A lovely little tune I learned from Stefan Grossman’s collection. I got two decent takes so I’ve posted them both. The alternating bass line is unusual in that, except for the break in the middle, it goes hi-low hi-low and avoids the root note of the chord.
I got a lot of help learning this one from my former teacher, Vernon Black. The songs in Grossman’s collection are not fully transcribed, and I have trouble figuring out the parts that are left out, especially if they are very different from the transcribed sections. Vernon’s ear could pick them out just fine, though.
New strings equals new recordings! I’m trying a new microphone position recommended by a book my friend Tobin lent me. The mic is one foot away, pointing midway between the sound hole and the beginning of the neck. Plus another mic in the corner of the room for reverb.
Dalrymple is a retired English doctor who worked in Britain’s lower-class hospitals and in some of the poorer parts of the world. This is a collection of essays on the culture of present-day Western civilization and he does not like what he sees.
He writes beautifully and with sober penetration into many of the ills of modern society. But his ultimate diagnosis often rings false to me. A conservative, Dalrymple’s villain of choice is the Liberal Intelligentsia and his attempts to connect every present day evil with that nefarious club strains my credulity. In his essay on how the publication of “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” inaugurated the downward spiral, he writes that before the censure laws were relaxed the public had a “distinctly limited demand” for Lawrence’s work, and then, after publication, “one in four British households had acquired it”.
Just got back from vacation and feel like recording. This is “Mama, Your Papa Loves You”, an Elizabeth Cotton tune that goes by several other names. Cotton is one of my favorite guitarists for fingerstyle blues and this song is one of her best, I think. I notice my tempo gets faster as the song progresses, but Cotton tended to play them that way too.
I can’t decide whether the bass is too heavy on this recording. I think I like it, it sort of envelopes the melody. Yeah, that’s it.
