SNOOKS EAGLIN "Possum up a Simm,;,nTree''

SNOOKS EAGLIN ''Possu.rn up a Si.rn.rnonTree'' Snooks Eaglin with Percy Randolph and Lucius Bridges

Negro folk music in the United States has been eclectic from almost the beginning. Spirituals were the product of the fusion of African rhythms and sometimes melodies with the Bible stories of American Portestan-tism and its folk and written religious music. Negro jazz has drawn on the styles of white marching bands, on Anglo-American, Span-ish , Mexican , German, and Louisiana French folk music; and on standard popular music.

In the present day , any serious discussion of live Negro folk music, what people sing and play for the fun of it, has to take into account the mass media. In fact , radio and records have often supplanted the oral infor-mant in putting into traditional channels ma-terial which becomes folk. Thus the perfor-mances of these three modern urban folk musicians: Snooks Eaglin, Percy Randolph, a French Quarter junkman who pushes around a primitive wooden cart, and Lucious Bridges , an auto mechanic - represent a vari-ety of influences: African rhythms, the Negro folk blues tradition, "race records" and th e ir contemporary descendants, "rhythm and blues" records; Spanish folk music , standard popular music, hill-billy, the evocative sounds of trains and the raucous bleat of the Model T , and even the tap danc-ing of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.

POSSUM UP A SIMMON TREE. Lucius Bridges - vocal; Snooks Eaglin - guitar; Per-cy Randolph - washboard. One of the old-est surviving American Negro songs, it is mentioned as a dance ("Possum up a gum tree" ) in Augustus Longstreet's Georgia S cenes (1835), also in the minstrel show song, "Zip Coon " (1834), in which the sing-er refers to it as a song Zip would sing. The tune Lucius sings is similar to the hill-billy favorite , popular in the late 40s, "Pistol Packin' Mama". Randolph plays the wash-board by drumming and scraping it with four thimbles on each hand. The folk wash-board as played by Negroes is a descendant of African percussion instruments.

THAT'S ALL RIGHT. Snooks Eaglin -vocal and guitar; Percy Randolph - harmon-ica ; Lucius Bridges - washboard. This is simil ar to the popular record by Big Boy Crudup recorded in 1946. Randolph's har-mo ni ca playing is in the same main stream of fo lk tradition as that of Blind Sonny Terry, wh om Rand olph has never heard.

VEAL CHOP AND PORK CHOP. Percy Randolph vo cal and slapping shoe shine rag. In the days when Percy Randolph was shin-ing shoes at the corner of Toulouse and Bur-gund y in New Orleans, he would sing this song while popping his shine rag. The com-plicated syncopated rh ythm of the snapping of the cloth would serve the double function

of attracting the attention of potential cus-tomers, and also of making dull work lively. In this performance the two shoes, played

by the shine rag, are a pair of tap dancers named Veal Chop and Pork Chop, each try-ing to outdo the other in a spectacular dis-play of virtuoso steps. The rhythm is most directly an imitation of the style of the late great Negro tap dancer, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson; more remotely, it is also survival of an African heritage. The text of the song is a variation on the routine of Pork Chop and Kidney Stew, two tap dancers who go from bar to bar in the French Quarter, enter-taining the customers and passing the hat.

I AIN'T GONNA STUDY WAR NO MORE. Snooks Eaglin - vocal and guitar. One of the best known of the early spiri-tuals, this is also a favorite number of New Orleans jazz bands, generally called "Down by the Riverside".

MODEL T AND THE TRAIN. Instrumen-tal by the trio. In this number they describe an encounter between the two machines which have most intrigued the folk imagina-tion. The Model T meets a train at a cross-ing, blows its horn, then continues down the road, while the train proceeds on to the sta-tion. While we were recording this number in the parlor of Snooks's house, his father, Fird, who was puttering around in the kit-chen, whipped out his harmonica and blew his own train imitation at the end of the piece. The sound of the train huffing to a stop in the distance sounded so appropriate we left it in the recording.

JACK O'DIAMONDS. Percy Randolph -vocal, harmonica, and tom-tom (actually the head of a banjo). This is a bad man ballad in fragmentary form. Jack O'Diamonds, here a mean gambling man, knocks a man down out of pure malice, just because he feels tired. This performance, verbally inarticulate but musically eloquent, differs from most recordings of this song which are rather dif-ferent in tune and text.

