Backed by her Georgia Jazz Band, here is the great Ma Rainey, reflecting on the joy and consequences of “Booze and Blues.” So good. This Youtube post “show more” is a great biography of this talented woman who was truly a force in the Blues.
On Thursday April 18, Attorney Bill Barr has announced plans to release a redacted copy of the long awaited “Mueller Report” about Russian interference into the 2016 Presidential campaign.
This document will become Public Domain, and we intend to make it available here @ PublicDomain4u.com.
Here”s a link to the report:
https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
Ida Cox – also known as the “Uncrowned Queen of the Blues” – worked her way up through the early blues circuit to become a popular headliner. A versatile artist, Cox also achieved fame as a successful vaudeville performer. Check out her powerful and evocative vocal on the classic, “Mojo Hand Blues”. A hard-to-find 78 RPM vinyl, here to enjoy as a video.
This scratchy copy of a Son House classic is pure gold. A master at creating unusual chord structures, Son House uses his vocal and guitar to create moving double-harmonies. Jack White of White Stripes fame dedicated the White Stripe’s first album to Son House.
This song is personal favorite of mine. Carl Martin’s humorous admonition to all prize fighters, telling them to stay off Joe Louis’ beat is a classic. There isn’t a wasted word in this song, and Martin’s delivery is as solid as a punch from the champ himself. It’s a shame the 78 has the snap, crackle, pop of an old recording.
Born in January of 1900 in Allatoona, Georgia, Clayton McMichen had his great success recording with Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers and Hometown Boys, and also as a solo artist. His solo effort performance of “Grave In The Pines” is a starkly sweet and sincere lament to a fallen love. McMichen performed regularly in Louisville, Kentucky until retiring in 1955, and later returning to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964.
This righteous song claims freedom from stodgy ways. Punk before there was Punk. A blues standard, this was adapted for fiddle by Earl Johnson, who learned to play the fiddle from his father. I’m sure you’ll notice the attitude this fiddler’s arrangement has. I admire the spunk!
The great Betty Roche lays down a classic be-bop jazz blues vocal. She joined Ellington’s band in 1943. Trouble means the same after 60-plus years.
I acquired my love of music for free!! I listened to the AM then FM radio all free, gr8 music filtered regionally, and I overheard most of the jukebox music I loved on someone else’s dime!
This site is the 2019 version of my jukebox.
With the aid of copyright law, the recorded music business has all but eliminated any free/legal opportunity to hear quality music these days. I’ve participated in the music biz since 1970, and I’ve watched a lot of horrors, BUT this latest format change could be music’s downfall. I hate doom and gloom talk, but I’m concerned.
The music industry’s largest players created competition to free music-sharing sites. They licensed their vast music catalogues with “take all or nothing” music license to the “deep pockets big guys” and businesses they owned.
They granted an ownership-type deal/license to a site located in Sweden, Spotify (former country of the largest pirate site ”Pirate Bay.”) SO the earnings from these bulk licenses deals have become primary earnings for the multinational businesses and the entire music community. These large music business made profits along with corporate underwriters thru stock sales.
Who is left holding the bag? MUSIC and Musicians who need the free music concept for exposure. I took it on myself to correct this situation. I’m offering a sherpa service thru music that has stood “the test of time” for free. This music is free-for-all in the public domain. I have also designed another site as a playlist to highlight music that I like that has limited value to the current music business structure, but I HOPE IT’S MY CONTRIBUTION TO MUSIC. I want to prevent these neglected works of art from being overlooked and lost. I can’t let that happen!! People who create music are under-rewarded, pawns of the crazy costs it takes just to be heard. They should be rewarded! I hope the free music list helps do this. With so little income for songwriters, we’re losing bright young minds to other industries, and I hope sites like these become important enough to be a new way to help music.
These treasured works by the honored poet Robert Frost become ours on January 1st, 2019. Long overdue, extensions of the copyright law will expire on this new year’s day. Many educators consider this very important to our culture. “The public domain has been frozen in time for 20 years, and we’re reaching the 20-year thaw,” says Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain. “We have shortchanged a generation,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. “The 20th century is largely missing from the internet.” Seems the Disney Company is blamed, for its lobbying for the passage of copyright protection laws for Mickey Mouse, as the reason for this cultural bankruptcy. Whoever is responsible, it’s finally going to change.
Fortunately, these poems and many more works become part of the public domain, available to all, by the correct application of copyright law (copyright expiration). So if you want to read these works of art and make a video of yourself, you can post it anywhere with no one to legally stop you. These beautiful poems were published in 1923 or before, making them 95 years old and available for public ownership.
“THE ROAD NOT TAKEN”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING”
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
“FIRE AND ICE”
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
“EVENING IN SUGAR ORCHARD”
From where I lingered in a lull in March
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
‘O fireman, give the fire another stoke,
And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.’
I thought a few might tangle, as they did,
Among bare maple boughs, and in the rare
Hill atmosphere not cease to glow,
And so be added to the moon up there.
The moon, though slight, was moon enough to show
On every tree a bucket with a lid,
And on black ground a bear-skin rug of snow.
The sparks made no attempt to be the moon.
They were content to figure in the trees
As Leo, Orion, and the Pleiades.
And that was what the boughs were full of soon.
