"The 'Gus' referred to in the title of this labor-of-love recording is Gus Cannon, who, in the 1920s, led Cannon's Jug Stompers, one of America's premier jug bands ...

Led by John Sebastian ((born John Benson Sebastian on March 17, 1944 in Greenwich Village NY) of Lovin' Spoonful fame (and featuring the late Fritz Richmond on jug and washtub bass and country-blues guitarist Paul Rishell) the J-Band revive classic '20s jug band standards (Stealin') and toss in some worthy originals ... "

Before he got into rock 'n roll, John played in jug bands. On the first couple Lovin' Spoonful albums he included some of his jug band songs, which were some of my favorites: "Bald Headed Lena," "Fishin' Blues," and "Jug Band Music," which included the lines, “And the doctor said give him jug band music/It seems to make him feel just fine.”

The J-Band: Geoff Muldaur, John, Fritz Richmond, Annie Raines,
James Wormworth, Paul Rishell - missing: Jimmy Vivino

Well, with the able assistance of the J Band, John B. has returned to his first love, with great results. This is his best record in many a moon, featuring such great songs as "Stealin'," "My Passing Fantasy," and "Wild About My Lovin'"

I love it

http://lix.in/-282e75

Love

Posted by Joski at 5:15 PM | 4 comments  
Labels: John B Sebastian

There is a reason why Derroll Adams has been and still is someone very important in folk music, and I'm glad to see he is receiving recognition as such.

Maybe he would have enlarged his international popular reputation in Folk or Country music styles, had he returned to the United States in the seventies. But he did not. Maybe he had personal reasons but maybe he felt it more important, in a kind of spiritual way, that he stayed in Europe.

This is the point : living here in Antwerp, Derroll became a major personality in the process of creating the poetic and musical culture of the English-speaking continental Europeans.

I know, as I'm one of them, there are lots of people in Belgium, France, Netherlands, Germany, who think and speak English and make music and sing in English.

This is where Derroll's personality and work still are important: the way he used to sing songs in his very personal way, and his songs themselves, are now part of a tradition that's not exclusively American.

Here is “Along the way” a somewhat “rare” recording

http://lix.in/-2e48bd

Thank you Derroll

Posted by Joski at 4:58 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: Derroll Adams

"This song has a variety of titles, of which the most common is simply 'The Cuckoo'.

Several singers also use the longer name given here. The songs 'The Unconstant Lover', 'Old Smokey', and 'The Wagoner's Lad' are also thought to derive from 'The Cuckoo'. The parent number has yet to be definitively traced, but it dates at least from the eighteenth century and is probably considerably older.

According to Vance Randolph, a stanza about the cuckoo and its glad tidings appears in a song given in David Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (1776). A nursery form of the song can be dated 1796, while another form of the lyric song was published in Glasgow in 1802. Of course, the single verse about the cuckoo and its glad tidings appears in a number of songs, such as that printed in Belden's Missouri collection (p.476). That verse is the one constant in versions of the song.

The cuckoo is a lowly regarded bird that is used symbolically in many ways in western Europe. Because it lays eggs in the nests of other birds, it often stands for adultery. It is also considered a harbinger of summer in Britain, and perhaps both this seasonal and a sexual sense are evident in most versions.

The song is widely known in the American tradition as the Coo Coo Bird.

The coo-coo is the cuckoo, not the modern one which gave its name to mental disturbance, but the old one, the classical symbol of fickleness, false love, of infidelity. The word “cuckold” was derived from the female cockoo’s habit of depositing her eggs in the nest of smaller birds and leaving them there to be hatched by a bird of a totally different species. Another symbolic role of the cuckoo was that it was the herald of spring and was identified with the warmth and promise of that season.

Here are a few versions I collected :

Kelly Harrell - The Cuckoo She's A Fine Bird (original from 1926)

With a cuckoo clock in the background. Clawhammer banjo player from Virginia, born in 1889.

Clarence Ashley - Coo Coo Bird

Hobart Smith - The Coo Coo Bird

Doc & Merle Watson - Cuckoo

Jim Kweskin - The Cuckoo

Mike Seeger - Coo Coo Bird

The New Lost City Ramblers - Coo Coo Bird

Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Cuckoo

Bob Dylan – The cuckoo is a pretty bird (gaslight tapes)

Peter, Paul And Mary - The Cuckoo

Tom Rush - The Cuckoo

John Renbourn - The Cuckoo

Grace Griffith - The Cuckoo

Hem - The Cuckoo

Kristin Hersh - Cuckoo

The Everly Brothers - Cuckoo Bird

The Pentangle - The Cuckoo

Kaleidoscope - The cuckoo

The Be Good Tanyas - The Coo Coo Bird

Townes Van Zandt - Coo Coo

Rick Fielding - Cuckoo

Rory Gallagher - The Cuckoo

Eliza Carthy & Richard Thompson - The Coo Coo Bird

Taj Mahal - The Cuckoo

Telefunk & Willard Grant Conspirarcy

I learned this tune from the Tom Rush Record (a long time ago)

http://lix.in/-23965a

http://lix.in/-251cfb

Oh the cuckcoo
She's a pretty bird
I wish that she were mine
She don't ever drink water
She only drink wine

Posted by Joski at 1:46 PM | 3 comments  
Labels: Cuckoo, Study

Pete Seeger is the dean of 20th Century folksingers.

