The 78 Project Movie (2014) Movie Script
1
O Mother, O Mother, come riddle it down
Come riddle two hearts as one
Say may I marry fair Ellender
Or bring the brown girl home
The brown girl she's got business there
You know you have none
So the best advice I can give you, my daughter
You guys sure you don't
want to do this in the greenhouse?
It's really noisy.
It's mostly voice, it sounds beautiful.
O Mother, O Mother, come riddle it down
Come riddle two hearts as one
May I marry fair Ellender
Or bring the brown girl home
Oh, the brown girl she has house and land
It's a very old song, I think it's from the late 1700s.
1757 is the estimated birthday of the song.
I mean this PRESTO machine you guys are using
is from the '30s, right?
For 200 years, people were just singing it to each other.
For more do I love your little finger
Than all of her body
Ooh ooh
So this is Deck 15,
and this is where the bulk of the archive is.
And you always have to do this.
So these are the Alan Lomax, John Lomax papers,
the administrative papers from the archive
during the 1930s.
These are more trips.
Here's a box for the field trip
that Alan took with Zora Neale Hurston,
Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, 1935.
Captain Pearl Nye recordings, 1937.
Haiti collection, 1937.
Jelly Roll Morton materials.
Southern states, School of the Air.
This is Woody Guthrie right here.
Talk about biblio anthropomorphism, huh?
Think about all these people standing
right next to each other.
So this is a big bag and this collection right here
are the original dust jackets for the 1930s disc recordings.
This is an interesting set.
This is from the Kentucky trip in 1937.
And this is the original recording
of House Of The Rising Sun.
And who's on that recording?
This is Georgia Turner, she was 16 at the time.
She lived in No-Town, Kentucky.
And her next door neighbor
was a guy named Tillman Cadle,
who's a folklorist of some note
and, uh, he must have introduced her to Lomax.
She made two disc recordings of this.
The one after this notes that the, um,
that they had to play it in a key lower than usual
because she had a bad cold at the time.
So the recording we have of Georgia Turner
sounds like she's, you know, 60 or something like that.
It's just 'cause she had a bad cold.
So, maybe that's why Dylan sang it in that growl.
Imitating Georgia Turner.
I wonder what the per capita of churches
is in the DeSoto County area.
A church per every hundred people.
Probably.
It's cool.
Is it cotton?
That is cotton.
Oh, this is called Hunters Chapel Road now.
- Is that it?
- I think that might be it.
Yeah, that looks like a chapel.
Hunters Chapel, this is it.
Walk with me, Lord, walk with me
While I'm on this tedious journey
I want Jesus to walk with me
Walk with me, Lord, walk with me
While I'm on this tedious journey
I want Jesus to walk with me
Walk with my mother, walk with me
While I'm on this tedious journey
I want Jesus to walk with me
Walk with me, Lord, walk with me
This place is great.
The Hi-Tone in Memphis.
This used to be Elvis Presley's karate school,
this is where he went to school to study karate
when he lived in Memphis.
PRESTO Recording Corp.
PRESTO Recording Corp.
What do you think?
That's pretty cool, yeah.
This is why we won the Cold War.
- What's that?
- Stuff like this
is why we won the Cold War.
This is so cool, man, this is just,
you know what it is?
This is all, all this whole thing came out of World War II,
you know, it came out of the military.
But this was actually pre, this is from,
the early ones are from the '30s.
- Oh, okay.
- This one,
this design, is from the late '30s.
This one based on the serial number
- was probably built in '41.
- Okay.
But, you know, have you ever felt this?
No.
Just very gently touch the tip.
Do, do, do, do, do
Wow!
- So that vibration...
- It's actually
physically moving.
That's what's carved in the groove.
And then.
This is an actual record, you know,
you can think of it as like a sculpture of an audio wave.
This is an actual physical model of the audio wave.
That is insane.
That's exactly right.
("Knoxville Girl")
I met a little girl in Knoxville
A town we all know well
And every Sunday evening, out in her home I'd dwell
We went to take an evening walk
About a mile from town
I picked a stick up off the ground
And knocked that fair girl down
She fell down on her bended knees
For mercy she did cry
Oh Willy dear, don't kill me here
I'm unprepared to die
She never spoke another word, I only beat her more
Until the ground around me within her blood did flow
Well this is a model K8 or K10,
we'll find out for sure in a minute.
Get the lid off of it here.
And move the power cord out of the way.
I see you have it tied with a rubber band and packed,
that's good, I won't even move that.
I'm gonna pick up this arm and move it back out of the way
so I've got clearance to pick up the turntable.
No, this is not a K10, this is a K8,
it doesn't have the microgroove feed screws.
You'd probably call this a semi-professional model
because it isn't like the bigger machines
that a lot of radio stations used,
yet it was portable, and a lot of radio stations
did use this for portable recording.
But this was kind of meant to go into the serious
home recordist, musicians, and people like that
that want a better recorder
than the otherwise available cheaper recorders.
And the K8 was a little bit of an assembly line process
in its manufacture, but not completely,
because if you've seen pictures of the PRESTO company,
it's a gigantic three story building
of nothing but a machine shop.
And they actually made every part of these
and they were each manufactured
and put together by themselves.
So one part of a K8 might not fit on another K8.
Okay, I might talk a little about the 78 speed
since this is kind of used for the 78 Project,
and why 78 speed as versus let's say 33.
Obviously at 33, you get more time on the record,
78, you're limited to the amount of time
you can cut on the record.
But it's like tape recorders.
If you think about tape recorders,
there was various speeds, they had 7 1/2, 15, 30, 3 3/4.
The slower speed of the tape recorder,
the less sound or quality of sound they could get on it.
So the same thing is in recording.
At 78, because it's moving so fast,
the literal speed is faster past the needle,
you can get a better quality of sound.
When you cut a groove,
obviously something comes out of it
and in this case it's like a long thread.
And it will build up ahead of the needle is recording,
so it has to be continually brushed out of the way
or sucked up with a vacuum cleaner.
If it should get tangled up in the needle,
it could actually get tangled up,
lift the head off, and you've ruined the record
because now you've broken the groove.
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell
The guilty pair, bowed down with care
God gave His Son to win
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin
Oh, love of God how rich and pure
How measureless and strong
It shall forevermore endure
The saints' and angels' song
It's amazing.
Like stepping back in time.
When we're recording just for my project in general,
you know, we, if we get stuck,
we listen to a lot of, like, old blues,
just the earliest footage we can find, you know.
And, I mean Son House and Billie Holiday
and just things like that
that we can just remember kind of where,
where the music and the soul that we love
came from, you know?
And, uh, so a lot of it sounds like this,
so to hear my voice on something
with that sound is just surreal.
So much vibe, and that's the thing
is that when you have a mic or whatever and a vocal booth
that make, you know, that flatter the voice the most,
if you're workin' with somebody that cares,
it's always the most difficult to capture,
still get room, still get ambience,
because it's like one or the other, you know?
So that's a really, a treat to hear.
You know, there's several places in Europe,
Germany, France, England,
uh, you know Australia, we even sell to Japan, you know?
It's, we cover all the Americas, that's Canada,
the United States, and South America, you know?
So it's, we have a lot.
These, all these right here on the floor
are ready to be washed and coated,
you know, for next week.
So, you know, we always try to stay ahead of things
so I have enough to coat, but that could be a challenge.
Do I just keep my bangs in here too?
It's gonna be tricky.
You can leave your bangs out.
What he's doin' right now over here,
is he's weighing the disc and he's gonna take a gram reading
to make sure that we're putting on the exact grams
on that last disc right there.
So he'll have to wait until it goes through the hopper,
then he'll pick it out up there
and he'll weigh it, make sure that we have
our exact grams that we need to have on there.
If it needs a slight of adjustment,
then we adjust the pump.
Now he'll log it, you know, we keep a log.
Love is a chance we should take
I'm movin' out of the gray
So where are we, Wayne?
We're in the inspection room right now.
And what's called the punching also gets done here.
This is also all the stock that's already been inspected
up on the racks.
That, like I said before, it's got to sit
a minimum of six weeks before we ship anything.
("I Saw the Light")
I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin
I wouldn't let my dear savior in
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
I saw the light, I saw the light
No more darkness, no more night
Now I'm so happy, no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Well, I was a fool to wander and stray
The straight is the gate and narrow the way
Now I have traded the wrong for the right
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Well, I saw the light, I saw the light
No more darkness, no more night
Now I'm so happy, no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Well, just like a blind man, I wandered along
Those worries and fears I claimed for my own
Then like the blind man that God gave back his sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Well, I saw the light, I saw the light
No more darkness, no more night
Now I'm so happy, no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Yeah, praise the Lord, I saw that light
Somethin' like that.
A little ending fart, oh well.
It's all right, we had to have at least one fart.
And at least 10 birds.
I can hear 'em
in the headphones so it came, it's on the record.
Won't you come in?
Should I tell you
- about this disc?
- Yeah, okay.
Uh, well, this is a disc recorded in 1940
in Shreveport, Louisiana by John and Ruby Terrill Lomax.
One of two, I guess,
that we'll be checking out from Shreveport.
Brad, you can talk about what we're seeing
on the surface there? - Yeah,
so this is an American folk song collection disc,
number 3995.
You can see it's A side and B side.
And, you know, A side's got three bands,
looks like the B side has a few more than that.
And there's a bit of oxidation on here.
So we need to clean this disc.
