Horace Weston’s approach to harmony was bold and advanced.

In his composition “Egyptian Fandango” (sheet music here) there is an E7 spelled f#-g#-d-e, putting two whole-tone pairs next to each other to maximize dissonance:

F#-g#-d-e by lucas_gonze

Something really unusual there is the f#, the 9th of the chord, as the bass note. Modern jazz might do that to give a sense of two chords at once, meaning an E7 chord and an F# chord happening at the same time. But the way this is voiced with the 9th right next to the 3rd makes the f# act more like a coloration than a tonal center. Funk would have a 9th but only if the 3rd and root are in other octaves, far away from one another to prevent dissonance, and anyway the 9th would never be used as the lowest note. It’s a quirky and creative touch on Weston’s part.

Another approach to this voicing from the same song, this time staggering the high note to be on the downbeat, putting the rest of the notes together on the upbeat, and adding the 5th of the chord in the root:

B-f#-g#-d-e by lucas_gonze

This is again a personal and creative concept. The phrase here is the classic oom-pah boom-chuck 1-2 bass-chord chop, but the first note is above the entire chord rather than below it. If that e note before the chord were an octave down, it would be the same old same old. Weston had ideas.

Here’s the entire bar where that chord is sitting:

Phrase A from Egyptian Fandango by lucas_gonze

And here’s the overall phrase containing that bar, to help you situate this with respect to the beat:

Phrase B from Egyptian Fandango by lucas_gonze

Here is a video performance of the song as a whole:

A similar harmony to the above is in Weston’s composition “Horace Weston’s Celebrated Polka” (view sheet music at the Library of Congress). In the B section the main idea is a closely voiced V7 chord, with the 5th, the b7 and root note right on top of each other in a strongly accented chop:

D-a-c-d by lucas_gonze

Some cool things about this version of “John Henry” by the Blind James Campbell String Band:

– The fiddler rocks.

– The tuba player sounds great in a string band. How come you don’t hear more tuba in string bands?

– The dancing about a minute in.

gurdonark ran across the true history of a pair of star crossed lovers from the olden days. He seems to have gotten hooked on their life stories and cyber stalked them, digging up any details he can find on the internet. It’s a sad tale of an ordinary breakup between two ordinary people, a long time ago.

“Strike the chords of Life’s great autoharp whenever you may, and there comes forth the wails of misery and woe commingling with those of laughter and song”
[letter of Lucy Roberson to Ollie Roberson, from the Nevada Supreme Court case of Roberson v. Roberson, 41 Nev. 276, 169 P. 333(1917)]

I can’t tell you the parts of their relationship which involved roses and love poems and promises in the dark. I can tell you they were minors when they married. I can tell you that their relations crossed the expected boundaries of intimacy, such that Lucy bore at least one child. I can also tell you that the marriage did not work.

The couple talked it over, and decided to go their separate ways. Ollie moved from the piedmont of North Carolina to Reno, Nevada. Lucy moved in with her people, along with the couple’s child.

Read the rest on gurdonark’s blog.

Sittin´ On Top Of The World – Otha Turner & Corey Harris

The lyrics are coming from the Mississippi Sheiks version of the song, the original and very first. This song became a bluegrass, blues and folk standard over the decades. There might be some significance to the fact that the Sheiks were black and their version predated the many countryish versions by whites. For example, Turner might identify with the Sheiks more than with Bill Monroe.

The way the slide and quills work together is great.

Update later: it seems most likely to me that it’s Otha Turner’s *age* causing him to use the original Mississippi Sheiks lyrics. It took a while for this song to spin off all the related versions, and in the meantime it was a great song just as it was. The original came out around 1930. Turner was born in 1907, so was around 23 when the Sheiks were doing their thing. That would be a perfect age for him to learn the original just as it was.