The intro on Joan Osborne’s One of Us release?
I watched an excellent documentary about the music and about National Archive efforts to preserve it on PBS.
Peace,
mangeorge
That’s a particular style of bluegrass categorized as Appalachian bluegrass.
Many songs are done a capella; it’s most popular song (if you can call it popular) was prolly O Death by Ralph Stanley, which was featured prominently in the Coen Brothers movie O Brother, Where Are Thou?.
Would that really be considered bluegrass, though? Since bluegrass is really a post-WWII form. I’d consider it Appalachian folk music or “old-time music”, but I’m not familiar enough with the domain to peg it more closely than that.
Well, it’s just that “old time” music, country, ragtime, traditional folk ballads and several other styles came to be amalgamated into what is now known as bluegrass, and you won’t see this style of music done regularly by anyone who isn’t today known as a bluegrass artist. I mean, if you go into a record store looking for “old time music” some knucklehead will show you where the 50s oldies groups are.
Plus “bluegrass” is a nicer sounding name than “old time backwoods mountain hillbilly folk music”, and a major root of bluegrass music was, in fact, the traditional music of Scots-Irish immigrants who settled in Appalachia.
Don’t forget, we’re talking about Joan’s intro here;
“Oh, one of these nights at about twelve o’clock/ This whole earth is gonna reel and rock / Saints will tremble and cry for pain / For the Lord’s gonna come in his heaven airplane.”
sang in a high, almost monotone with a very formal and specific style. A little hard to understand, too.
Listen:
One of Us
First 15 seconds.
yeah… that’s old time bluegrass folk music, fer sher… just listen to Ralph Stanley in that link I gave in ya post #2… same style
The sample in “One of Us” is Nell Hampton singing “The Airplane Ride”. It can be found on this album. One of the tags on that album is “Appalachian Folk”, which might be more appropriate if you don’t want to call it Bluegrass.
ya know, I like Appalachian Folk better than I like old time music… can we all agree to go with that moniker, and we’ll just make the rest of the world follow suit?
I love Old Time Music, but that phrase really applies to String Band Music.
The styles co-existed. The Stanley Brothers played Bluegrass, the amped-up* child of Old Timey. But Ralph Stanley’s “O, Death” goes back to the older *a capella * “Appalachian Folk” tradition. The more conservative denominations did not allow musical instruments in church & frowned on them at home. That sort of thing might lead to dancing & whiskey drinking.
- Not with electrical amplification, of course!
From wikipedia:
That song, while very similar in style to the Ralph Stanley song linked by Snowboarder Bo in post #2, has a very different sound. the difference is somewhat explained on that same linked page.
I think Nell hampton was featured in that PBS program I mentioned in the OP.