Looking for some simple bluegrass...

I get the urge to sing bluegrass music at work sometimes (especially if I find myself sweeping the stairs in a skirt, lol... I'm a dork), so I was getting sick of singing the same four songs off the Cold Mountain and O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtracks: "I'll Fly Away," "As A Songbird That Has Fallen," "Lady Margaret," and "The Scarlet Tide."
What are some other simple songs I could sing- like stuff the pioneer ladies sang to their babies and to entertain guests.
Strange and specific request, but I like this kind of old-fashioned music a lot.

 

sounds like you may dig 'Revival' by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings....also maybe pick up some recordings from The Carter Family

 

Wasn't going to post here anymore but ya got my interest Flower.

Lot's of good ol'/ new music out there:

Nancy Griffith (Kate Wolf song)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R1KLlQvY-k

Tom Russel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5pbQWhoncY

Old Crow Medicine Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug7IgB8MfWE

Guy Clark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQGjkBuMGAU&feature=related

Kate Wolf (RIP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f3Crgu-Jec

Peter Rowan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XotQUK7tgj8

Arlo (over orchestrated)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDAl7lGGtSo

Maring, Bowling and Davis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsWJu2bKUhE

James Keelaghan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZTvgdtxNzI

Welch and Rawlings (traditional song)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nugXkgd_-84

On and on and on, you get the idea?

Or how bout some...

John Prine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBEiXv73V50

Follow the related links and lot's of ol' timey music around both old and new.

Of course there's even....

Bruce (he's really a folky in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and youl'd be amazed how fun this one is in sing-a-long!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBEiXv73V50

Dylan, Neil Young (and the rest), Browne and Cockburne when acoustic. This would be a much better place if more people sang.

 

Woops, I just remembered you were looking for blue grass. Sorry, for getting carried away and except for OCMS, not much banjo and three chord in that batch...lemme get back to you.

And the Bruce link should have been:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQpyxh3xpv8

 

Old Time... Is that what it's called? Would make sense.
I should look that up on Last.fm and see what I find...

 

At www.live365.com there are several bluegrass stations you can link to. Just enter "bluegrass" in their search.

 

I posted about this about a year ago, so I guess it might bear repeating.

Actually what most people call bluegrass today is what "country" was 40, 50, or 60 years ago. And along about that time, around the early 1940's, a new band started becoming very popular which had a huge impact on country music. As I heard one DJ on Sirius radio (bluegrass channel 65) say recently, "If there was no Bill Monroe, there'd be no bluegrass." That is true, because there was no such thing as bluegrass music before Bill Monroe came along with his band, the Blue Grass Boys, so named for the lush blue-blossomed grass of his home state of Kentucky, and that name was later given to his distinctive style. A lot of traditional Southern Appalachian mountain music that predates Bill Monroe is sometimes incorrectly referred to as bluegrass. But the term bluegrass somehow kind of stuck on Bill's special way of playing and singing the old country music, and nowadays almost anything that has sort of an old country sound like almost everyone played in the 40's and 50's seems to come under the broad category of bluegrass.

Traditional mountain music that was in existence prior to Bill Monroe coming on the scene is not "bluegrass." It is "old-time" or "traditional." I think many old-time/traditional musicians in the Asheville, NC area (mecca for both old-time and bluegrass music) would cringe at being called "bluegrass" musicians.

Bluegrass and country may have had the same roots, which generally was old-time mountain music, but old-time music is as different from bluegrass as bluegrass is different from contemporary country.

One good place to hear old-time music on the Internet is here:
http://www.sugarinthegourd.com/

 

WUNC, public radio out of Chappel Hill, NC produces a program called Back Porch Music that might interest you....

But you wanted specific songs...How about "Red River Valley"? Or "Goodnight, Irene"?

 

Get a bluegrass station going on pandora.com

If you want recommendations, get ahold of Farmout. He's like God of all things bluegrass.

 

Thanks for that link, I'll check that out. Another link for great old-time music on regular radio or the Internet - though it's only on Sundays from 3-6 pm (Eastern) - is This Old Porch on WNCW located in Spindale, NC.
http://www.wncw.org/ThisOldPorch.html

 

Farmout? Isn't that just the name of a new Rednex album? If that's what you're referring to, I don't think that type of music even comes close to what the original poster was looking for.

 

Ricky Skaggs may be a good place for finding some more traditional style bluegrass music.. he started out bluegrass. went country.. and like the smart man he is.. went back to his roots and writes bluegrass again.. he gets all his influence from traditional bluegrass legends like flatts & scruggs and obviously from Bill Monroe(both mando players)..

ps: if you haven't heard the best bluegrass album The Three Pickers by Scuggs, Watson & Skaggs.. you definitely need to invest in it.. best bluegrass album EVER.. hands down

 

Again, I might be wrong, but I don't think FireflyInTheDark is talking about bluegrass music. Sounds like she is talking about old-time/traditional - and that's not really "bluegrass." I think there may be a lot of confusion among some folks about the difference, and some assuming there's no difference, but there is. If you do an an Internet search for "old-time music," you'll find lots of references and sources as to what it means. Here's one:
http://mikeseeger.info/html/oldtime.html

 

I should have mentioned this before. A really good source for some of this old music is here:
http://www.ivycreek.com/index.html

 

I like this source for plain old simple bluegrass type folk
http://www.lyon.edu/wolfcollection/songs/songs.html

 

FireflyInTheDark, if you are interested in authentic old ballads and folksongs that are easy to learn and fun to sing, get a CD or tape of Bill Morris or Bobby McMillon (I've seen Bobby many times in concert - he is great!).

Their music can be found at the website I mentioned above, http://www.ivycreek.com/index.html

You can hear some samples of their music here:

Bill Morris:
http://www.ivycreek.com/onlinestore_products.html?prod=2033&cat=833

Bobby McMillon:
http://www.ivycreek.com/onlinestore_products.html?prod=178228&cat=833

There are lots of other great old-time singers and musicians whose CDs are for sale on that site as well, but these are just two examples of the authentic stuff and two of my favorite singers.