A renaissance of jug band music evolved in the early 1960’s and many young musicians cut their chops on classic old-time tunes associated with the jug bands of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions were a jug band that played around the south San Francisco bay area during that time. They were rag-tag group that spelled "McCree" in a variety of ways on purpose. One of their 1964 performances at The Top of the Tangent, a coffee house on the top floor of a pizzeria in Palo Alto was recorded for broadcast over Stanford University radio station KZSU-FM. A tape of that recording was discovered in 1997 in the attic of the mom of one of the student recording engineers. An album of 17 songs and an interview with the band was released in 1999. It was released on Grateful Dead Records because three members of Mother McCree’s eventually picked up electric instruments and morphed into a blues band called The Warlocks and then became The Grateful Dead.
On American Pastimes today we’ll feature a set of songs performed by Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions.
Here's the link to the archived broadcast: http://kzfr.org/admin/broadcasts/edit/6383