Born in 1919, he grew up in a family of musicians, his father was the eminent musicologist, Charles Seeger. He played with Woody Guthrie in the Almanac Singers, and in 1949 helped establish The Weavers. They were the first group from the folksong revival whose songs reached national prominence through record sales and radio. They were blacklisted during the McCarthy era because of their vocal left-wing activism, which dramaticaly reduced their appearences on the air, in live concerts and in record shops.

Beyond his numerous recordings, the ones he made for Moses Asch and Folkways Records (now Smithsonian Folkways) are remarkable because Pete was free to record whatever material he felt was important. As performer and activist for social justice, civil rights and environmental causes (among others), Pete Seeger continues to make occasional recordings, still plays an occasional concert, and always gets the audience singing along with him in multi-voiced harmony. He still fights hard for what he believes in..

Here are his famous “Frontier Ballads” from 1954

http://lix.in/-2828cb

Posted by Joski at 11:37 AM | 1 comments  
Labels: Pete Seeger

Posted by Joski at 11:25 AM | 0 comments  
Labels: Red Rivers

Dave Alvin is one of the good guys. His love for America's traditional music has been apparent since the 1980s and the Blasters, an affectionately remembered rockabilly outfit which always had a folk song or two in its repertoire.

Public Domain: Songs from the Wild Land sounds like the labour of love it undoubtedly is. It's a collection of (mostly) standards from the American song bag, some rocked-up -- most surprisingly and wonderfully, the ordinarily sombre "East Virginia Blues" (not really a blues, but Alvin almost turns it into one).

"Don't Let Your Deal Go Down," the signature song of Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, becomes a post-war Chicago blues in Alvin's hands.

Among the relatively rare obscurities is "Dark Eyes," probably learned from Molly O'Day's recording, a song of broken love as pretty as any you'll hear.

Alvin's mournful vocal is the perfect instrument for "Shenandoah." The somber tone of the opening track prevails through most of the selections, but there are a handful of uptempo songs, like "Maggie Campbell," "What Did the Deep Sea Say," "Walk Right In" and "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down."

More representative of the album, however, are tracks like "A Short Life of Trouble," "Engine 143" and "Murder of the Lawson Family." These are honest songs of sorrow and grief and (sometimes) even joy, but one is also left with a sense of hope.

As Alvin says in his liner notes, "A lot of what is good, and bad, about us is in these songs."

Even when listening to the bleakest of these songs, there is still a strand of optimism that runs through this album, a testament to the human spirit.

http://lix.in/-26a216

Enjoy

Posted by Joski at 11:16 AM | 0 comments  
Labels: Dave Alvin

Lucy Kaplansky (born 1960) is an American Folkie from New York City. Kaplansky also has a PhD in clinical Psychology from yeshiva University.
Kaplansky was originally from Chicago, and at the age of 18, decided not to go to college, and moved to New York City. She became involved in the city's folk music scene, particularly around Greenwich Village, where she played with, among others, Suzanne Vega and Shawn Colvin.

In 1983, she decided to become a psychologist, enrolling in Yeshiva University. She continued playing music while doing her PhD, and began to have some success as part of a duo with Colvin. However, when they began to attract record company interest, Kaplansky declined, choosing instead to set up a private practice and become a staff psychologist at a New York hospital. For several years, she concentrated largely on her work, and played little in the way of concerts. However, she still did some session work, such as singing backing vocals in the studio for Suzanne Vega.

By the early 1990s she found herself increasingly drawn back to music. Colvin, who by this time had experienced some commercial success, offered to produce an album for her. The result, The Tide, a mixture of her own songs and several covers, was released by Red House Records in 1994. At this time, she decided to give up her psychology practice, and return to music full-time. She released three more albums before her latest, The Red Thread, was released in February 2004.

In 1998 Kaplansky joined with Dar Williams and Richard Shindell to form the folk group “Cry Cry Cry”, which made an album and toured at length before going their separate ways.

Her Ten Year Night album in 1999 won rave reviews and boosted her popularity, leading to performances on CBS-TV. Her album, The Red Thread has a hauntingly beautiful song about her experience of being a New Yorker on 9-11. Ironically, in August 2001, she played a memorable concert outside the World Trade Center.

She is in high demand as a backing vocalist on the records of others, being a semi-regular collaborator with John Gorka and Nanci Griffith.

