Commercial Recordings After 1940
"Take This Hammer" was issued as on commercial 78-rpm single by Lead Belly in 1940 and again in 1942. In his performance on this record, Lead Belly added a "haah" at the end of each line, explaining in his spoken introduction, "Every time the men say 'haah', the hammer falls. The hammer rings, and we swing, and we sing." In saying "we", Lead Belly was undoubtedly referring to his many years an inmate of the notorious prison farm in Angola, Louisiana. Lead Belly's powerful version subsequently became a staple of the urban folk revival.
Meanwhile, the song continued to be popular among country singers. Merle Travis's 1946 recomposition, "Nine Pound Hammer is Too Heavy", an adaptation of the song to coal mining, had a great impact on folk and country singers.
Read more about this topic: Take This Hammer
Famous quotes containing the words commercial and/or recordings:
“There is every reason to rejoice with those self-styled prophets of commercial disaster, those harbingers of gloom,
Over the imminent lateness of the denouement that, advancing slowly, never arrives,
At the same time keeping the door open to a tongue-in-cheek attitude on the part of the perpetrators....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“All radio is dead. Which means that these tape recordings I’m making are for the sake of future history. If any.”
—Barré Lyndon (1896–1972)