Hobart Smith

Hobart Smith (May 10, 1897—January 11, 1965) was an American old-time musician. He was most notable for his appearance with his sister, Texas Gladden, on a series of Library of Congress recordings in the 1940s and his later appearances at various festivals during the folk music revival of the 1960s. Smith is often remembered for his virtuosic performances on the banjo, and had also mastered various other instruments, including the fiddle, piano, guitar, piano, harmonica, accordion, and organ. – Wikipedia

Be sure to find In Sacred Trust; The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes, which features 35 more excellent banjo, guitar, and fiddle performances by Hobart.

Parchman Farm

“Parchman Farm” is the title of a number of songs about Mississippi State Penitentiary, known as Parchman Farm, a hard time prison because of the Trusty system which was later outlawed.

There have been a number of blues songs written about Parchman Farm and several blues musicians were imprisoned there, including Bukka White (who wrote “Parchman Farm Blues”), and Son House. In 1939, folklorist Alan Lomax recorded White and others at the farm for the Library of Congress.

Little Sadie and The Cuckoo

Son House – Grinnin’ In Your Face

A good one for when you’re feeling down-trodden.

Son House – Walking Blues

This version of Walking Blues, perhaps the most recorded blues song ever, features Son House (its original writer) with Willie Brown on a second guitar, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin on mandolin, and Leroy Williams on harmonica. It was recorded in 1941 by Alan Lomax at Klack’s Store, Lake Cormorant, MS for the Library of Congress. Alan Lomax stated this was the greatest thing he ever recorded. It benefits from Son’s still-strong voice, which diminished greatly in the following decades. It features what seems to be “the” Son House riff.

Robert Johnson learned Walking Blues from Son House, and Muddy Waters learned it from Robert:

Papa Charlie Jackson – I’m Alabama Bound, Sheik of Displaines Street

I’m on a Papa Charlie Jackson kick lately.

I really like the staccato runs he plays on his handcrafted guitar-banjo.

Jerry’s Map

Jerry’s Map is an art project involving the procedural evolution of an enormous map. Watch this video, then read the artist’s blog.

Digitizing Constructed Writing Systems

@FiatLingua, the official Twitter account of the Language Creation Society, alerted me to this blog post about one neographer’s frustrations in bringing the writing system of his constructed language to the computer.

Small Graph Sandbox

I recently came across this interesting catalog of small (simple, undirected, unlabeled, and connected) graphs. It will tell you that the graph pictured above (the complete graph on three vertices, or the cycle of length three) has order, size, and girth 3 and six automorphisms, along with a variety of other potentially useful data.  It looks like the author’s site contains a number of other interesting things too.

The Cuckoo

Here’s several versions of a very Appalachian-sounding song I’ve been working on lately: