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Originally posted by Jim_VA

This week’s song is “The Baltimore Fire,” which was first recorded by Charlie Poole in 1929.  The song commemorates the February 7-8, 1904 fire that destroyed much of central Baltimore.  The song first appeared in a 1905 songbook (no author given), and almost certainly was inspired by an 1873 song about a fire in the city of Boston that occurred in 1872. 

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Homeless To-Night!, or, Boston in Ashes

https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=6461&pid=3

That's a great performance, Jim!  I'm reminded of other songs commemorating tragedies, like Ben Dewberry.  I watched a documentary (see video below)  about Charlie Poole and realized how little I knew about him, his significance in music history, and his own tragic life with an early death in his 30's from alcohol poisoning after a 13-week binge. I'm reminded of singers and composers like Hank Williams, who died young from a combination of drinking and substance abuse.  Luckily Johnny Cash came out of it and had a longer life.  Jimmy Rodgers may have sung about drinking, but it was the illness of tuberculosis (TB) that killed him early.

I'm also reminded of fires, which were common in the gold mining towns I live by.  They're scary and tragic, and these days many young people set their career in California toward being a fire fighter and even an electric lineman due to our many wildfire incidents. The church in Smartsville which I'm still helping to restore, had been rebuilt in 1871 after burning down.  The community church I attend also had burned down and was replaced by a building donated from the local air force base.  And even today, I'm weed whacking around a pile of branches from a fallen tree to make burning it safer, as I live in a high fire region.

I listened to Charlie Poole, who played it in the key of G, so my arrangement is in open G.  It's a simple song to play with chords -- I, IV and V.  The fiddle solo is very close to the sung melody on the chorus.

My former banjo teacher, Cutch Tuttle (of Churchville, VA), and his group at the time, Hound Dog Hill, recorded this tune/song on one of their albums (Cutch is a Charlie Pool fan), and I had completely forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder, Jim, and nicely played by you and by Janet. 

All three of the original New Lost City Ramblers, Mike, Tom, and John have separately told me that this was the most requested and most popular song in their performances in the late 1950s and 1960s. Since I came back to playing old time music in the late 1990s I was shocked that many people did not know or wish to play this song. Outside of a few folks in North Carolina, Charlie Poolie is no longer celebrated. Every now and then I do call this tune in old time jams, and it is so sad that people do not know this apart from old grey heards who put the old in old time music like me.

The issue is that I have never heard any other recording or version of it other than Poole's and those who sought to emulate Poole.

But thanks. We need more Charlie Poole and less wordless obscure fiddle tunes.

It will be interesting to see what the other banjo renditions of it. Poole's recording had all the lead done by fiddle while  Poole's roll style 3 finger accompaniment up and down the neck was pure rhythm.

It is above all a vocal song. I do try to play it 3 finger style. Poole was a 3 finger style banjoist.   He actually wanted the recording companies to record classic banjo pieces like those of Van Eps, Poole did record at least one classic banjo piece  .

Very much of Poole's recordings acredited as Hillbilly like this one are actually renditions of already written songs of the late 19th and early 20th century.                                                   

  There is no evidence he ever frailed. He was an adherent of what is now called the classic banjo approach but in is day properly called the guitar style. R 

    We need more Charlie Poole tunes and fewer wordless fiddle tunes.  Fiddlers already have Fiddle Hangout!

Part of this is the issue of style.  The song comes out of a sentimental song of disaster which was a much bigger part of life in the 19th century, because disasters were many.  Songs, poems, paintings, etc were much more given about death because death was much more popular in the late 19th century and early 20th century than it is today.  It was easier to participate in death and there were fewer obstacles.   In the Wide Wide World, a book that was a best seller in England and the US in the mid 19th century the teenaged heroine envies friends of her who have already died and gotten to go to the good place.

The struggle for this song has always not do do it making fun of the sentiments.  The fire seems to have had some memory.  In the 1980s when I came to visit Charm City a bit,  people I knew who were not old time music fans would point out different points mentioned in the song,

"Bold firemen did struggle with Devotion, but their efforts all proved in vain," might be something to put one my gravestone!

Can someone point to an solo or a band with at least one banjo lead version of this in either two finger or three finger. There are a couple fairly good bluegrass recordings of this tune.

Sitting here starting to put together a guitar-style banjo arrangement of the tune causes me to think about what the original style or setting for such a song would have been either in the time of Charlie Poole in the 20s, or at the time of the Boston fire, or indeed for "proper" rendition of such a song.

Since the 1960s, I have heard this song played in the kind of hardy, sometimes tongue in cheek, vigorous style that Charlie Poole Recorded it in.

Polole's recording seems too vigorous for a song designed to celebrate sorrow and induce piety and remind us that death is our fate and coming soon, so we better get ready. Such a song must retain a mournful and respectful pace.

We should step back from performing the tune the way a man who would soon drink himself to death and enjoy doing so did, without much fear of the Lord, and take the song as a warning to shun sin, drink, and banjo playing, and other express lanes to Perdition.

At the same time I realized that many banjoists were devoting themselves to sinful music arising out of sinful dancing
to ragtime and blues and other new Black musics combining these and other things. After completing an attempted angelic rendition of the Baltimore Fire song that was hard to listen to,

I lapsed into an attempt at what a fallen soul like Gus Cannon might have done with the piece mixing ragtime and blues influences,,
This is my first attempt in years to upload an mp3 to the hangout, so my sound settings seem to have produced something a bit more trebly than I like, but

The original lyrics about the Boston Fire included third verse (with alternate lyrics for the chorus) that is hopeful and upbeat about the town that would be quickly rebuilt following the fire: 

[Verse 3] But who saves a city in her panic / From the rule of the Fireking, so tyrannic, / But the brave hearted fireman and mechanic, / The best and the noblest in the land. / Far brighter than the soldier’s record gory / Are the names of those who live in song and story, / Who restore a city to her former glory, / And build her up, if possible, more grand.
[Chorus 2] For soon will no trace remain / Of all this sea of flame, / For Boston will rise again, remember! / Like Chicago from the ground, / And brave men will be found, / Who will rebuild a fairer town / Before the next November.

Fires were pretty regular destroyers of towns, villages, and little settlements when fires and fire fed engines were pretty much the main source of heat, energy, and light.

Tony, I like your:

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Originally posted by writerrad

"attempt at what a fallen soul like Gus Cannon might have done with the piece mixing ragtime and blues influences."
 

 Your creative interpretation of a renowned banjoist represents in my "teacher's mind" the highest achievement level in Bloom's Taxonomy (and is rarely done). 
 I get up to "Apply" when I listen to a tune/song and arrange it for banjo. You created something new that relates the original to a transformed expression of the theme. Could you sing the original lyrics with your playing?
 

sure will try