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Traditional prison work song of the Southern United States

"Ain't No More Cane on This Brazos" is a traditional prison work song of the Southern United States. The title refers to work assigned to prisoners sentenced to hard labor in Texas. The labor involved cutting sugar cane along the banks of the Brazos River, where many of the state's prison farms were located in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Bob dylan im not there basement tapes The Basement Tapes is a collection of over songs recorded by Bob Dylan and his then-backing group, the Band , in the summer of in West Saugerties , New York , just outside Woodstock. Recording sessions began in a den known as "The Red Room" in Dylan's home, before moving to an improvised recording studio in the basement of a house known as Big Pink , where Rick Danko , Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson lived. Fourteen basement tape songs appeared in on a demo privately circulated by Dylan's publishing company, Dwarf Music. The other eight tracks were recordings by the Band from different times. Below is an alphabetical list of songs from these recording sessions.

It has been recorded by Alan Lomax on his recording Texas Folk Songs Sung by Alan Lomax as "Ain't No More Cane on This Brazis", Odetta, Lonnie Donegan, the Limeliters on their album 14 14K Folksongs (), Son Volt on the album A Retrospective: , and The Band on the album Across the Great Divide. Bob Dylan also performed the song live in the early s^[1] and his version is on multiple bootleg recordings taken from The Gaslight Cafe.

An extensive set of lyrics to the song, as sung by inmates of Central State Farm near Houston, Texas, appears in folklorist John Lomax's book American Ballads and Folk Songs, originally published in Lomax collected another version of the song in a recording of a performance by Ernest Williams and James (Iron Head) Baker; the recording appears on the Document Records album Field Recordings, Vol.

6: Texas ().

The song is sometimes attributed to Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly), but a recording of him singing the song is obscure or non-existent.

See full list on en.wikipedia.org

The Bootleg Series Vol. It is the ninth installment of the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, available as a six-disc complete set, and as a separate set of highlights — in a two-disc format common to the rest of the series — entitled The Basement Tapes Raw. Revered for decades as the "holy grail" for music collectors and Dylan fans, [ 1 ] [ 2 ] the recordings have been notoriously bootlegged by collectors in various forms throughout the years, some of which were included on what is arguably the first rock bootleg album ever, Great White Wonder , released in July Of these tracks 23 are alternate takes, making distinct songs in the set, of which some are heard in two or three different takes. The Basement Tapes Complete was universally acclaimed upon release by critics and fans alike, and went on to win Best Historical Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards.

A song titled "Ain't No More Cane on this Brazos" does not appear in the extensive discography of Leadbelly recordings contained in Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell's book The Life and Legend of Leadbelly. Alan Lomax suggests, in the notes for his recording, another source from the Texas prison community.

Possibly the song became associated with Leadbelly through his various recordings of another Texas prison song titled "Go Down, Ol' Hannah" which shares some verses with "Ain't No More Cane on this Brazos".

In , Band of Heathens with their distinctive arrangement included it on their Live at Momo's album. In Lyle Lovett released two versions of the tune on his album It's Not Big, It's Large.

On February 16, , Lovett and John Hiatt performed the song live at the Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston, New York, along with The Band's Garth Hudson. On February 14, , Lovett also performed this song with friend Robert Earl Keen at Rudder Auditorium on the campus of their Alma mater, Texas A&M University.^{[citation needed]}

"Ain't No More Cane" is featured in the film Festival Express, where Rick Danko, Janis Joplin, John "Marmaduke" Dawson, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and various other musicians drunkenly sing it while on the train going to the next concert on the tour.

All American Boy It was released on June 26, , by Columbia Records. Two-thirds of the album's 24 tracks feature Dylan on lead vocals backed by the Band, and were recorded in , eight years before the album's release, in the lapse between the release of Blonde on Blonde and the subsequent recording and release of John Wesley Harding , during sessions that began at Dylan's house in Woodstock , New York , then moved to the basement of Big Pink. While most of these had appeared on bootleg albums , The Basement Tapes marked their first official release. The remaining eight songs, all previously unavailable, feature the Band without Dylan and were recorded between and During his — world tour, Dylan was backed by the Hawks, a five-member rock group who would later become famous as the Band.

The song, as "No More Cane on the Brazos", was also covered by the singer Ian Gillan of Deep Purple fame for his solo-album Naked Thunder. The Chad Mitchell Trio recorded the song on their album Singin' our Mind. Other covers include The Black Crowes. Chris Smither also covered "No More Cane on the Brazos" on his CD "Happier Blue".

Bill Staines recorded the song on his album Miles. It was also covered by Lonnie Donnegan in and by Canadian band Crowbar on Larger than Life (And Live'r than You've Ever Been) (, Daffodil 2-SBA) (recorded in concert at Massey Hall, Toronto, Ontario, Canada).

Aint No More Cane It is indeed, for me, the very start of Dylan as the writer we have known across the years, although of course I do know that he wrote other songs before that. My earlier attempt at putting up a version of this song was ultimately removed, so here are two. This song is part of a huge outpouring of songs from Dylan in the first half of , which were by and large recorded with the Band. It is a most extraordinary mixture of pieces and shows Dylan at his most creative, not just for each individual song, but for the incredible variation in all the songs. And in the midst of it all, we have a song he seemingly threw away.

A version of this song is also recorded by The Wood Brothers on their live album Live Vol.2 Nail & Tooth. The song's lyric "Captain don't you do me like you done poor old Shine" was the inspiration for Poor Old Shine, the previous band name for the band Parsonsfield. The song has also been covered by the band The Magpie Salute, consisting of former Black Crowes members Rich Robinson, Marc Ford, and Sven Pipien.

It can be found on their mostly live debut album, "The Magpie Salute".

Lyrics

The lyrics to The Band's version, which are often attributed to Leadbelly, are as follows:^[2]

Ain't no more cane on the Brazos

It's all been ground down to molasses

You shoulda been on the river in

They were driving the women just like they drove the men.

Go down Old Hannah, don'cha rise no more

Don't you rise up til Judgement Day's for sure

Ain't no more cane on the Brazos

It's all been ground down to molasses

Captain don't you do me like you done poor old Shine

Well ya drove that bully til he went stone blind

Wake up on a lifetime, hold up your own head

Well you may get a pardon and then you might drop dead

Ain't no more cane on the Brazos

It's all been ground down to molasses.

A version The Band performed with Bob Dylan on the Basement Tapes includes the following as a second verse:

Shoulda been on the river in nineteen and four

They were finding the dead bodies in every single door.

References

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