Do you see along the edges it's pretty easy
where there's not any grooves, no modulation?
But, um, the plasticizer is exuded
and so we need to do the best we can
to clean this before we play it.
We flip the switch up which essentially
just starts the platter rotating.
The one in the back dispenses the Disc Doctor,
the Disc Doctor record cleaner.
And you can see there's a brush
which is designed to stir this up.
This is the vacuuming arm.
And when I flip this to dry,
the vacuuming arm, the motor is engaged.
The arm has a suction that sucks both the liquid
and this oxidation that I'm trying to remove off the disc
through the tube and into a waste in the inside.
Again, we're thinking long term.
Library of Congress, you're thinking 50, 100, 200 years.
You're thinking what way can this be stored
to have this disc usable in the future.
I'm reaching the end here, so I'm gonna take a peek.
Let's see what this looks like.
You can see just a single pass
has made a significant difference
in the condition of that disc.
Versus this.
You can see this is a bare aluminum disc.
Lomax used bare aluminum for a couple of years in the field.
I've transferred some recordings from 1933
when he recorded Lead Belly in Mooringsport.
It's not actually cutting, it's embossing,
the way you emboss a name on a cup or a ring.
This is from 1934 in Louisiana.
This is in Jennings, Louisiana.
A man named Jimmy Peters is leading a group
that was singing at a local church.
And, uh, this is a, these were called a, this is a jorae.
It's associated with funerals.
Oh, here's one of them.
This is French.
I want to be married.
They'd been making field recordings for the library
for about a year at that point, John and Alan.
And the 1934 trip was, um, one of their first
really extensive trips to a single area,
that area being the Cajun Country of Louisiana,
where they recorded both the white
and black French music traditions.
Both the song styles that were essentially old world French,
or in other cases that were more, you know,
African or even Caribbean.
That one's a good example of a real blend of all three.
It's a French song, but it was African American singers
and, you know, what you're hearing is,
you know, it's the roots of zydeco right there.
That's one of the most recognizable
Cajun and zydeco melodies right there
and those rhythms are very much the ones
that will later be associated with zydeco.
But, you know, that zydeco style didn't really happen
for another 10 or 15 years after this recording.
So it's, you know, it's the roots of music
that had, you know, yet to be.
Is it better to go fast on gravel or slow?
Not too fast.
- Something's wrong.
- Why?
It says we missed it.
It says we missed it, but there was no.
Oh, he said, maybe that's what he meant
by go a mile past where this takes you.
Oh, right.
This actually looks just like my friend's place,
the one who owns a ranch in Marksville, Louisiana.
- Whoa, Jesus!
- Shit.
That was deep.
This is just like my friend's.
- This has to be it.
- I think it's this.
All right.
Hey, this is heavy, can you carry this?
It's heavy, I'm warning you, I'm telling you, it's heavy.
What do you think, dude?
Ooh, that's pretty heavy, huh?
- Got it?
- Yes.
Oh, man, you're strong.
It's easy.
- Okay.
- Okay?
Are you ready, Alex?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- That sounded so cool.
- Nice.
Whoa.
I'm scared.
Oh my God, that's so awesome.
Nice balance.
That's the best.
Real nice balance, too.
Trape Mon Chapeau, it's a traditional song
that we play it with my dad, with Les Freres Michot,
and it's basically a song
that you finish dances with a lot
'cause it's catch my hat, it's time to go,
trape mon chapeau.
And there was this kind of just street bum
at Lafayette who, we were playing outside
and he came up, he said can I play accordion?
I play accordion.
I was like okay, sure, go ahead.
And so my brother gave him his accordion,
and then he just sat down and just killed it
and played that song, and that's where
I learned my words was from this dude,
which is his words are different
than all the other words.
And he was this pretty young homeless dude
and when it says my hat, my capo, my cape,
which is like a, like a coat, yeah,
like get my hat, get my coat.
It's time to go.
Your mama's screaming, your daddy's mad,
and your dog's barking at me and the rooster's crowing
and get me my hat, it's time to get out of here
'cause they don't like me and the kids are crying
and all that.
So the last line of the last verse
is the kids are crying.
I decided to use my Grandpa's fiddle last minute
because, for some reason, when I tune my fiddle now
which I don't tune that fiddle down much,
it sounded different so I decided to use
my grandpa's fiddle which I know
I've tuned down a bunch and it worked.
This style is kind of a communal style,
if you want to say, where it's not like,
I'm gonna take a solo and you take a solo,
it's more like let's do it together the whole time.
So we're all pushing the same melody,
and the same rhythm, and same song,
all together, all the time.
There's no, no one stands out really,
you're just one big sound.
That's the, that's what I love about French music.
This is a PRESTO disc recorder.
It's an 80 year old technology
developed with my father, George Saliba,
and his partner, Morris Gruber in the early 1930s.
And Dad used to bring this out into the living room in 1944
and record records on discs with it.
Guests would come to the house
and my father would bring this machine out
and start recording it,
and I certainly remember him recording us.
We made several home recordings.
In fact, in January of 1945, my fifth birthday party,
was recorded on disc, although unfortunately,
I can't find the disc.
There is a recording of me singing Howdy Doody
around 1948 when I was eight years old.
But then as LPs came in and the technology changed,
this machine was put away into the basement.
Here we go, Howdy Doody Time.
What does that say, 1948?
Yeah, January 28, 1948.
Is that your birthday?
January 28 is my birthday.
1940 is the year I was born.
This is your eighth birthday.
It was my eighth birthday, yes.
Almost everybody is familiar
with the William F. Gettle kidnapping case
out in Los Angeles, California this summer,
but few are familiar with the method
in which the kidnappers were captured
and still fewer know that the machine
instrumental in their arrest was made by a Syrian.
This is made from The Syrian World
New York, September 7, 1934.
George J. Saliba.
The machine resembling a portable phonograph
is an instantaneous recorder,
a product of the PRESTO Recording Corporation of New York,
the organizer and president of which
is Mr. Saliba, a young man 29 years old.
Two detectives in a hotel room
took it easy and waited for days for clues
that the PRESTO machine would give them.
They had wired up the room next to theirs
thinking they are on the track of the robbers of the bank,
but to their amazement, they found through the recordings
that they had stumbled on the kidnappers
of William F. Gettle, millionaire Beverly Hills broker
who had eluded the police and stirred up the nation.
The instantaneous recorder is a revolutionary cog
in the wheel of modern scientific progress.
It is used all over the world by movie studios,
colleges, radio stations, courts, detectives,
and by many others in various professions.
Admiral Byrd's expedition, now at the South Pole,
has two of them.
Any expedition that goes out
takes it along as necessary equipment.
It went along with the Carnegie and Strauss expeditions.
I never knew this.
The two spectacular cases in which the little wonder
played the main role were a bank robbery
and a famous divorce case.
Well, it takes a worried man
To sing a worried song
Well, it takes a worried man
To sing a worried song
Well, it takes a worried man
To sing a worried song
I'm worried now
But I won't be worried long
Well, I went down to the river
And I laid myself to sleep
I went down to the river
What do you think, Richard?
These are our tubes.
I think there are nine tubes in there.
This is an innovation that came out in the early 1930s,
it's a metal tube and it has the benefits
of actually having a shield built into it
and it's actually fairly rugged
compared to a glass tube, you could drop this
and most likely, you're not gonna have
internal problems with it.
This tube is actually a triode,
which is a three-element vacuum tube
that's combined with a pair of diodes
that are normally used in table radios.
Your PRESTO, that diode section's not used,
but this is used as a voltage amplifier
in your PRESTO.
You've got a bunch of those here.
Then you've got a 6N7, which is a dual triode,
and this can be operated as a Class B amplifier,
and this, more than likely, is output tube compressor,
the thing that actually drives the cutter head.
- [Man] And so when they were designing the PRESTOs,
presumably, they would've had some options
as choices to what kind of tubes to use,
- right?
- Yes.
And what kind of decisions
do you think made, went into the choices that they made?
I believe, based on the tube components
I've seen in PRESTOs, at least the portable ones,
that they were price-conscious,
that they wanted to pick tubes that were available,
that were relatively current production,
the rugged and if the metal versions were available,
and simple.
Bias at 50, that's one.
Full-scale is K,
and then it has all the settings at the socket
to tell which wire is which.
All right, this is two sections and it is healthy.
So what does that tell you?
It tells you that the tube is good,
the gain's good, doesn't have any shorts,
doesn't have any gas, to speak of, I mean,
it probably has some micro, micro increments of gas,
but it's a good tube.
So we could cut a good record with that?
Yes.
It's gonna lead a long service life.
When I was a little bitty baby
My mama would rock me in the river
In that old south fork back home
It's down there in the canyon
Where I used to do a lot of plannin'
In that old south fork back home
- How cool, like, just to meet total strangers?
But that's kind of, like, an interesting thing, right?
That, well, Lomax didn't have that,
which is the ability to just sort of
research things on the internet.
And find someone, introduce yourself to them,
and have them invite you to their house.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, it's pretty incredible
'cause I feel like after that experience,
we really know them.
Yeah, well, we do know them.
I mean, when you do something with someone and they say
this is the most fun I've ever had listening to myself,
you kind of have had some kind of an experience.
That's exciting to me.
I kept thinking that the whole time
when we were in their house is that
under what other circumstances
would we be here with them in this place?
