Songs for our initial Pandora radio playlist

Tomorrow in class we'll go over how to set up an account on Pandora and create "radio stations" based on a set of seed music. For our first such radio station, I would like everyone to create a station containing the following songs:

• "Got my mojo working" by Muddy Waters
• "Death letter blues" by Son House
• "Lord, I just can't keep from crying" by Blind Willie Johnson
  
• "Wreck of the Old 97" by Pink Anderson
• "Death cell blues" by Blind Willie McTell
• "Sitting on top of the world" by Mississippi Shieks
• "My Oklahoma blowed away" by Pete Seeger
• "Stand by me" by Sister Matthews
• "Jesus is a mighty good leader" by Skip James
• "Feather bed" by Memphis Jug Band
• "Worried man blues" by The Original Carter Family
• "Midnight special" by Leadbelly
• "Parchman Farm blues" by Bukka White
• "Jump the boogie" by Boozoo Chavis
• "Wabash cannonball" by Roy Acuff
• "A spoonful blues" by Charlie Patton
• "This land is your land" by Woody Guthrie
• "Oh happy day" by The Edwin Hawkins Singers
• "Move on up a little higher" by Mahalia Jackson
• "Cross road blues" by Robert Johnson
• "Cold, cold heart" by Hank Williams
• "Uncle Pen" by Bill Monroe
• "Wildwood flower" by The Carter Family
• "Waiting for a train" by Jimmie Rodgers
  

You should then listen to this station. I don't know for sure what will come up. If you keep listening, you'll get eventually get quite a few of these to come up, but there are no guarantees as to what will play and when. I would encourage at least two kinds of listening. First, do some background listening just to run through a lot of different songs and get a sense of the breadth and range of these many types of music. Second, do some more detailed listening where you really paying attention to all the songs, taking some notes, marking what you like, and writing some remarks on your blog about things that particular struck you (good, bad, confusing, amazing). And bring some of these things up in class!

I'm hopeful that this use of Pandora will be both cool and convenient. You'll have to let me know how it works for you. Thanks!

It would be good to post about Blanco on your blog

I would encourage everyone to post some sort of (thoughtful) response on their blog to Blanco's presentation last night.

Note that I didn't say "I require everyone...". You are adults, and ultimately you have to make your own decisions about how to get the most of your life here at UMM. I can make suggestions, but I can't (and won't and shouldn't) follow you around making sure you do everything I suggest. I think you ought to attend events, take notes, reflect and discuss things with the people around you, and post to your blog as part of a larger discussion. What you do, however, is ultimately up to you :-).