musical excavation
Dec. 18th, 2006 11:43 amI have a cd called "Old Time Music On The Air vol 1". My favorite song on there is "44 gun" by The Wandering Ramblers. Recently, as I was kind of going through a bluegrass/old time/americana phase, I dug up all of my old collections and anthologies related to this type of music, and I remembered that I really liked this song.
I also discovered that Abigail Washburn, the banjo-player who sings both in English and Chinese, has also recorded as part of an all-female string band called Uncle Earl. Their cd got great reviews and I ordered a cheap copy from Amazon (really -- it was $1.98 plus S&H). It's very good. One of the songs on there is "Sugarbabe" which they say they learned from the excellent albumn from The Wandering Ramblers, "Rambling and Wandering".
This made me realize -- I'd never tried to look for a full albumn/cd from this band, The Wandering Ramblers.
Well, after much internet archaeology, I was able to find one track by this band on a second cd that I can order -- a collection of different tracks from the label Marimac, which apparently was their label. I also tracked down one single site that offered their release as a cassette tape. I might actually buy it -- this release was from around 1990, small label in an obscure genre, and who knows, it may not have ever been released on cd format.
A lot of what I came across were performers who listed playing in the Wandering Ramblers as one of their past accomplishments, or musicians who referenced The Wandering Ramblers as their source of inspiration for a particular song. It seems that in the world of Old Time Music, this band left quite a footprint. But they appear to be long gone now. One woman, who sings and plays a few instruments and was a member of the band, lives here in Seattle and teaches music.
Another aside is that, when I ordered a second Gillian Welch cd, it had a song called "Winter's Come and Gone" on it. I put this on my collection for the Christmas party. I also put on one of the songs by Abigail Washburn that comes from my Quest USA soundtrack, of her singing in Chinese. These songs come from her earliest ep's that I haven't ordered yet. Anyway the song I picked was "Winter's Come and Gone", but it wasn't until I was listing the tracks that I realized I had the same song title twice, and then realized that yes, they had the exact same melody. They're the same song, in two different languages. ^_^
I also discovered that Abigail Washburn, the banjo-player who sings both in English and Chinese, has also recorded as part of an all-female string band called Uncle Earl. Their cd got great reviews and I ordered a cheap copy from Amazon (really -- it was $1.98 plus S&H). It's very good. One of the songs on there is "Sugarbabe" which they say they learned from the excellent albumn from The Wandering Ramblers, "Rambling and Wandering".
This made me realize -- I'd never tried to look for a full albumn/cd from this band, The Wandering Ramblers.
Well, after much internet archaeology, I was able to find one track by this band on a second cd that I can order -- a collection of different tracks from the label Marimac, which apparently was their label. I also tracked down one single site that offered their release as a cassette tape. I might actually buy it -- this release was from around 1990, small label in an obscure genre, and who knows, it may not have ever been released on cd format.
A lot of what I came across were performers who listed playing in the Wandering Ramblers as one of their past accomplishments, or musicians who referenced The Wandering Ramblers as their source of inspiration for a particular song. It seems that in the world of Old Time Music, this band left quite a footprint. But they appear to be long gone now. One woman, who sings and plays a few instruments and was a member of the band, lives here in Seattle and teaches music.
Another aside is that, when I ordered a second Gillian Welch cd, it had a song called "Winter's Come and Gone" on it. I put this on my collection for the Christmas party. I also put on one of the songs by Abigail Washburn that comes from my Quest USA soundtrack, of her singing in Chinese. These songs come from her earliest ep's that I haven't ordered yet. Anyway the song I picked was "Winter's Come and Gone", but it wasn't until I was listing the tracks that I realized I had the same song title twice, and then realized that yes, they had the exact same melody. They're the same song, in two different languages. ^_^