Fleming Brown Interview 1964:
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Here’s a recording of Studs Terkel interviewing the great chicago banjo picker Fleming Brown. Fleming sits with Studs as he explains and plays some songs. During this interview Fleming describes the song “Flag of Blue, White and Red” as an anti-union song he picked up around mines in southern Illinois. Fleming later admitted, in an interview in I Come For To Sing magazine, that he made this song up himself and passed it off as a found song. It was a pretty big admission at the time as Fleming was somewhat of a figurehead in the scene around that time. It’s interesting compared to someone like Bob Dylan’s, who’s made a carrear out of ”creative licence” with his past. I’ve been trying to dig this interview up in the Old Town School resource center; I’ll post it when I find it!
Check it out:
- Trouble On My Mind
- Coal Creek March
- Flag of Blue, White, and Red
- Fare Thee Well Old Ely Branch
- Darlin’ Cory
- Down the Ol’ Plank Road - Dave Macon
- Single Girl - Carter Family
- Hello Stranger
- Market Square
- The Ford Machine
- As I Go Ramblin’ Round
- Stackerlee
Tags: Fleming Brown, mp3, radio, Studs Terkel
So Studs Terkel passed away. I hadn’t gotten a chance to write something about him, but I wanted to get some links up. Studs was an enormously influential member in Chicago music. His book ‘And They All Sang’ has one of the best interviews with Big Bill Broonzy I’ve ever read, I highly suggest you check it out. He covers a wide range of musicians from folk to popular to jazz. On seeing the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson performing at her Chicago church he says,
“Here are parishioners, bone-weary after a week of unsung work, for a wage not worth singing about; here they are, listening to song, such as I, whose work is so much easier and whose wage is so much better, have never heard. It is at such time and circumstance that I become aware of my own arrogance.”
Studs was a great watcher, he had big ears that were open to amazing amount of art and live that moved around him. His most famous book is ‘Working’, interviews with all kinds of regular people, but I really like this musican one. Read on for more memories and links.
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Tags: Big Bill Broonzy, Bob Dylan, Chicago, Deaths, I Come For To Sing, Mahalia Jackson, Pete Seeger, Studs Place, Studs Terkel, Win Stracke, Working
“Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it.
My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle
they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they
created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me - and if I take
the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach
out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down
into that river and take out what I need to get through this world.” - Utah PhillipsÂ
The Pickin’ Bubs are Maura Lally, Peggy Browning, and Mark Mitchell. They are excellent musicians performing around Chicago and teaching at Chicagos’ Old Town School of Folk Music. They create lovely new songs and adapt traditional folk and blues songs with an everchanging series of guests and collaborators. The Bubs don’t just talk a lot about tradition; They are keenly aware of being part of a living music tradition. Like the quote says, they are aware of what’s in that stream, how to add to it and see the ability in us all to tap into that stream as we need. I put up a live set from them before the weekend (It also went out on our podcast feed, but check it out if you haven’t gotten a chance) , but here is the companion interview the Bubs were nice enough to give me.
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Tags: Big Bill Broonzy, Chris Waltz, Ed Holstein, Fred Holstein, John Hartford, Mark “Louie†Mitchell, Mark Dvorak, Maura Lally, Peggy Browning, Pete Seeger, The Pickin’ Bubs