("Careless Love")
Love, love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, oh careless love
You broke the heart of many a poor boy
But you'll never break this heart of mine
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, how can it be
He was true, yes, true to me
But now he lies beneath the sea
Captain, Captain, tell me true
Answer me
I pray you do
In my little Willie sail with you
We're looking here at the wall
of about, oh, it's almost 5,000 instantaneous discs,
many of which were acetates that Moses Asch had.
All of this stuff here actually dates before '48,
pretty much, it's his stuff from his Asch and Disc labels.
The real cream of the crop here
is the top shelf through here
is all the original Woody Guthrie recordings,
like hundreds of Guthrie recordings,
and Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, Mary Lou Williams,
um, Josh White.
This is one of the glass discs
that Moe Asch had recorded in the '40s.
This one here is a fiddle tune, it's Woody,
Woody Guthrie actually played fiddle.
Scratch in the edge right here, it actually says fiddle.
And sometimes there might be a W.G. for Woody Guthrie
or there might be an L.B. for Lead Belly.
It's also Moe, the grease pencil,
Moe Asch has written hot fiddle on here,
so he didn't know what the song was.
It looks like I wrote down it was Cindy, the song Cindy.
But they're on glass, they were made on glass during,
they used glass as the base during World War II
and what happens with glass over time?
It breaks, I have tons of them that are broken.
Before World War II, people actually recorded,
like the Lomaxes and people like that
would be out in the field with their disc-cutting machine
recorded on metal discs frequently.
This is Sidney Robertson Cowell
who was a field reporter, one of her discs,
and she actually did write all her notes
on the sleeve itself.
This one was done by the Russell Family
of Marion, Virginia, who were a famous family
who built dulcimers and dulcimer players.
Marion, Virginia, is down, bottom of the Shenandoah Valley,
down towards Bristol, Virginia.
This was actually all her little notes
about one verse omitted, a line from the song,
talks about who's on here in November 1936.
Jesus Born in Bethlehem, so it's a carol.
These aluminum discs, of course, last,
you know, could last forever, it's amazing.
And unlike Moe Asch, there's no,
nothing scratched on this one,
so if it gets lost in the sleeve,
you're not gonna know what it is,
it looks like, um, other than listening to it.
This one here is what happens, a worst-case scenario.
This is Woody Guthrie's mother-in-law
was a famous Yiddish poet,
and so he actually did a whole series of songs
for Hanukkah at one point.
Thankfully, we copied all of this,
but it's a case of what happens
with some of the acetates after awhile
is your acetates are flaking off
completely like old paint.
You can see it's sort of like it's falling off right here.
So thankfully it was copied here, twice,
but, so we have the music, but when this stuff's flaked off
into pieces like this that, it's over.
You can't, nothing really you can do with that.
Is this Menifee?
This looks like it could be Menifee.
I think so, yeah.
It's coming up.
All right.
Going to see my old friend Coati Mundi.
Coati Mundi.
When was the last time you saw him?
- Coati?
- Yeah.
I saw Coati in Harlem this past summer.
Yeah.
It hasn't been that long.
No, we went for coffee, lunch.
And at that time he expressed an interest in doing a 78.
So here we are.
He said there's a purple Jeep up front.
Purple Jeep.
Oh, where have you been Billy Boy, Billy Boy
Oh, where have you been, Charming Billy
I've been off to seek a wife
She's the joy of my life
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother
Did she bid you to come in, Billy Boy, Billy Boy
Did she bid you to come in, tell me, Billy
Yes, she bade me to come in
She's got no wrinkles on her skin
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother
Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy
Can she bake a cherry pie, tell me, Billy
She can bake a cherry pie
Even cook some beans and rice
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother
Take it easy.
She's a young thing
And cannot leave, forget that
She's gonna leave her mother
That was the toughest performance of my life, man.
Oh, where have you been Billy Boy, Billy Boy
Oh, where have you been, Charming Billy
I've been off to seek a wife
She's the joy of my life
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother
Did she bid you to come in, Billy Boy, Billy Boy
Back in Spanish Harlem,
my dad, may he rest in peace, and my mom,
they used to give me a little bit of a country life
'cause I grew up in Spanish Harlem,
projects, the whole thing.
They would put me in this really beautiful program
called The Fresh Air Fund.
And they would take inner-city kids
and send them to farms, different places.
I used to go to the Shenandoah area,
near the Shenandoah Caverns by New Market, Virginia,
and it was a farm,
I mean, straight-out farm, cows, milking,
cleaning out the stables, the whole thing,
and they used to hum this song, the farmhands.
And as I remember as a kid,
I must have been eight years old or something,
and they would kid other people with that,
and they would hum and sing the song,
but I couldn't really remember the lyrics.
But I just remember the one line,
she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.
So I had broken lyrics that I had and stuff,
so I cut a lot of the original lyrics,
different people but then I put my own lyrics into it
that meant something to me.
So I've been living with that song
somehow in my subconscious for a ton of years.
She's a young thing
And cannot leave, forget that
She's gonna leave her mother
Yay!
Yeah!
You know, I was just talking to my sister,
I was asking her if she remembers
they would have these little booths
where you could go in and record for a minute
or something like that, and the record drops
and they made it right there,
you could walk away with it.
42nd Street.
But the a cappella guys,
they would do the demo records cheap like that.
So they would go in and they'd sing, you know,
whoever can squeeze into the little booth,
and then they'd take the record with them
and try to chop that or just to give it to friends
or somebody, just one record.
I should get my first record I've ever done, it's acetate.
I don't know, gee, let me, I got it right there.
I mean, this is not sounding good in terms of musically,
but I got my old address, which I'm not gonna say,
the old phone number. - Let me see.
Yeah.
That's where we grew up in the projects.
I know.
I know, I'm telling Laurie.
I was reminiscing.
Yeah, I know, look at this.
I don't know what's gonna come out of this.
Oh, come on, you gotta dance, dance with her.
Come on.
("In My Time of Dying")
Well, in my time of dying
I don't want nobody to mourn
All I want for you to do is take my body home
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so I could die easy
Whoa, whoa, whoa
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so I could die easy
Jesus gonna make my, Jesus gonna make my
Jesus gonna make my bed
Well, meet me, Jesus, meet me
Meet me in the middle of the air
If these wings should fail me, Lord
Won't you just bring another pair now
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so I could die easy
Whoa, whoa, whoa
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so I could die easy
Jesus gonna make my, Jesus gonna make my
Jesus gonna make my bed
Ooh, yeah
Oh, whoa ho
Ooh, yeah
Whoa, that's gnarly cool with all that stuff on there.
Look at all that.
- That sounded amazing.
- That's fun, that's cool.
Yeah.
You guys, that's cool.
("In My Time of Dying")
That's cool.
Well, in my time of dying
I don't want nobody to mourn
All I want for you to do is take my body home
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so I could die easy
Whoa, whoa, whoa
I don't know many old-timey music
or never grew up with the blues.
My own blues, but not like, the blues.
Jesus, meet me.
Meet me in my dying bed.
No way, no way.
You know what's funny?
I used to sing a lot like, not gospel,
but a lot of, like, soul, like Christian music,
and I was just like I do not want to sing this song.
But then I was like it's not leaving me.
I'm gonna sing it 'cause it's not leaving me, so.
I mean, what's that, Led Zeppelin sang it.
- Yeah.
- Fucking crazy fucks.
And they made it so good, they were soulful about it.
They know what's up.
Topanga Canyon.
What was the name
of the place that we're looking for?
- Froggy's.
- Froggy's.
I think it's a fish place.
He also kinda warned us that there wasn't
gonna be anything to eat up here, that there's,
I think his exact words were there's not a 7-Eleven
on the corner, if you know what I mean.
Is that because there are no 7-Elevens
or because there are no corners, because right now.
I don't really know what his circumstances are.
I don't know what their house is like or anything, so.
Are we doing it in his house?
Where are we doing it? - He didn't really say.
Interesting.
All right, well this is Topanga, like a little town.
Yup, there it is, Froggy's.
Okay, uh, not, yeah, exactly straight through,
not that sharp right and then straight.
Then we'll see him.
All right, let's see if we can find him.
Uh, there he is. - What year is that?
I think this one is from 1939 or '40
'cause it has a serial number
that would've indicated it was made
at their factory in New York.
And then they moved to New Jersey in '41.
And it made the trip.
Wow.
Got this awesome custom case from a company
called Red Dirt Cases.
That's really fragile.
Now, this is pretty sturdy, right?
Um, not quite.
That's, like, the least sturdy porch.
We'll put it right there, yeah.
Hey, Lavinia, you can't stand on this.
Don't stand on it?
That's good to know.
Spinning and just put the needle down
for just a couple seconds to get a little lead-in groove.
And then I'll give you a thumbs up.
- Okay.
- And you can start.
Great.
- Ready?
- Yup.
Okay.
("Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen")
Nobody knows
All the troubles I've seen
Nobody knows
All the sorrow
Glory, glory
Glory hallelujah
Glory, glory
Glory hallelujah
Nobody knows
All the troubles I've seen
("After You've Gone")
Now won't you listen, baby, while I say
How can you tell me that you've gone away
Don't say that we must part
Don't break your baby's heart
You know I loved you for those many years
I loved you night and day
Oh, honey baby, can't you see my tears
Now listen to me while I say
After you've gone and left me crying
After you've gone, there's no denying
You'll feel blue
You'll feel sad
You lost the bestest pal that you've ever had
There'll come a time
Now don't forget it
There'll come a time
Where you'll regret it
Oh, babe, think what you're doing
You know my love for you will drive me to ruin
After you've gone
After you've gone away
There'll come a time
Don't forget it
There'll come a time
When you'll regret it
Oh, babe, think what you're doing
You know my love for you will drive me to ruin
After you've gone
After you've gone away
- Holy shit!
