Date:         Wed, 9 Aug 2006 12:32:45 -0400
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From:         Thomas Stern <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Josh White   Langston Hughes   Folksay records label   Folksong
              and folksingers  Stinson records
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Below I've transcribed the liner notes from the 10" LP  JOSH WHITE  
Folksay Records FLP-15.
"Josh White sings Easy" by Langston Hughes.
More fuel for the folksinger/folksong controversy, from the literary 
viewpoint......

Some questions:
1.Is Langston Hughes' liner note also on the STINSON issue of this Josh 
White album?
  If Not, what is on the Stinson lp?
2.Elijah Wald notes the following JW-LH connection, what others?

> Josh also acted in a BBC radio play about black soldiers, The Man Who 
> Went to War, written by Langston Hughes, and one of his most popular 
> songs of this period was a war-and-integration number from Hughes' 
> pen, "Freedom Road." This was not a strict blues, but both Hughes and 
> Josh worked to make it fit his style:

 3.Can someone provide information about the FOLKSAY record label 
(appear to be
same as Stinson 10" lp's.  So far I've only seen LOW catalog numbers). 
4.Are the Folksay and Stinson issues RIVAL issues of this material 
(anyone remember
the situation during the 60's blues rediscoveries era when the Piedmont 
albums were issued on
different labels by the feuding principals in that enterprise), OR 
simply a label change
at some point in time?  Why?
5.Can someone provide accurate dates when Stinson started releasing 
their albums on 12"lp's,
and when they moved from New York City to California?

Thanks!
Best wishes, Thomas.

Folksay Records FLP #15  Josh White
JOSH WHITE SINGS EASY
You could call Josh White the Minstrel of the Blues, except that he is 
more than a Minstrel of the Blues. The Blues are Negro music, but. 
although he is a Negro, Josh is a fine folk-singer of anybody's songs - 
southern Negro or southern white, plantation work-songs or modern union 
songs, English or Irish ballads - any songs that come from the heart of 
the people.
When Josh was a little boy, he used to lead the famous Blind Lemmon 
Jefferson around, and he probably passed the tin cup. Blind Lemmon was a 
singer of Blues and Moans and Shouts. Blind Lemmon was great at those 
lonely songs that one man or one woman sings alone. Perhaps it was from 
Blind Lemmon that Josh absorbed the common loneliness of the folk song 
that binds one heart to all others-and all others to the one who sings 
the song. For Josh has a way of taking a song like Hard Times Blues and 
making folks who have never even had a hard time feel as though they had 
experienced poverty.
The guitar that Josh White plays is as eloquent, as simple and direct as 
are his songs themselves. His guitar keeps a heart-beat rhythm that 
makes you feel his songs in your heart. His guitar has in it at one and 
the same time, sadness and gaiety, despair and faith. Sometimes his 
guitar laughs behind a sad song. Sometimes it cries behind a happy song. 
Sometimes it makes a Chaplinesque comment on One Meat Ball. Josh White 
and His Guitar used to be billed together. They are one and inseparable.
Josh White sings with such ease that you never feel like he is trying. 
That is the secret of true folk-singing-for the folk-song never tries to 
get itself sung. If it just doesn't ease itself into your soul and then 
out of your mouth spontaneously, to stay singing around your head 
forever, then it isn't a folk-song. If it doesn't sing easy and wear 
like an old shoe, it isn't a folk-song. And if the singer tries too hard 
and gets nowhere with such a song, that singer isn't a folk-singer.
The popular song hits sort of go in one ear, ring around in your head 
for a bit, then out the other ear. But folk songs like Water Boy, or 
Lord Randall, or any good old Blues, sort of soak into your being and 
remain there with no effort. The great folk-singers give them off 
again-with no effort, either. From Blind Lemmon to Burl Ives, from 
Bessie Smith to Aunt Molly Jackson there runs a wave of singing easy. 
Josh White also sings easy.
By LANGSTON HUGHES