GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU
Music of the Medicine Shows 1926 - 1937
OLD HAT CD 1005

Before motion pictures... before radio... before television... the traveling medicine shows brought entertainment to America. Flamboyant pitch doctors roamed the land, hawking their tonics, elixirs, and miracle cures, and with them came a host of singers, dancers, comedians, banjo pickers, blues shouters, jug blowers, string ticklers, and minstrel men. The shows died out by mid-20th century, but not before a handful of seasoned veterans left their musical legacy on phonograph records. Here are 48 classic performances by such colorful names as Pink Anderson, Daddy Stovepipe, Shorty Godwin, Gid Tanner, Banjo Joe, the Three Tobacco Tags, and many more—well over two hours of this extraordinary music. A 72-page color booklet details the fascinating history of the medicine shows with a profusion of rare photographs, artifacts, illustrations, full discography, and song descriptions. Three years in the making, the new release from Old Hat Records is a groundbreaking survey of music from the American medicine show, that peculiar form of theater that merged entertainment with merchandising. Good For What Ails You is a two-CD set that delivers a generous mix of 48 songs, many available nowhere else, first recorded nearly 80 years ago and now remastered with digital clarity.

Good For What Ails You was nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Album Notes and Best Histornical Album.

“Like Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, these 48 tracks provide a fine introduction to what Greil Marcus called ‘the old, weird America.’ If nothing else, such a cornucopia of delights will cure the modern day blues.”   –Casper Llewellyn Smith, Guardian Unlimited,
July 16, 2006

“Factor in assorted skillet lickers, jug stompers, fruit jar drinkers, ramblers, crackers, tarheels and tobacco tags, and you have a buried history of vernacular music, therapeutic culture and politics second to none. Recommended; or rather, prescribed.”   –Brian Morton, The Wire, November 2005

“When you go out on tour and play with different bands every day, or you play in bars all the time, your tastes start to become very selective... What I’m listening to most of the time at present is an album called Good For What Ails You, which is an album of songs that people used to listen to at medicine shows all over the States. It’s quite an interesting album and I think that people would be well advised to pick it up.”   –Jack White, White Stripes, December 2005

SONG LIST AND SOUND SAMPLES
DISK ONE
1. THE SPASM Daddy Stovepipe & Mississippi Sarah	LISTEN	LISTEN
2. TANNER'S BOARDING HOUSE Gid Tanner & Riley Pucket	LISTEN	LISTEN
3. DON'T THINK I'M SANTA CLAUS Lil McClintock	LISTEN	LISTEN
4. HOKUM BLUES Dallas String Band with Coley Jones	LISTEN	LISTEN
5. JIMBO JAMBO LAND Shorty Godwin	LISTEN	LISTEN
6. GONNA SWING ON THE GOLDEN GATE Fiddlin’ John Carson & His Virginia Reelers	LISTEN	LISTEN
7. PAPA’S ’BOUT TO GET MAD Pink Anderson & Simmie Dooley	LISTEN	LISTEN
8. THE MAN WHO WROTE HOME SWEET HOME NEVER WAS A MARRIED MAN      Charlie Parker & Mack Woolbright	LISTEN	LISTEN
9. BYE, BYE, POLICEMAN Jim Jackson	LISTEN	LISTEN
10. THE BALD-HEADED END OF A BROOM Walter Smith	LISTEN	LISTEN
11. BOW WOW BLUES Allen Brothers	LISTEN	LISTEN
12. BEANS Beans Hambone & El Morrow	LISTEN	LISTEN
13. A CHICKEN CAN WALTZ THE GRAVY AROUND Stovepipe # 1 and David Crockett	LISTEN	LISTEN
14. TELL IT TO ME Grant Brothers & Their Music	LISTEN	LISTEN
15. AIN’T NO USE WORKING SO HARD Carolina Tar Heels	LISTEN	LISTEN
16. MAMA KEEP YOUR YES MA’AM CLEAN Walter Cole	LISTEN	LISTEN
17. C-H-I-C-K-E-N SPELLS CHICKEN Kirk McGee & Blythe Poteet	LISTEN	LISTEN
18. MY MONEY NEVER RUNS OUT Banjo Joe	LISTEN	LISTEN
19. RAILROADIN’ SOME Henry Thomas “Ragtime Texas”	LISTEN	LISTEN
20. TRAVELING MAN Prince Albert Hunt’s Texas Ramblers	LISTEN	LISTEN
21. G. BURNS IS GONNA RISE AGAIN Johnson-Nelson-Porkchop	LISTEN	LISTEN
22. BABY ALL NIGHT LONG Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers	LISTEN	LISTEN
23. BORN IN HARD LUCK Chris Bouchillon	LISTEN	LISTEN
24. HE’S IN THE JAILHOUSE NOW Memphis Sheiks	LISTEN	LISTEN
DISK TWO
1. GONNA TIP OUT TONIGHT Pink Anderson & Simmie Dooley	LISTEN	LISTEN
2. CHEVROLET CAR Sam McGee	LISTEN	LISTEN
3. IT AIN’T GONNA RAIN NO MO’ Gid Tanner & His Skillet-Lickers	LISTEN	LISTEN
4. BRING IT WITH YOU WHEN YOU COME Cannon’s Jug Stompers	LISTEN	LISTEN
5. ATLANTA STRUT Blind Sammie	LISTEN	LISTEN
6. GO ALONG MULE Uncle Dave Macon & His Fruit Jar Drinkers	LISTEN	LISTEN
7. CASEY BILL Earl McDonald’s Original Louisville Jug Band	LISTEN	LISTEN
8. I GOT MINE Frank Stokes	LISTEN	LISTEN
9. HANNAH Chris Bouchillon	LISTEN	LISTEN
10. ADAM & EVE IN THE GARDEN Bogus Ben Covington	LISTEN	LISTEN
11. MYSTERIOUS COON Alec Johnson & His Band	LISTEN	LISTEN
12. HER NAME WAS HULA LOU Carolina Tar Heels	LISTEN	LISTEN
13. RENO BLUES Three Tobacco Tags	LISTEN	LISTEN
14. SCOODLE UM SKOO Papa Charlie Jackson	LISTEN	LISTEN
15. STACKALEE Frank Hutchison	LISTEN	LISTEN
16. THE CAT’S GOT THE MEASLES, THE DOG’S GOT THE WHOOPING COUGH Walter Smith	LISTEN	LISTEN
17. SHOUT YOU CATS Hezekiah Jenkins	LISTEN	LISTEN
18. NOBODY’S BUSINESS IF I DO Tommie Bradley	LISTEN	LISTEN
19. SWEET SIXTEEN Charlie Poole & The North Carolina Ramblers	LISTEN	LISTEN
20. TICKLISH REUBEN Charlie Parker & Mack Woolbright	LISTEN	LISTEN
21. I HEARD THE VOICE OF A PORK CHOP Jim Jackson	LISTEN	LISTEN
22. SHINE Dallas String Band with Coley Jones	LISTEN	LISTEN
23. THE GYPSY Emmett Miller & His Georgia Crackers	LISTEN	LISTEN
24. KISS ME CINDY J.E. Mainer’s Mountaineers	LISTEN	LISTEN