- Yay!
Wow!
Wow!
You did it!
Oh, my gosh, I was so nervous.
I was, like, shaking the whole time.
Wow, that's some serious thing.
I had two PRESTOs.
I had a overhead lathe,
I had seven lead screws, or pitch screws,
different grooves, um,
I was cutting two 34 lines per inch, LPs.
Uh, seven on the side, fourteen in all.
And I was getting daggone good response.
I got one of the old records laying here.
That, uh, let's see, what was I looking for?
Oh, God.
I gotta play you this.
I remember this from when I was a kid.
This guy must've liked it, too,
and he cuts inside out.
So, you don't have to worry with the chip, y'know?
Palmolive Brushless and Palmolive Lather
Shaving Cream present Inner Sanctum Mysteries.
Remember that?
You don't remember that.
Good evening, friends.
I love it.
That's really cool.
Did you hear the quality?
- Are you ready?
- Yeah.
Okay.
Well, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
to each and every one, from your old Joe friend here.
Look out there, Joe, yeah, yeah.
I timed that pretty good, didn't I?
What's on the flip side?
This is fun.
In here are a few of the original dust jackets
for the trip that Alan made to Fisk University.
This is typical, it has absolutely nothing on it,
but we kept it anyway, except the number.
But this one's very cool.
So, it's disc number 66, July 30th, um,
County Agricultural School in Coahoma County.
You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Dead and Gone,
a gentleman named McKinley Morgan with guitar.
Who we know that is, of course, McKinley Morganfield
and Johnny playing guitar.
And that's Muddy Waters.
That's one of the original Muddy Waters recordings.
What does that say?
It says broken.
Yup, broken record.
Uh, two, uh, three Muddy Waters originals.
Uh, he dropped it.
Waters, Waters.
I guess they're gonna be under Morganfield.
What book is that that you're looking?
This is the Dixon, Godrich, and Rye
Blues and Gospel Records discography.
It's the main blues discography
and they indexed all of our recordings,
so it's an easy, uh, kind of, July 30th.
We're gonna guess this is '42, right?
No, there appears to be no Muddy Waters
recordings from July 30th, 1942.
This is definitely an unknown recording.
Oops.
Are you still finding things?
I'm still finding things.
You've been to the basement.
- It is fun, isn't it?
- Yes.
But it's specifically designed to distract people
so you can pick their pockets.
I mean, the interesting thing
is that it's a device of criminality.
That's the only context I've ever seen it
in the world except for my talks.
- It's got a sinister...
- It's kind of the Facebook
of another generation or something.
Distracting people while you pick their pockets?
- Exactly.
- Yeah.
Yeah, it's the internet.
Well, you know, that's cute, like, I feel like
if I'd heard that, like, on my parents' old 78,
so I would have thought that was, like, a really cool,
weird thing from some corner of the world.
I would've really liked it.
Hearing that, I suddenly felt like I could translate back
and I suspect that hearing Robert Johnson live,
you'd hear a little bit more of a tail and resonance
and I feel like it might've had a different,
a little bit of a different continuity between phrases
than what we're used to 'cause I realize
the transformation in my own, in my own recording.
This recording setup, for some reason,
it kind of focused in and picked out,
I would say, like, sort of the main event
and there's a lot of, there's certain details
are there and certain details aren't,
but it brings, it's sort of, a different kind of focus
than modern recordings.
It's almost as if, um, like, you're shining a spotlight
in a room and you only see certain things, not other things.
And I feel like it had that spotlight effect
on the recording and it's hard
to pin down exactly what it is.
It's not just the loud stuff
and it's not just certain frequencies.
It's something a little bit more subtle than that.
I mean, I knew this, but I'd never really experienced it,
which is that since this type of recording
picks up certain things,
you can really hear how instrument designs evolve
to sound good on it.
Like, I can really, like you can really
immediately tell that an archtop guitar
would sound good on this.
And a really interesting thing,
like I can just tell from doing this,
like a saxophone would pull through on this
better than a clarinet.
And I can't tell you exactly why.
Maybe it's the even versus odd overtone thing
or something like that,
but you can just hear that it would, it would fit.
That promised land
Where all
Is peaceful
Deep river, Lord
I want to cross over
Into that ground
I want to cross over
Into that ground
Should I punch in?
Next time you gotta live with it.
("Where Did You Sleep Last Night")
My girl, my girl
Don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I will shiver the whole night through
My girl, my girl
Where will you go
I'm going where the cold wind blows
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I will shiver the whole night through
Her husband was
A hardworking man
Just about a mile from here
His head was found in a driving wheel
But his body was never found
So my girl, my girl
Don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I will shiver the whole night through
Was that any good?
That was beautiful.
Cool.
How'd it feel?
Felt pretty good.
How'd you, was it all right?
I thought it sounded great.
- Sweet.
- Can't wait
to hear it on the master tape.
Yeah.
("Where Did You Sleep Last Night")
My girl, my girl
Don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I will shiver the whole night through
Where did you first hear that song?
I mean, of course, I heard it, like I heard,
y'know, Kurt Cobain singing it when I was, like, five.
And that's when I first heard it.
But then, I, y'know, Lead Belly's actually from Shreveport.
And so, you know, my grandma, you know,
had some Lead Belly records and she had
a Lead Belly on vinyl or something like that.
I remember she would play some of it around the house,
but my granddad was really the Lead Belly fan.
He liked him a lot.
And he liked Woody Guthrie a lot,
and, like, a bunch of, uh, all that stuff,
so that's where I first heard it.
And, uh, Lead Belly version anyways.
Hard times back then, too,
like thinking 'bout how it was living back then.
So, you know those songs are, like, seriously honest
and, like, Lead Belly killed a few people, you know,
I mean, like, went to prison
and got shot in the belly and lived.
Remind me again who it was,
your uncle who whistled?
No, it was my great granddad.
- It was your great granddad.
- Yeah.
Do you know him?
No, he killed himself in 1960,
but he was a great tenor guitar player
and I have his four string Gibson tenor guitar
and, uh, it's like, I think it's a 1940,
mid '40s Gibson tenor guitar.
It's real cool.
Y'know, he had, like, a family band.
They used to play in the kitchen and they played
on top of the Youree Hotel in Shreveport.
And they would do gigs like that and shows there.
And they were really good, they were really talented.
Well, my grandma says they were.
But yeah, he went to my grandmother's house,
which is his daughter, asked her for the gun,
he said some dude was lurking around the house
and she gave it to him, of course, you know,
and then he went and blew his head right off.
So, that's the end of that story.
But see, his mother did the same thing, so.
Sorry, that's a little bit too dark for the.
The first record Lead Belly ever did for Moe
was actually children's songs, which became sort of,
um, you know, once people figured out that Lead Belly
had actually been in prison twice for manslaughter
and then he was singing a children's record,
it caused quite a, y'know,
but again, no publicity is bad publicity, right?
So, all the original recordings of Lead Belly,
which he started, he started recording him in '42,
are all up here.
One of the early children's songs that Moe Asch recorded,
it's Skip To My Lou,
which, y'know, is, everybody knows that song.
So here's your original Lead Belly Skip To My Lou disc.
Actually, this looks like one, a copy of it
'cause he got the Asch Recording Studio in the center,
so that's, this is, uh, outside, like outside going in,
Skip To My Lou, play party dance song.
But it is glass.
How can you tell that it's glass?
Oh, you can tell just by.
Skip To My Lou.
All my beautiful charm
I got a few left in glory
They got nine songs per side.
Yeah.
That's the one you learned from, huh?
Yeah, that's the one I learned from.
("Skip to My Lou")
Lost my partner, what'll I do
Skip to my lou, my darling
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Skip to my lou, my darling
I'll find another one prettier than you
Skip to my lou, my darling
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Skip to my lou, my darling
Little red wagon, paint it blue
Skip to my lou, my darling
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Skip to my lou, my darling
It's like we did one with Roseanne in her kitchen.
- Kitchens are good.
- Yeah.
Yeah, I would do it in the kitchen in my old house.
My regular house, not the studio,
'cause the studio's really cramped.
The only big room is the studio.
Of all the gin joints.
We, um, basically decided to hop,
drop into this place called Ricochet for lunch.
I'm figuring that's where all the locals went.
And then, at a certain point, in walked Victoria Williams,
who looked familiar to me,
and she sat with her back to us and it was her voice
that made me think it might be her.
We've been trying to find her for a week and there she is,
and maybe we're gonna cut a record with her tonight.
I take this hammer
Take it to the captain
Take this hammer
Get it to the captain
Oh, take this hammer
Take it to the captain
And tell him I'm gone
Buddy, tell him I'm gone
'Cause this old hammer killed John Henry
This old hammer killed John Henry
Oh, this old hammer killed John Henry
It won't kill me
Oh no, it won't kill me
God gave Noah the rainbow sign
God gave Noah the rainbow sign
Yes, God gave Noah the rainbow sign
Said it won't be water
Be fire next time
When you hear that cuckoo calling
When you hear that cuckoo calling
Yes, when you hear that cuckoo calling
It's a sign of rain
Take this hammer
Take it to the captain
Take this hammer
Take it to the captain
Oh, take this hammer
Bring it to the captain
You tell him I'm gone
O Mother, O Mother, come riddle it down
Come riddle two hearts as one
Say may I marry fair Ellender
Or bring the brown girl home
The brown girl she's got business there
You know you have none
So the best advice I can give you, my daughter
You guys sure you don't
want to do this in the greenhouse?
