Overview
The Long Runners evolved when I was invited to create a skiffle group for Idris Elba’s TV comedy drama In the Long Run. I corralled Dan Stewart from my Old Time band Rattle On the Stovepipe, and the Armer brothers, Eddie and John from the Lonnigans skiffle group. Between filming we sat in our trailer and shared our musical backgrounds. Filming finished, Eddie, Dan and I decided to record a few more songs, the result – On the Run, a mélange of styles, genres and instruments sheltering amicably, if noisily, under an umbrella of Old Time Americana.
From the mid 19th century through the early decades of the 20th the southern worker’s sound-track was blues, jazz, jug-band, medicine-show, gospel, vaudeville, folk, country, minstrel, parlour, and Old Time string band songs and music. In the UK, 1950s post-war youth, inspired by Lonnie Donegan and others, blended these musics into that uniquely British demotic phenomenon – Skiffle.
On the Run, with a nod to skiffle (‘Long Lost John’ and ‘Good Night Irene’), looks to those earlier popular genres, especially, but not exclusively, songs from the ‘20s and ‘30s by performers such as Ma Rainey, guitar-picker Bayless Rose, the Memphis Jug Band, and the Georgia Crackers string band. Not surprisingly, with all the to-ing and fro-ing across the Atlantic, many songs and tunes were familiar on both sides of the pond, frequently undergoing a ‘sea change’ as countless singers passed them mouth to ear over a couple of hundred years.
Three such Appalachian songs are, Cluck Old Hen, so popular with rural performers, most collectors considered it too commonplace to publish. It’s origin can be detected in the English nursery rhyme Hickety, Pickety, My Black Hen (she lays eggs for gentlemen, some days five, some days ten…). Learnt by me from Derroll Adams, who said he learnt it from Bert Jansch! Dear Companion, is a short variant of ‘Go and Leave Me if You Wish it’ (and other titles) sung all over the British Isles and N. America at the end of the 19th century. In 1916 Cecil Sharp collected similar lyrics to ours from Rosie Hensley, Carmen, N.C. Thirdly, The Coo-Coo Bird a set of floating verses, put to a modal tune. Originally the British lyric folk song ‘The Cuckoo’ (‘The cuckoo is a pretty bird’), well known in both the UK and the USA. Many contemporary performers of the ‘Coo-Coo’ have been influenced by the Clarence Ashley1929 banjo recording, included on Folkways 1957 Anthology of American Folk Music.
Fingerpicked, ragtimey, Piedmont blues, popular from North Virginia down to Georgia, exemplified by Rev. Gary Davis, Pink Anderson, Blind Boy Fuller, Bayless Rose and Erin Harpe, was our inspiration for Ma Rainey’s 1928 ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ number, Black Eye Blues. Bayless Rose’s ‘you only love me for my money’ complaint, Black Dog Blues, and the Georgia Crackers’ Black Bottom Blues – a warning to avoid the haunts of gamblers, hookers, druggies, and gangsters, where murder is a Saturday night sport, unless you’re ‘tooled up’. Josie-O from the repertoire of Kentucky fiddler Art Stamper (1933-2005), is our noisy bow to all those wild, hell-for-leather, string bands that in the ‘20s and ‘30s raced down from the hollers, clutching fiddles, banjos, guitars, and whatever else they could lay hands on, to play for northern record talent-scouts, such as Columbia’s Ralph Walker. Setting up their recording equipment in country stores, they uncovered a foot-tapping hill-billy goldmine, and such future stars as the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. Walk On Boy learnt by me in Doc Watson’s sitting room in Deep Gap, N.C. while on an Appalachian road trip with banjoist Barry Murphy. Written by Mel Tillis and Wayne Walker it sums up Doc’s belief that ‘nobody in the world’s, gonna help you carry your load.’ Which is why, though blind, Doc did whatever he could – from repairing clocks to playing electric guitar in a rockabilly band – to feed and clothe himself and his family.
Until well into the 20th century the southern prison farms were notorious for the exploitation of the mainly black convicts. Many guilty of little more than being black and in a wrong place at a wrong time. I put Go Down Old Hannah together from verses in Bruce Jackson’s Texas prison farm collection, Wake Up Dead Man. Hannah, being the sun. With prison farm experiences as bad as antebellum slavery it’s no wonder Long Lost John did a runner.
