quiet, soft spoken, but there with his guitar he spun some of the most real verses that's goin' to be written about the death of N.Y. Youth Board worker Louis C. Marsh and the miners striking in Hazard, Kentucky. There was an immediateness about those two songs Phil did. I got a strong feeling that his song on Hazard is going to be remembered past this strike, and be resung in many strikes to come.

Phil’s last song, a fine one of hope with a great group chorus had the last half of it heard by Pete Seeger who later that night was going to sing at the Hazard strikers rally at Community Church. After hearing the tape of the songs, smiling all the way through, Pete sang a number of new songs sent him recently.

We were all out of breath without breathing hard, that feeling you get when a lot of good things happen all at once. Pete expressed it, leaning back in his chair, saying slowly in dreamy tones: “You know, in the past five months I haven't heard as many good songs and as much good music as I heard here tonight.”

That’s what makes Broadside, all that good singing and all that good writing, plus a lot of hard work, labor pains. In the sheets of paper there are many smiles and many glances of anger, and even more the strong hope that these songs just won’t stay on the mimeograph pages, but will live and be sung.

(Broadside #20, February 1963)