Going up to Hamburg - Interstate Express (official video)

Описание: The title track of our new record, Going Up To Hamburg, filmed in Dresden, DE by Matthias Barthel and Nils Brabandt.

We learned this old time American fiddle tune from the playing of Mississippi fiddler John Hatcher, and paired it with another great Mississipi tune, Poor Little Mary, Sitting in the Corner, from Enos Canoy (though our version is a bit of a modern take on his amazing and strange - in the best way - solo fiddle version).



The album is available on bandcamp at:

https://interstateexpressband.bandcam...

Follow us on social media:

https://linktr.ee/interstateexpressband

Interstate Express is:

Craig Judelman - Fiddle
Joe Buirski - Banjo
Jack B. Latimer - Guitar

More info about the band at:

https://www.interstateexpressband.com


This music usually called Old Time music, as when the record companies were first recording it in the 1910's, it was the music the 'Old Timers' (older people) played and liked - so it reaches back to the 19th century and earlier. Old Time music is the composite of traditional styles of American folk music, with strong ties to English, Irish and Scottish music, as well as African and African American music, but also French, German, Italian, Native American and everyone else who played an instrument in that big and diverse land.

Our band is based in Berlin, Germany and so obviously a tune referencing Hamburg seemed a natural fit for us, but the Hamburg in the song is likely actually a small village ('unincorporated community') in southwestern Tennessee, on the Tennessee River, a bit east of Memphis. It's not so far from Hatcher's home town of Tishomingo, Mississippi which is a bit north of Simpson County Mississippi - hometown of Enos Canoy, the source of the second tune in our medley. Canoy was a amazing and unique fiddler, and one of the first to perform on Mississippi radio with his family band, the Canoy Wildcats.

The tune Poor Little Mary, Sitting in the corner may be a fiddle version of a children's game song, though its true origins are unknown. Canoy, reportedly learned the tune from his uncles Love Kennedy and Robert Runnels (also of Simpson County, Mississippi) so if it was originally not a fiddle tune, it seems he wasn't the one to set it on the fiddle. It was recorded through an invaluable joint project of the WPA (Works Progress Association, a depression era project to put people to work, often involving artists or infrastructure projects) and the Library of Congress. As noted above, our version is quite a bit 'straighter' than Canoy's recording and we highly recommend listening to his, and all the great old recordings if you enjoyed ours, which we sure hop you do!