It's really noisy.
It's mostly voice, it sounds beautiful.
O Mother, O Mother, come riddle it down
Come riddle two hearts as one
May I marry fair Ellender
Or bring the brown girl home
Oh, the brown girl she has house and land
It's a very old song, I think it's from the late 1700s.
1757 is the estimated birthday of the song.
I mean this PRESTO machine you guys are using
is from the '30s, right?
For 200 years, people were just singing it to each other.
For more do I love your little finger
Than all of her body
Ooh ooh
So this is Deck 15,
and this is where the bulk of the archive is.
And you always have to do this.
So these are the Alan Lomax, John Lomax papers,
the administrative papers from the archive
during the 1930s.
These are more trips.
Here's a box for the field trip
that Alan took with Zora Neale Hurston,
Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, 1935.
Captain Pearl Nye recordings, 1937.
Haiti collection, 1937.
Jelly Roll Morton materials.
Southern states, School of the Air.
This is Woody Guthrie right here.
Talk about biblio anthropomorphism, huh?
Think about all these people standing
right next to each other.
So this is a big bag and this collection right here
are the original dust jackets for the 1930s disc recordings.
This is an interesting set.
This is from the Kentucky trip in 1937.
And this is the original recording
of House Of The Rising Sun.
And who's on that recording?
This is Georgia Turner, she was 16 at the time.
She lived in No-Town, Kentucky.
And her next door neighbor
was a guy named Tillman Cadle,
who's a folklorist of some note
and, uh, he must have introduced her to Lomax.
She made two disc recordings of this.
The one after this notes that the, um,
that they had to play it in a key lower than usual
because she had a bad cold at the time.
So the recording we have of Georgia Turner
sounds like she's, you know, 60 or something like that.
It's just 'cause she had a bad cold.
So, maybe that's why Dylan sang it in that growl.
Imitating Georgia Turner.
I wonder what the per capita of churches
is in the DeSoto County area.
A church per every hundred people.
Probably.
It's cool.
Is it cotton?
That is cotton.
Oh, this is called Hunters Chapel Road now.
- Is that it?
- I think that might be it.
Yeah, that looks like a chapel.
Hunters Chapel, this is it.
Walk with me, Lord, walk with me
While I'm on this tedious journey
I want Jesus to walk with me
Walk with me, Lord, walk with me
While I'm on this tedious journey
I want Jesus to walk with me
Walk with my mother, walk with me
While I'm on this tedious journey
I want Jesus to walk with me
Walk with me, Lord, walk with me
This place is great.
The Hi-Tone in Memphis.
This used to be Elvis Presley's karate school,
this is where he went to school to study karate
when he lived in Memphis.
PRESTO Recording Corp.
PRESTO Recording Corp.
What do you think?
That's pretty cool, yeah.
This is why we won the Cold War.
- What's that?
- Stuff like this
is why we won the Cold War.
This is so cool, man, this is just,
you know what it is?
This is all, all this whole thing came out of World War II,
you know, it came out of the military.
But this was actually pre, this is from,
the early ones are from the '30s.
- Oh, okay.
- This one,
this design, is from the late '30s.
This one based on the serial number
- was probably built in '41.
- Okay.
But, you know, have you ever felt this?
No.
Just very gently touch the tip.
Do, do, do, do, do
Wow!
- So that vibration...
- It's actually
physically moving.
That's what's carved in the groove.
And then.
This is an actual record, you know,
you can think of it as like a sculpture of an audio wave.
This is an actual physical model of the audio wave.
That is insane.
That's exactly right.
("Knoxville Girl")
I met a little girl in Knoxville
A town we all know well
And every Sunday evening, out in her home I'd dwell
We went to take an evening walk
About a mile from town
I picked a stick up off the ground
And knocked that fair girl down
She fell down on her bended knees
For mercy she did cry
Oh Willy dear, don't kill me here
I'm unprepared to die
She never spoke another word, I only beat her more
Until the ground around me within her blood did flow
Well this is a model K8 or K10,
we'll find out for sure in a minute.
Get the lid off of it here.
And move the power cord out of the way.
I see you have it tied with a rubber band and packed,
that's good, I won't even move that.
I'm gonna pick up this arm and move it back out of the way
so I've got clearance to pick up the turntable.
No, this is not a K10, this is a K8,
it doesn't have the microgroove feed screws.
You'd probably call this a semi-professional model
because it isn't like the bigger machines
that a lot of radio stations used,
yet it was portable, and a lot of radio stations
did use this for portable recording.
But this was kind of meant to go into the serious
home recordist, musicians, and people like that
that want a better recorder
than the otherwise available cheaper recorders.
And the K8 was a little bit of an assembly line process
in its manufacture, but not completely,
because if you've seen pictures of the PRESTO company,
it's a gigantic three story building
of nothing but a machine shop.
And they actually made every part of these
and they were each manufactured
and put together by themselves.
So one part of a K8 might not fit on another K8.
Okay, I might talk a little about the 78 speed
since this is kind of used for the 78 Project,
and why 78 speed as versus let's say 33.
Obviously at 33, you get more time on the record,
78, you're limited to the amount of time
you can cut on the record.
But it's like tape recorders.
If you think about tape recorders,
there was various speeds, they had 7 1/2, 15, 30, 3 3/4.
The slower speed of the tape recorder,
the less sound or quality of sound they could get on it.
So the same thing is in recording.
At 78, because it's moving so fast,
the literal speed is faster past the needle,
you can get a better quality of sound.
When you cut a groove,
obviously something comes out of it
and in this case it's like a long thread.
And it will build up ahead of the needle is recording,
so it has to be continually brushed out of the way
or sucked up with a vacuum cleaner.
If it should get tangled up in the needle,
it could actually get tangled up,
lift the head off, and you've ruined the record
because now you've broken the groove.
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell
The guilty pair, bowed down with care
God gave His Son to win
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin
Oh, love of God how rich and pure
How measureless and strong
It shall forevermore endure
The saints' and angels' song
It's amazing.
Like stepping back in time.
When we're recording just for my project in general,
you know, we, if we get stuck,
we listen to a lot of, like, old blues,
just the earliest footage we can find, you know.
And, I mean Son House and Billie Holiday
and just things like that
that we can just remember kind of where,
where the music and the soul that we love
came from, you know?
And, uh, so a lot of it sounds like this,
so to hear my voice on something
with that sound is just surreal.
So much vibe, and that's the thing
is that when you have a mic or whatever and a vocal booth
that make, you know, that flatter the voice the most,
if you're workin' with somebody that cares,
it's always the most difficult to capture,
still get room, still get ambience,
because it's like one or the other, you know?
So that's a really, a treat to hear.
You know, there's several places in Europe,
Germany, France, England,
uh, you know Australia, we even sell to Japan, you know?
It's, we cover all the Americas, that's Canada,
the United States, and South America, you know?
So it's, we have a lot.
These, all these right here on the floor
are ready to be washed and coated,
you know, for next week.
So, you know, we always try to stay ahead of things
so I have enough to coat, but that could be a challenge.
Do I just keep my bangs in here too?
It's gonna be tricky.
You can leave your bangs out.
What he's doin' right now over here,
is he's weighing the disc and he's gonna take a gram reading
to make sure that we're putting on the exact grams
on that last disc right there.
So he'll have to wait until it goes through the hopper,
then he'll pick it out up there
and he'll weigh it, make sure that we have
our exact grams that we need to have on there.
If it needs a slight of adjustment,
then we adjust the pump.
Now he'll log it, you know, we keep a log.
Love is a chance we should take
I'm movin' out of the gray
So where are we, Wayne?
We're in the inspection room right now.
And what's called the punching also gets done here.
This is also all the stock that's already been inspected
up on the racks.
That, like I said before, it's got to sit
a minimum of six weeks before we ship anything.
("I Saw the Light")
I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin
I wouldn't let my dear savior in
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
I saw the light, I saw the light
No more darkness, no more night
Now I'm so happy, no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Well, I was a fool to wander and stray
The straight is the gate and narrow the way
Now I have traded the wrong for the right
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Well, I saw the light, I saw the light
No more darkness, no more night
Now I'm so happy, no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Well, just like a blind man, I wandered along
Those worries and fears I claimed for my own
Then like the blind man that God gave back his sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Well, I saw the light, I saw the light
No more darkness, no more night
Now I'm so happy, no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Yeah, praise the Lord, I saw that light
Somethin' like that.
A little ending fart, oh well.
It's all right, we had to have at least one fart.
And at least 10 birds.
I can hear 'em
in the headphones so it came, it's on the record.
Won't you come in?
Should I tell you
- about this disc?
- Yeah, okay.
Uh, well, this is a disc recorded in 1940
in Shreveport, Louisiana by John and Ruby Terrill Lomax.
One of two, I guess,
that we'll be checking out from Shreveport.
Brad, you can talk about what we're seeing
on the surface there? - Yeah,
so this is an American folk song collection disc,
number 3995.
You can see it's A side and B side.
And, you know, A side's got three bands,
looks like the B side has a few more than that.
And there's a bit of oxidation on here.
So we need to clean this disc.
Do you see along the edges it's pretty easy
where there's not any grooves, no modulation?