The Memphis Jug Band’s 1930 recording of K.C.Moan has inspired many bands including ours. Though tempted to add kazoo, tub-bass and washboard, we decided it would be gilding the lily, and so resisted. Peg Leg Sam The Medicine Show Man. Monopedal step-dancers are uncommon but with the help of a piratical wooden peg-leg and wild blues harmonica playing Sam earned a living performing in travelling medicine-shows. Sam’s harmonica style greatly influenced Eddie’s playing when he started out in the 1970s. Courtesy of Flyright Records The Last Medicine Show we’ve incorporated live recordings of Sam and his boss, Chief Thundercloud, working a crowd and selling snake-oil at a dollar a bottle. Roll up! Lead Belly’s melancholic waltz time, Good Night Irene (a considerable rewrite of black composer Gussie Davis’s 1886 ‘Irene, Good Night’) was a 1950 No.1 hit for the Weaver’s folk group, despite its schmaltzy orchestral backing. Believing we couldn’t do anything worse we recorded a fast, skiffly/jazzy/jugband type chorus as a possible lively ending for In the Long Run. Ultimately not placed in the show we’ve used the recording to finish On the Run. With apologies to conservative folkies and Bristol Rovers football club.
Reviews
Folk London – Brian Cope
It is always with optimistic anticipation I approach a new recording from the WildGoose studio and I have yet to be disappointed, such is the quality of the recordings and standard of musicianship. On The Run, by the Long Runners, a skiffle group created by Dave Arthur for the Idris Elba TV comedy-drama In The Long Run, is, unsurprisingly, no exception. Dave and Dan Stewart together form two-thirds of the old-timey band Rattle on the Stovepipe and are here joined by Eddie Armer of the Lonnigans skiffle group to create a “melange of styles, genres and instruments sheltering amicably, if noisily, under an umbrella of old-time Americana”. Assorted guitars, banjos, mandolin, fiddle, harmonica, brass, percussion and the obligatory washboard and tea-chest bass come together throughout the album. Of the few tracks I have some knowledge of, Go Down Old Hannah – assembled here from prison farm verses by Dave – I knew from the singing of Pete Seeger, John Hardy from Lonnie Donegan and Manfred Mann, and Good Night Irene from the Weavers. They have all been impressively reinterpreted, especially the latter where, armed with Derek Mason’s percussion, they conclude this fine album with their version of Irene delivered in 62 seconds flat! Available from wildgoose.co.uk Brian Cope
Folking.com
At the turn of the 20th century, in the fashionable salons of New York and Boston, fashionable things were happening. Meanwhile the working folks of the southern states were getting their rocks off to a different kind of music – an amalgam of everything that had gone before and would eventually arrive at skiffle. That’s where On The Run comes in. The Long Runners is a new name but its constituent parts are well known. Led by Dave Arthur of Rattle On The Stovepipe who co-opted Dan Stewart from the same band and Eddie Armer from The Lonnigans – three vocalist/multi-instrumentalists – joined by John Armer and, on the final track, Derek Mason.
They begin with ‘Black Bottom Blues’, a song with more antecedents than are strictly necessary and packed with floaters that you’ve heard many times before. It sets the scene perfectly – not always serious but treated seriously and respectfully. They follow that with the Appalachian tune ‘Cluck Old Hen’ – essentially a dance tune with minimal lyrics – and ‘Josie-O’, a tribute to the southern string bands.
Between them, The Long Runners can muster three guitars, two banjos, mandolin, harmonica, fiddle, tea-chest bass (why not?), brass and assorted percussion so the first two tracks feature banjo and mouth-harp while ‘Josie-O’ is given a denser soundscape with fiddle and harp sharing the top line. ‘Walk On Boy’ comes from Doc Watson although it was written by Mel Tillis and Wayne Walker with a reference to ‘John Henry’ and is one of the few songs here that can pin down its authorship with any certainty. The Memphis Jug Band first recorded ‘K.C.Moan’ in 1930 and the chaps thought better of messing around with it and quite right too – it rolls along beautifully.
‘Go Down Old Hannah’ was assembled by Dave Arthur from prison farm verses; ‘Black Dog Blues’ comes from Bayless Rose while ‘Long Lost John’ is the story of a prison escapee. Dear Companion’, sometimes called ‘Go And Leave Me If You Wish To’ was a popular song on both sides of the Atlantic and ‘The Coo-Coo’ crossed the pond and stayed there. ‘Peg Leg Sam, The Medicine Show Man’ incorporates actual recordings of Sam and the Medicine Show man, Chief Thundercloud (possibly not his real name). It’s about as real as you can get.
‘John Hardy’ needs no introduction and ‘Black Eye Blues’ is from Ma Rainey. Finally, On The Run closes with a live madcap burst through ‘Goodnight Irene’. Forget the standard languid ¾ version that can become a dirge, The Long Runners’ crank up the speed and get through it in a minute.
On The Run is a whole heap of fun and if you’ll go to your grave with a Mississippi Sheiks album clutched to your breast this is for you.
Dai Jeffries
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