Hurrah to this freshly minted single from our friend Joseph Decosimo! Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy this delicacy with all your heart. In Joseph’s words:

“During the summer of 2020, I was hiking along the laurel bluffs above the Eno River, just north of Durham. I had been obsessing over Dee Hicks’ singing of this old English hunting ballad. Dee’s voice was delightfully grounded and gravelly yet capable of making some impressive melodic jumps. At some quieter moment during my walk, I stumbled upon a fox that was nesting in the ferns a few feet away and rousted it. I took it as a sign that I had to learn the song. 

My friend and mentor Bobby Fulcher, who recorded Dee’s singing, dates this piece to hunts in 1688 in Yorkshire and observes that “it has undergone great change, through oral transmission, though the hound, Rule, found in the earliest broadside version from the Roxburghe Ballads, is still part of the pack.” I added my dear Charlie into the pack, although it’s unlikely that his stubby corgi nubbins could have kept up with those foxhounds. After twelve wonderful years with Charlie, we had to say goodbye to him in August 2022, long after I had recorded the song. We miss him. As the song says, Charlie is my good old dog forevermore, I know. 

Related versions can be heard on a 1942 Alan Lomax recording of Will Starks from Clarksville, Mississippi and from Jimmie Tarlton of Columbus, Georgia.”

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