But, um, the plasticizer is exuded
and so we need to do the best we can
to clean this before we play it.
We flip the switch up which essentially
just starts the platter rotating.
The one in the back dispenses the Disc Doctor,
the Disc Doctor record cleaner.
And you can see there's a brush
which is designed to stir this up.
This is the vacuuming arm.
And when I flip this to dry,
the vacuuming arm, the motor is engaged.
The arm has a suction that sucks both the liquid
and this oxidation that I'm trying to remove off the disc
through the tube and into a waste in the inside.
Again, we're thinking long term.
Library of Congress, you're thinking 50, 100, 200 years.
You're thinking what way can this be stored
to have this disc usable in the future.
I'm reaching the end here, so I'm gonna take a peek.
Let's see what this looks like.
You can see just a single pass
has made a significant difference
in the condition of that disc.
Versus this.
You can see this is a bare aluminum disc.
Lomax used bare aluminum for a couple of years in the field.
I've transferred some recordings from 1933
when he recorded Lead Belly in Mooringsport.
It's not actually cutting, it's embossing,
the way you emboss a name on a cup or a ring.
This is from 1934 in Louisiana.
This is in Jennings, Louisiana.
A man named Jimmy Peters is leading a group
that was singing at a local church.
And, uh, this is a, these were called a, this is a jorae.
It's associated with funerals.
Oh, here's one of them.
This is French.
I want to be married.
They'd been making field recordings for the library
for about a year at that point, John and Alan.
And the 1934 trip was, um, one of their first
really extensive trips to a single area,
that area being the Cajun Country of Louisiana,
where they recorded both the white
and black French music traditions.
Both the song styles that were essentially old world French,
or in other cases that were more, you know,
African or even Caribbean.
That one's a good example of a real blend of all three.
It's a French song, but it was African American singers
and, you know, what you're hearing is,
you know, it's the roots of zydeco right there.
That's one of the most recognizable
Cajun and zydeco melodies right there
and those rhythms are very much the ones
that will later be associated with zydeco.
But, you know, that zydeco style didn't really happen
for another 10 or 15 years after this recording.
So it's, you know, it's the roots of music
that had, you know, yet to be.
Is it better to go fast on gravel or slow?
Not too fast.
- Something's wrong.
- Why?
It says we missed it.
It says we missed it, but there was no.
Oh, he said, maybe that's what he meant
by go a mile past where this takes you.
Oh, right.
This actually looks just like my friend's place,
the one who owns a ranch in Marksville, Louisiana.
- Whoa, Jesus!
- Shit.
That was deep.
This is just like my friend's.
- This has to be it.
- I think it's this.
All right.
Hey, this is heavy, can you carry this?
It's heavy, I'm warning you, I'm telling you, it's heavy.
What do you think, dude?
Ooh, that's pretty heavy, huh?
- Got it?
- Yes.
Oh, man, you're strong.
It's easy.
- Okay.
- Okay?
Are you ready, Alex?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- That sounded so cool.
- Nice.
Whoa.
I'm scared.
Oh my God, that's so awesome.
Nice balance.
That's the best.
Real nice balance, too.
Trape Mon Chapeau, it's a traditional song
that we play it with my dad, with Les Freres Michot,
and it's basically a song
that you finish dances with a lot
'cause it's catch my hat, it's time to go,
trape mon chapeau.
And there was this kind of just street bum
at Lafayette who, we were playing outside
and he came up, he said can I play accordion?
I play accordion.
I was like okay, sure, go ahead.
And so my brother gave him his accordion,
and then he just sat down and just killed it
and played that song, and that's where
I learned my words was from this dude,
which is his words are different
than all the other words.
And he was this pretty young homeless dude
and when it says my hat, my capo, my cape,
which is like a, like a coat, yeah,
like get my hat, get my coat.
It's time to go.
Your mama's screaming, your daddy's mad,
and your dog's barking at me and the rooster's crowing
and get me my hat, it's time to get out of here
'cause they don't like me and the kids are crying
and all that.
So the last line of the last verse
is the kids are crying.
I decided to use my Grandpa's fiddle last minute
because, for some reason, when I tune my fiddle now
which I don't tune that fiddle down much,
it sounded different so I decided to use
my grandpa's fiddle which I know
I've tuned down a bunch and it worked.
This style is kind of a communal style,
if you want to say, where it's not like,
I'm gonna take a solo and you take a solo,
it's more like let's do it together the whole time.
So we're all pushing the same melody,
and the same rhythm, and same song,
all together, all the time.
There's no, no one stands out really,
you're just one big sound.
That's the, that's what I love about French music.
This is a PRESTO disc recorder.
It's an 80 year old technology
developed with my father, George Saliba,
and his partner, Morris Gruber in the early 1930s.
And Dad used to bring this out into the living room in 1944
and record records on discs with it.
Guests would come to the house
and my father would bring this machine out
and start recording it,
and I certainly remember him recording us.
We made several home recordings.
In fact, in January of 1945, my fifth birthday party,
was recorded on disc, although unfortunately,
I can't find the disc.
There is a recording of me singing Howdy Doody
around 1948 when I was eight years old.
But then as LPs came in and the technology changed,
this machine was put away into the basement.
Here we go, Howdy Doody Time.
What does that say, 1948?
Yeah, January 28, 1948.
Is that your birthday?
January 28 is my birthday.
1940 is the year I was born.
This is your eighth birthday.
It was my eighth birthday, yes.
Almost everybody is familiar
with the William F. Gettle kidnapping case
out in Los Angeles, California this summer,
but few are familiar with the method
in which the kidnappers were captured
and still fewer know that the machine
instrumental in their arrest was made by a Syrian.
This is made from The Syrian World
New York, September 7, 1934.
George J. Saliba.
The machine resembling a portable phonograph
is an instantaneous recorder,
a product of the PRESTO Recording Corporation of New York,
the organizer and president of which
is Mr. Saliba, a young man 29 years old.
Two detectives in a hotel room
took it easy and waited for days for clues
that the PRESTO machine would give them.
They had wired up the room next to theirs
thinking they are on the track of the robbers of the bank,
but to their amazement, they found through the recordings
that they had stumbled on the kidnappers
of William F. Gettle, millionaire Beverly Hills broker
who had eluded the police and stirred up the nation.
The instantaneous recorder is a revolutionary cog
in the wheel of modern scientific progress.
It is used all over the world by movie studios,
colleges, radio stations, courts, detectives,
and by many others in various professions.
Admiral Byrd's expedition, now at the South Pole,
has two of them.
Any expedition that goes out
takes it along as necessary equipment.
It went along with the Carnegie and Strauss expeditions.
I never knew this.
The two spectacular cases in which the little wonder
played the main role were a bank robbery
and a famous divorce case.
Well, it takes a worried man
To sing a worried song
Well, it takes a worried man
To sing a worried song
Well, it takes a worried man
To sing a worried song
I'm worried now
But I won't be worried long
Well, I went down to the river
And I laid myself to sleep
I went down to the river
What do you think, Richard?
These are our tubes.
I think there are nine tubes in there.
This is an innovation that came out in the early 1930s,
it's a metal tube and it has the benefits
of actually having a shield built into it
and it's actually fairly rugged
compared to a glass tube, you could drop this
and most likely, you're not gonna have
internal problems with it.
This tube is actually a triode,
which is a three-element vacuum tube
that's combined with a pair of diodes
that are normally used in table radios.
Your PRESTO, that diode section's not used,
but this is used as a voltage amplifier
in your PRESTO.
You've got a bunch of those here.
Then you've got a 6N7, which is a dual triode,
and this can be operated as a Class B amplifier,
and this, more than likely, is output tube compressor,
the thing that actually drives the cutter head.
- [Man] And so when they were designing the PRESTOs,
presumably, they would've had some options
as choices to what kind of tubes to use,
- right?
- Yes.
And what kind of decisions
do you think made, went into the choices that they made?
I believe, based on the tube components
I've seen in PRESTOs, at least the portable ones,
that they were price-conscious,
that they wanted to pick tubes that were available,
that were relatively current production,
the rugged and if the metal versions were available,
and simple.
Bias at 50, that's one.
Full-scale is K,
and then it has all the settings at the socket
to tell which wire is which.
All right, this is two sections and it is healthy.
So what does that tell you?
It tells you that the tube is good,
the gain's good, doesn't have any shorts,
doesn't have any gas, to speak of, I mean,
it probably has some micro, micro increments of gas,
but it's a good tube.
So we could cut a good record with that?
Yes.
It's gonna lead a long service life.
When I was a little bitty baby
My mama would rock me in the river
In that old south fork back home
It's down there in the canyon
Where I used to do a lot of plannin'
In that old south fork back home
- How cool, like, just to meet total strangers?
But that's kind of, like, an interesting thing, right?
That, well, Lomax didn't have that,
which is the ability to just sort of
research things on the internet.
And find someone, introduce yourself to them,
and have them invite you to their house.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, it's pretty incredible
'cause I feel like after that experience,
we really know them.
Yeah, well, we do know them.
I mean, when you do something with someone and they say
this is the most fun I've ever had listening to myself,
you kind of have had some kind of an experience.
That's exciting to me.
I kept thinking that the whole time
when we were in their house is that
under what other circumstances
would we be here with them in this place?