DEATH VALLEY BLUES. Snooks Eaglin - vocal and guitar; Lucius Bridges - wash-board. This is a standard blues which has been recorded by Lonnie Johnson and Blind Boy Fuller among others .

THIS TRAIN. The trio gives a popular hill-billy number their own special flavor. Among the best known Negro recordings of this song is that by Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

BOTTLE UP AND GO. Lucius Bridges -vocal; Snooks Eaglin - washboard; Pere Randolph - harmonica. This song has been a hit among Negroes formany years, widely played on the juke boxes of the rural South. Among many recordings of it are those by the Memphis Jug Band , Tommy Mcclennan,

and Blind Boy Fuller, the latter titled, "Step it up and Go".

MARDI GRAS MAMBO. Lucius Bridges - vocal; Snooks Eaglin - vocal and tom-tom; Percy Randolph - harmonica. A popu-lar song composed several years ago, this lively description of the Negro celebration of the most famous New Orleans holiday here becomes something of a fo lk creation, a complex interweaving of the original song and Randolph's inspired contrapuntal play-

ing, which is a mixture of the famous jazz hit of the 1920s, "The Peanut Vendor", and the favorite Mexican and Spanish folk song, "La Paloma". "Girt Town" is a Negro sec-tion back of Fourth Street.

ROCK ME MAMA. Snooks Eaglin - vo-cal and guitar; Lucius Bridges - washboard. This is again based on a very popular record by Big Boy Crudup recorded in 1944.

JOHN HENRY. Lucius Bridges - vocal; Snooks Eaglin - guitar; Percy Randolp h -washboard. In this fragmentary variant of the most famous of Negro folk epics, even John Henry's woman is a great steel-driver.

LOCOMOTIVE TRAIN. Percy Rando lph - harmonica; Snooks Eaglin - guitar; Lucius Bridges - washboard. Here the trio effective-ly suggest the clatter of the wheels on the tracks, the wailing whistle of the train, and its exciting accelerating rhythm. The core of the performance lies in Randolph's complex syncopation and his sensitive use of the "blue" notes.

I HAD A LITTLE WOMAN. Snooks Eaglin - vocal and guitar. A typical blues in standard form redeemed from triteness by the anguish in Snooks' voice and his brilliant ace om paniment.

DON'T LEAVE ME MAMA. Lucius Bridges - vocal and guitar; Snooks Eaglin -guitar; Percy Randolph - washboard. In this lively song, Lucius gives us the exuberant fun of a two-step in a Negro dance hall:

All you women fall in line, Shake your shimmy like I

shake mine. This is yet another variant of the popular "Rock Me Mama" .

(Notes by Harry Oster with some editing by Chris Strachwitz)

2014

POSSUM UP A SIMMON TREE (* )

THAT'S ALL RIGHT

VEAL CHOP AND PORK CHOP

I AIN 'T GONNA STUDY WAR NO MORE

MODEL T AND THE TRAIN

JACK O'DIAMONDS

DEATH VALLEY BLUES

THIS TRAIN

BOTTLE UP AND GO (*)

MARDI GRAS MAMBO

ROCK ME MAMA

JOHN HENRY (*)

LOCOMOTIVE TRAIN

I HAD A LITTLE WOMAN

DON'T LEAVE ME MAMA

Ford " Snooks" Eaglin - vocal s, guitar, washboard, and tom-toms

Lucious Br idges - washboard and vocals on( * )

Percy Randolph - harmon ica and washboard

Recorded and edited by Harry Oster and Richard Allen. New Orleans, La. ca. 1958. Originally issue as Folklyric LP 107

Cover photo by Harry Oster

Cover: Wayne Pope

Re-issue produced by Chris Strachwitz

For our 84 page catalog giving full details on over 400 Blues, Cajun, Zydeco, Tex-Mex, Country, Jazz, Folk, and Ethnic Lps, Cassettes, CDs, and Videos send $2.00 to cover postage to:

ARHOOLIE CATALOG, 10341 San Pablo Ave. El Cerrito, Ca . 94530 USA.

(Catalog includes all releases on ARHOOLIE, BLUES CLASSICS, FOLKLYRIC, J .E.M .F., OLD TIMEY, RAMBLER, and WESTERN labels .)