7-8:30 tonight I’ll play a set at Cinema Bar in Culver City for the after-work drinkers. TGIF: a couple Coronas, killer tacos at Tito’s next door, and americana music.

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I learned the folky country tune “Big River Blues” from Doc Watson. Somewhere or other he mentioned he learned the song from the Delmore Brothers, and yesterday I came across that original version.

Here it is: Big River Blues (mp3)

This recording is from the 1930s. The genre is self-aware as something like country and western, probably with an emphasis on the western. Their conception of the style is that it’s slightly slick rube music, more in tune and less liquored up than the crude early days only ten years before. The single-note lead guitar line might be on an early electric instrument. It a step on the evolutionary path to rockabilly, and you can start to hear how something like Carl Perkins would come out of this.

Their guitar lead got picked up in Doc Watson’s version, modified to use his Merle Travis influenced picking technique rather than a flatpick. I didn’t grab that lead line when I learned the Doc stuff, it just didn’t catch my ear that strongly. And I used the title from Doc’s version; _Deep_ River Blues rather than _Big River Blues_.

The hidden value of Creative Commons:

Every so often, I get a little Google news vanity alert about a photo that’s been credited on the Internet. One of my faves is the remix of Lawrence Lessig at the top of this post. It is actually a collage that was created by Andy on the fly for a G33k dinner.

Tag up your photos and try it yourself. If they’re on a free hosting service, what do you have to lose?

Makes sense to me. A big part of why I use CC or public domain licensing on my music is to encourage reuse and hopefully create viral effects.

So something holding back CC musicians is that it’s hard for potential reusers to find permissively licensed music on independent sites like mine.

Rolling stops on a bicycle allow for efficient riding uses Celebrated Shoo Fly Galop::

Bicycles, Rolling Stops, and the Idaho Stop from Spencer Boomhower on Vimeo.

I just stumbled across a big collection of digitized cylinders at Syracuse University Library. It’s not very big but it is clean and modern.

Check out, for example, this 1916 one-step by Vess Ossman. What’s a one-step? No idea. I think that he was 7 years from death at this point, and pretty much at the end of his career.