("Careless Love")
Love, love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, oh careless love
You broke the heart of many a poor boy
But you'll never break this heart of mine
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, how can it be
He was true, yes, true to me
But now he lies beneath the sea
Captain, Captain, tell me true
Answer me
I pray you do
In my little Willie sail with you
We're looking here at the wall
of about, oh, it's almost 5,000 instantaneous discs,
many of which were acetates that Moses Asch had.
All of this stuff here actually dates before '48,
pretty much, it's his stuff from his Asch and Disc labels.
The real cream of the crop here
is the top shelf through here
is all the original Woody Guthrie recordings,
like hundreds of Guthrie recordings,
and Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, Mary Lou Williams,
um, Josh White.
This is one of the glass discs
that Moe Asch had recorded in the '40s.
This one here is a fiddle tune, it's Woody,
Woody Guthrie actually played fiddle.
Scratch in the edge right here, it actually says fiddle.
And sometimes there might be a W.G. for Woody Guthrie
or there might be an L.B. for Lead Belly.
It's also Moe, the grease pencil,
Moe Asch has written hot fiddle on here,
so he didn't know what the song was.
It looks like I wrote down it was Cindy, the song Cindy.
But they're on glass, they were made on glass during,
they used glass as the base during World War II
and what happens with glass over time?
It breaks, I have tons of them that are broken.
Before World War II, people actually recorded,
like the Lomaxes and people like that
would be out in the field with their disc-cutting machine
recorded on metal discs frequently.
This is Sidney Robertson Cowell
who was a field reporter, one of her discs,
and she actually did write all her notes
on the sleeve itself.
This one was done by the Russell Family
of Marion, Virginia, who were a famous family
who built dulcimers and dulcimer players.
Marion, Virginia, is down, bottom of the Shenandoah Valley,
down towards Bristol, Virginia.
This was actually all her little notes
about one verse omitted, a line from the song,
talks about who's on here in November 1936.
Jesus Born in Bethlehem, so it's a carol.
These aluminum discs, of course, last,
you know, could last forever, it's amazing.
And unlike Moe Asch, there's no,
nothing scratched on this one,
so if it gets lost in the sleeve,
you're not gonna know what it is,
it looks like, um, other than listening to it.
This one here is what happens, a worst-case scenario.
This is Woody Guthrie's mother-in-law
was a famous Yiddish poet,
and so he actually did a whole series of songs
for Hanukkah at one point.
Thankfully, we copied all of this,
but it's a case of what happens
with some of the acetates after awhile
is your acetates are flaking off
completely like old paint.
You can see it's sort of like it's falling off right here.
So thankfully it was copied here, twice,
but, so we have the music, but when this stuff's flaked off
into pieces like this that, it's over.
You can't, nothing really you can do with that.
Is this Menifee?
This looks like it could be Menifee.
I think so, yeah.
It's coming up.
All right.
Going to see my old friend Coati Mundi.
Coati Mundi.
When was the last time you saw him?
- Coati?
- Yeah.
I saw Coati in Harlem this past summer.
Yeah.
It hasn't been that long.
No, we went for coffee, lunch.
And at that time he expressed an interest in doing a 78.
So here we are.
He said there's a purple Jeep up front.
Purple Jeep.
Oh, where have you been Billy Boy, Billy Boy
Oh, where have you been, Charming Billy
I've been off to seek a wife
She's the joy of my life
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother
Did she bid you to come in, Billy Boy, Billy Boy
Did she bid you to come in, tell me, Billy
Yes, she bade me to come in
She's got no wrinkles on her skin
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother
Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy
Can she bake a cherry pie, tell me, Billy
She can bake a cherry pie
Even cook some beans and rice
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother
Take it easy.
She's a young thing
And cannot leave, forget that
She's gonna leave her mother
That was the toughest performance of my life, man.
Oh, where have you been Billy Boy, Billy Boy
Oh, where have you been, Charming Billy
I've been off to seek a wife
She's the joy of my life
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother
Did she bid you to come in, Billy Boy, Billy Boy
Back in Spanish Harlem,
my dad, may he rest in peace, and my mom,
they used to give me a little bit of a country life
'cause I grew up in Spanish Harlem,
projects, the whole thing.
They would put me in this really beautiful program
called The Fresh Air Fund.
And they would take inner-city kids
and send them to farms, different places.
I used to go to the Shenandoah area,
near the Shenandoah Caverns by New Market, Virginia,
and it was a farm,
I mean, straight-out farm, cows, milking,
cleaning out the stables, the whole thing,
and they used to hum this song, the farmhands.
And as I remember as a kid,
I must have been eight years old or something,
and they would kid other people with that,
and they would hum and sing the song,
but I couldn't really remember the lyrics.
But I just remember the one line,
she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.
So I had broken lyrics that I had and stuff,
so I cut a lot of the original lyrics,
different people but then I put my own lyrics into it
that meant something to me.
So I've been living with that song
somehow in my subconscious for a ton of years.
She's a young thing
And cannot leave, forget that
She's gonna leave her mother
Yay!
Yeah!
You know, I was just talking to my sister,
I was asking her if she remembers
they would have these little booths
where you could go in and record for a minute
or something like that, and the record drops
and they made it right there,
you could walk away with it.
42nd Street.
But the a cappella guys,
they would do the demo records cheap like that.
So they would go in and they'd sing, you know,
whoever can squeeze into the little booth,
and then they'd take the record with them
and try to chop that or just to give it to friends
or somebody, just one record.
I should get my first record I've ever done, it's acetate.
I don't know, gee, let me, I got it right there.
I mean, this is not sounding good in terms of musically,
but I got my old address, which I'm not gonna say,
the old phone number. - Let me see.
Yeah.
That's where we grew up in the projects.
I know.
I know, I'm telling Laurie.
I was reminiscing.
Yeah, I know, look at this.
I don't know what's gonna come out of this.
Oh, come on, you gotta dance, dance with her.
Come on.
("In My Time of Dying")
Well, in my time of dying
I don't want nobody to mourn
All I want for you to do is take my body home
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so I could die easy
Whoa, whoa, whoa
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so I could die easy
Jesus gonna make my, Jesus gonna make my
Jesus gonna make my bed
Well, meet me, Jesus, meet me
Meet me in the middle of the air
If these wings should fail me, Lord
Won't you just bring another pair now
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so I could die easy
Whoa, whoa, whoa
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so I could die easy
Jesus gonna make my, Jesus gonna make my
Jesus gonna make my bed
Ooh, yeah
Oh, whoa ho
Ooh, yeah
Whoa, that's gnarly cool with all that stuff on there.
Look at all that.
- That sounded amazing.
- That's fun, that's cool.
Yeah.
You guys, that's cool.
("In My Time of Dying")
That's cool.
Well, in my time of dying
I don't want nobody to mourn
All I want for you to do is take my body home
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so I could die easy
Whoa, whoa, whoa
I don't know many old-timey music
or never grew up with the blues.
My own blues, but not like, the blues.
Jesus, meet me.
Meet me in my dying bed.
No way, no way.
You know what's funny?
I used to sing a lot like, not gospel,
but a lot of, like, soul, like Christian music,
and I was just like I do not want to sing this song.
But then I was like it's not leaving me.
I'm gonna sing it 'cause it's not leaving me, so.
I mean, what's that, Led Zeppelin sang it.
- Yeah.
- Fucking crazy fucks.
And they made it so good, they were soulful about it.
They know what's up.
Topanga Canyon.
What was the name
of the place that we're looking for?
- Froggy's.
- Froggy's.
I think it's a fish place.
He also kinda warned us that there wasn't
gonna be anything to eat up here, that there's,
I think his exact words were there's not a 7-Eleven
on the corner, if you know what I mean.
Is that because there are no 7-Elevens
or because there are no corners, because right now.
I don't really know what his circumstances are.
I don't know what their house is like or anything, so.
Are we doing it in his house?
Where are we doing it? - He didn't really say.
Interesting.
All right, well this is Topanga, like a little town.
Yup, there it is, Froggy's.
Okay, uh, not, yeah, exactly straight through,
not that sharp right and then straight.
Then we'll see him.
All right, let's see if we can find him.
Uh, there he is. - What year is that?
I think this one is from 1939 or '40
'cause it has a serial number
that would've indicated it was made
at their factory in New York.
And then they moved to New Jersey in '41.
And it made the trip.
Wow.
Got this awesome custom case from a company
called Red Dirt Cases.
That's really fragile.
Now, this is pretty sturdy, right?
Um, not quite.
That's, like, the least sturdy porch.
We'll put it right there, yeah.
Hey, Lavinia, you can't stand on this.
Don't stand on it?
That's good to know.
Spinning and just put the needle down
for just a couple seconds to get a little lead-in groove.
And then I'll give you a thumbs up.
- Okay.
- And you can start.
Great.
- Ready?
- Yup.
Okay.
("Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen")
Nobody knows
All the troubles I've seen
Nobody knows
All the sorrow
Glory, glory
Glory hallelujah
Glory, glory
Glory hallelujah
Nobody knows
All the troubles I've seen
("After You've Gone")
Now won't you listen, baby, while I say
How can you tell me that you've gone away
Don't say that we must part
Don't break your baby's heart
You know I loved you for those many years
I loved you night and day
Oh, honey baby, can't you see my tears
Now listen to me while I say
After you've gone and left me crying
After you've gone, there's no denying
You'll feel blue
You'll feel sad
You lost the bestest pal that you've ever had
There'll come a time
Now don't forget it
There'll come a time
Where you'll regret it
Oh, babe, think what you're doing
You know my love for you will drive me to ruin
After you've gone
After you've gone away
There'll come a time
Don't forget it
There'll come a time
When you'll regret it
Oh, babe, think what you're doing
You know my love for you will drive me to ruin
After you've gone
After you've gone away
- Holy shit!
