Cisco Houston Web Site

LPs

The Folk Box

Elektra (EKL 9001)

1964

Folk Box LP

A 48 page booklet with complete lyrics and a lengthy (and exceedingly pompous) essay by Robert Shelton was included. That essay is available Here. Just one Cisco performance.

Side 1: Songs Of The Old World And Migration To The New

Side 2: Settling, Exploring And Growing In The New World

Side 3: Work Songs

Side 4: Many Worshippers, One God

Side 5: Country Music - From Ballads To Bluegrass

Side 6: Nothing But The Blues

Side 7: Of War, Love And Hope

Side 8: Broadsides, Topical Songs, Protest Songs

Track Listing:

  1. Cynthia Gooding: Greensleeves
  2. Ian Campbell Folk Group: Down In The Coal Mine
  3. Ewan MacColl: Geordie
  4. Irish Ramblers: Whiskey In The Jar
  5. Susan Reed: Irish Famine Song
  6. Ed McCurdy: Gypsy Laddie
  7. Jean Redpath: Tae The Weavers
  8. African Traveling Song
  9. Navajo Night Chant
  10. Gene Bluestein: Skada At America
  11. New Lost City Ramblers: When First Unto This Country
  12. Susan Reed: Springfield Mountain
  13. Ed McCurdy: Good Old Colony Times
  14. Oscar Brand: Jefferson And Liberty
  15. Pete Seeger: Darling Cory
  16. Jack Elliott: Jesse James
  17. Leadbelly: Rock Island Line
  18. Woody Guthrie: Oregon Trail
  19. Erik Darling: Swannanda Tunnel
  20. Ed McCurdy: Kentucky Moonshine
  21. Alabama School Children: Green Green Rocky Road
  22. Leadbelly: Pick A Bale Of Cotton
  23. Seafarers Chorus: Haul On The Bowline
  24. Pete Seeger: Paddy Works On The Railway
  25. Harry Jackson: I Ride An Old Paint
  26. Cisco Houston: Zebra Dun
  27. Horace Sprott: Field Holler
  28. Koerner, Ray & Glover: Linin' Track
  29. Willer Turner: Now Your Man Done Gone
  30. Josh White: Timber
  31. Negro Prisoners: Grizzly Bear
  32. Marilyn Child & Glenn Yarbrough: Mary Had A Baby
  33. Josh White: Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin Bed
  34. Blind Willie Johnson: Dark Was The Night
  35. Judy Collins: Twelve Gates To The City
  36. Theodore Bikel: A Zemer
  37. Glenn Yarbrough: Wayfaring Stranger
  38. Ed McCurdy: Simple Gifts
  39. Leadbelly: Meetin' At The Building
  40. Bob Gibson: You Can Tell the World
  41. Christian Tabernacle Church: Down By The Riverside
  42. Willy Clancy: Sligo Reel/Mountain Road
  43. Eric Weissberg: Old Joe Clark
  44. Clarence Ashley: Coo Coo Bird
  45. Tom Paley: Shady Grove
  46. Eric Weissberg & Marshall Brickman: Flop-Eared Mule
  47. Jean Ritchie: Nottamun Town
  48. Doc Watson and others: Amazing Grace
  49. Doc Watson: Cripple Creek
  50. The Dillards: Pretty Polly
  51. George Pegram & Walter Parham: Yellow Rose Of Texas
  52. Dián And The Greenbriar Boys: Green Corn
  53. The Dillards: Old Man At The Mill
  54. Sonny Terry: Lost John
  55. Big Bill Broonzy: I Wonder When I'll Get To Be Called a Man
  56. Leadbelly: Black Snake Moan
  57. Blind Lemon Jefferson: See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
  58. Hally Wood: House Of The Rising Sun
  59. Mark Spoelstra: France Blues
  60. New Lost City Ramblers: Carter Blues
  61. Dave Ray: Slappin' On My Black Cat Bone
  62. Dave Van Ronk: Don't Leave Me Here
  63. Josh White: Southern Exposure
  64. Ed McCurdy: John Brown's Body
  65. Frank Warner: Virginia's Bloody Soil
  66. Theodore Bikel: Two Brothers
  67. Judy Collins: Masters of War
  68. Theodore Bikel: Blow The Candles Out
  69. Jean Redpath: Love Is Teasin'
  70. Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson: Sally Ann
  71. Jean Ritchie: Little Devils
  72. Limeliters: The Hammer Song
  73. Woody Guthrie: This Land Is Your Land
  74. Pete Seeger, Almanac Singer With Audience: Which Side Are You On?
  75. New Lost City Ramblers: No Depression In Heaven
  76. Woody Guthrie: Talking Dust Bowl
  77. Big Bill Broonzy: Black Brown And White
  78. Oscar Brand: Talking Atomic Blues
  79. Hamilton Camp: Girl From The North Country
  80. Judy Collins: The Dove
  81. Tom Paxton: High Sheriff Of Hazard
  82. Phil Ochs: The Thresher
  83. Pete Seeger: We Shall Overcome

LP Notes:

The note attached to Cisco's performance:

Another side of cowboy life is revealed here by the late Cisco Houston, longtime traveling companion of Woody Guthrie. This is a delightful ballad about a practical joke at the expense of a newcomer to the cattle country, but, as the story will reveal, the greenhorn is not to be outsmarted. Folklorists have differed about the origins of this song. John Lomax ascribed it to a Negro camp cook on the Pecos River, but Kenneth S. Goldstein believes it is of white cowboy authorship

Review:

Jim Clark

How could one paragraph be so dumb? A great song, a riotous performance, and only the 60s self-righteous, world-saving, eager-to-argue nitwits interested more in "lifting the Negro" than discussing music would care who wrote the darn thing. Lots of fine performances on this set, with that dated and humorously annoying early 60s earnestness pervading. And these notes add nothing to our understanding of Cisco either. He has no self, but is identified as a dead guy who gets validity by being associated with Woody.

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