- Yay!
Wow!
Wow!
You did it!
Oh, my gosh, I was so nervous.
I was, like, shaking the whole time.
Wow, that's some serious thing.
I had two PRESTOs.
I had a overhead lathe,
I had seven lead screws, or pitch screws,
different grooves, um,
I was cutting two 34 lines per inch, LPs.
Uh, seven on the side, fourteen in all.
And I was getting daggone good response.
I got one of the old records laying here.
That, uh, let's see, what was I looking for?
Oh, God.
I gotta play you this.
I remember this from when I was a kid.
This guy must've liked it, too,
and he cuts inside out.
So, you don't have to worry with the chip, y'know?
Palmolive Brushless and Palmolive Lather
Shaving Cream present Inner Sanctum Mysteries.
Remember that?
You don't remember that.
Good evening, friends.
I love it.
That's really cool.
Did you hear the quality?
- Are you ready?
- Yeah.
Okay.
Well, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
to each and every one, from your old Joe friend here.
Look out there, Joe, yeah, yeah.
I timed that pretty good, didn't I?
What's on the flip side?
This is fun.
In here are a few of the original dust jackets
for the trip that Alan made to Fisk University.
This is typical, it has absolutely nothing on it,
but we kept it anyway, except the number.
But this one's very cool.
So, it's disc number 66, July 30th, um,
County Agricultural School in Coahoma County.
You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Dead and Gone,
a gentleman named McKinley Morgan with guitar.
Who we know that is, of course, McKinley Morganfield
and Johnny playing guitar.
And that's Muddy Waters.
That's one of the original Muddy Waters recordings.
What does that say?
It says broken.
Yup, broken record.
Uh, two, uh, three Muddy Waters originals.
Uh, he dropped it.
Waters, Waters.
I guess they're gonna be under Morganfield.
What book is that that you're looking?
This is the Dixon, Godrich, and Rye
Blues and Gospel Records discography.
It's the main blues discography
and they indexed all of our recordings,
so it's an easy, uh, kind of, July 30th.
We're gonna guess this is '42, right?
No, there appears to be no Muddy Waters
recordings from July 30th, 1942.
This is definitely an unknown recording.
Oops.
Are you still finding things?
I'm still finding things.
You've been to the basement.
- It is fun, isn't it?
- Yes.
But it's specifically designed to distract people
so you can pick their pockets.
I mean, the interesting thing
is that it's a device of criminality.
That's the only context I've ever seen it
in the world except for my talks.
- It's got a sinister...
- It's kind of the Facebook
of another generation or something.
Distracting people while you pick their pockets?
- Exactly.
- Yeah.
Yeah, it's the internet.
Well, you know, that's cute, like, I feel like
if I'd heard that, like, on my parents' old 78,
so I would have thought that was, like, a really cool,
weird thing from some corner of the world.
I would've really liked it.
Hearing that, I suddenly felt like I could translate back
and I suspect that hearing Robert Johnson live,
you'd hear a little bit more of a tail and resonance
and I feel like it might've had a different,
a little bit of a different continuity between phrases
than what we're used to 'cause I realize
the transformation in my own, in my own recording.
This recording setup, for some reason,
it kind of focused in and picked out,
I would say, like, sort of the main event
and there's a lot of, there's certain details
are there and certain details aren't,
but it brings, it's sort of, a different kind of focus
than modern recordings.
It's almost as if, um, like, you're shining a spotlight
in a room and you only see certain things, not other things.
And I feel like it had that spotlight effect
on the recording and it's hard
to pin down exactly what it is.
It's not just the loud stuff
and it's not just certain frequencies.
It's something a little bit more subtle than that.
I mean, I knew this, but I'd never really experienced it,
which is that since this type of recording
picks up certain things,
you can really hear how instrument designs evolve
to sound good on it.
Like, I can really, like you can really
immediately tell that an archtop guitar
would sound good on this.
And a really interesting thing,
like I can just tell from doing this,
like a saxophone would pull through on this
better than a clarinet.
And I can't tell you exactly why.
Maybe it's the even versus odd overtone thing
or something like that,
but you can just hear that it would, it would fit.
That promised land
Where all
Is peaceful
Deep river, Lord
I want to cross over
Into that ground
I want to cross over
Into that ground
Should I punch in?
Next time you gotta live with it.
("Where Did You Sleep Last Night")
My girl, my girl
Don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I will shiver the whole night through
My girl, my girl
Where will you go
I'm going where the cold wind blows
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I will shiver the whole night through
Her husband was
A hardworking man
Just about a mile from here
His head was found in a driving wheel
But his body was never found
So my girl, my girl
Don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I will shiver the whole night through
Was that any good?
That was beautiful.
Cool.
How'd it feel?
Felt pretty good.
How'd you, was it all right?
I thought it sounded great.
- Sweet.
- Can't wait
to hear it on the master tape.
Yeah.
("Where Did You Sleep Last Night")
My girl, my girl
Don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I will shiver the whole night through
Where did you first hear that song?
I mean, of course, I heard it, like I heard,
y'know, Kurt Cobain singing it when I was, like, five.
And that's when I first heard it.
But then, I, y'know, Lead Belly's actually from Shreveport.
And so, you know, my grandma, you know,
had some Lead Belly records and she had
a Lead Belly on vinyl or something like that.
I remember she would play some of it around the house,
but my granddad was really the Lead Belly fan.
He liked him a lot.
And he liked Woody Guthrie a lot,
and, like, a bunch of, uh, all that stuff,
so that's where I first heard it.
And, uh, Lead Belly version anyways.
Hard times back then, too,
like thinking 'bout how it was living back then.
So, you know those songs are, like, seriously honest
and, like, Lead Belly killed a few people, you know,
I mean, like, went to prison
and got shot in the belly and lived.
Remind me again who it was,
your uncle who whistled?
No, it was my great granddad.
- It was your great granddad.
- Yeah.
Do you know him?
No, he killed himself in 1960,
but he was a great tenor guitar player
and I have his four string Gibson tenor guitar
and, uh, it's like, I think it's a 1940,
mid '40s Gibson tenor guitar.
It's real cool.
Y'know, he had, like, a family band.
They used to play in the kitchen and they played
on top of the Youree Hotel in Shreveport.
And they would do gigs like that and shows there.
And they were really good, they were really talented.
Well, my grandma says they were.
But yeah, he went to my grandmother's house,
which is his daughter, asked her for the gun,
he said some dude was lurking around the house
and she gave it to him, of course, you know,
and then he went and blew his head right off.
So, that's the end of that story.
But see, his mother did the same thing, so.
Sorry, that's a little bit too dark for the.
The first record Lead Belly ever did for Moe
was actually children's songs, which became sort of,
um, you know, once people figured out that Lead Belly
had actually been in prison twice for manslaughter
and then he was singing a children's record,
it caused quite a, y'know,
but again, no publicity is bad publicity, right?
So, all the original recordings of Lead Belly,
which he started, he started recording him in '42,
are all up here.
One of the early children's songs that Moe Asch recorded,
it's Skip To My Lou,
which, y'know, is, everybody knows that song.
So here's your original Lead Belly Skip To My Lou disc.
Actually, this looks like one, a copy of it
'cause he got the Asch Recording Studio in the center,
so that's, this is, uh, outside, like outside going in,
Skip To My Lou, play party dance song.
But it is glass.
How can you tell that it's glass?
Oh, you can tell just by.
Skip To My Lou.
All my beautiful charm
I got a few left in glory
They got nine songs per side.
Yeah.
That's the one you learned from, huh?
Yeah, that's the one I learned from.
("Skip to My Lou")
Lost my partner, what'll I do
Skip to my lou, my darling
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Skip to my lou, my darling
I'll find another one prettier than you
Skip to my lou, my darling
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Skip to my lou, my darling
Little red wagon, paint it blue
Skip to my lou, my darling
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Ah-ha
Skip to my lou
Skip to my lou, my darling
It's like we did one with Roseanne in her kitchen.
- Kitchens are good.
- Yeah.
Yeah, I would do it in the kitchen in my old house.
My regular house, not the studio,
'cause the studio's really cramped.
The only big room is the studio.
Of all the gin joints.
We, um, basically decided to hop,
drop into this place called Ricochet for lunch.
I'm figuring that's where all the locals went.
And then, at a certain point, in walked Victoria Williams,
who looked familiar to me,
and she sat with her back to us and it was her voice
that made me think it might be her.
We've been trying to find her for a week and there she is,
and maybe we're gonna cut a record with her tonight.
I take this hammer
Take it to the captain
Take this hammer
Get it to the captain
Oh, take this hammer
Take it to the captain
And tell him I'm gone
Buddy, tell him I'm gone
'Cause this old hammer killed John Henry
This old hammer killed John Henry
Oh, this old hammer killed John Henry
It won't kill me
Oh no, it won't kill me
God gave Noah the rainbow sign
God gave Noah the rainbow sign
Yes, God gave Noah the rainbow sign
Said it won't be water
Be fire next time
When you hear that cuckoo calling
When you hear that cuckoo calling
Yes, when you hear that cuckoo calling
It's a sign of rain
Take this hammer
Take it to the captain
Take this hammer
Take it to the captain
Oh, take this hammer
Bring it to the captain
You tell him I'm gone