Her father was the noted mathematician Irving Kaplansky. Lucy Kaplansky sometimes performs songs composed by her father (who was also an accomplished pianist) on mathematics-related themes.



This is her latest record “Over the Hills”

This release contains a stunning range of material, from stories about family--those that have gone before and follow after, of lives lived and roads traveled--to a compelling collection of classic songs by other writers, performed with Lucy's distinctive interpretive sensibility. Over the Hills is Lucy's story and her reflection upon her times, connecting to universal themes of love, joy, loss and dreams for the future.

With two major losses in her life this past year--her father Irving Kaplansky and mentor Red House president Bob Feldman--Lucy (along with co-writer/husband Richard Litvin) was inspired to write title track "Over the Hills." Encompassing the themes of the album, it reflects upon the connections between generations and the journey we all make beyond the world of our parents. From the album's opening song "Manhattan Moon" about her joy in motherhood to "Today's the Day" about saying goodbye to her dying father, Lucy's new songs are utterly personal and deeply moving.

All her albums are outstanding and she is my favourite singer songwriter.

http://lix.in/-2e4331

Hi Lucy !

Posted by Joski at 11:12 AM | 1 comments  
Labels: Lucy Kaplanski

The Greenbriar Boys were a seminal northern folk and bluegrass music group who first got together in jam sessions in New York’s Washington Square Park.

Along with the New Lost City Ramblers, their urban traditional country sound inspired a generation of musicians and fans. Son of an Armenian poet, guitarist/vocalist John Herald, joined with classically trained banjo player Bob Yellin and mandolin player/folklorist, Ralph Rinzler.

In 1962, they released their first eponymous album on Vanguard. Three more albums followed: Ragged but Right! in 1964, Dian and the Greenbriar Boys in 1965, and Better Late Than Never in 1966 (with the additions of mandolinist/vocalist Frank Wakefield, who replaced Rinzler, and fiddler, Jim Buchanan).

The 1966 album included the original recorded version of Mike Nesmith 's "Different Drum", which was made into a hit song the following year by the Stone Poneys with Linda Ronstadt. By the last album, Rinzler had left to become director of the folklife area at the Smithsonian Institution which now bears his name.

The Greenbriar Boys disbanded in the late 60's, reuniting occasionally in later years. John Herald released albums with The John Herald Band and a solo album, in 2000, Roll On John, before committing suicide in 2005.

http://lix.in/-26a20c

http://lix.in/-29c056

Fill your ears

Posted by Joski at 11:04 AM | 3 comments  
Labels: Greenbriar Boys

In the North American cultural imagination there is no more compelling a source of symbol and metaphor than the railroad, as folk song traditions and popular music readily confirm. This occupational miscellany of previously unreleased Library of Congress recordings (22 tracks logged between 1936 and 1959) includes construction and craft songs, train calls, track-lining chants, instrumental imitations of railroad sounds, train-wreck legends, hobo and outlaw ballads, gospels steeped in train imagery, and folk appropriations of romantic popular songs with railroad themes.

The history and the mystery of the railroad ring out from this 22-track collection of American railroad songs and music from the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress. Recorded by 16 different collectors between 1936 and 1959, the collection includes songs about the construction of the railroad and railroading as craft, as well as songs that tap the symbolic significance of the train. Train calls, track-lining chants, stories of famous train wrecks and instrumental train imitations are joined by spirituals using train imagery and folk descendants of popular compositions about the railroad.

http://lix.in/-2394ca

Enjoy

Posted by Joski at 10:59 AM | 0 comments  
Labels: Ballads, Railroad Songs

Few performers can rightfully lay claim to "living legend" status, but for Etta Baker there is no doubt about it. Her father taught her to play as a child, and through Etta we can step back in time and listen to the roots of traditional Southern Appalachian music.

Etta first gained a widespread following among folk enthusiasts in the 50's as a result of her songs on the "Traditional Music of the Southern Appalachians," collection.

For this album see my friend the Irate Pirate ( I wish him well in Ireland) : http://grapewrath.blogspot.com/2008/04/mrs-etta-baker-family-and-friends.html

Her relaxed and simple style are certainly a reflection of her familiarity with and love of the music she plays. She could easily be called "Queen" of the Piedmont blues, because she has a grace and graciousness rarely seen. Between Doc Watson and Etta Baker, North Carolinians have an incredible living history of the music of our region. We should consider ourselves most fortunate to be able to experience firsthand the music of these great performers.

At the age of 91 artist Etta Baker reclaimed ownership of Railroad Bill. Taj Mahal has always made homage to Mrs. Etta Baker by performing her music. He explains, "That chord in Railroad Bill is a very ancient root chord; it strikes straight through me, every time I hear it”

Etta Baker has inspired generations of Blues Guitar players and Taj Mahal credits her as his main style inspiration. She is the premier female Piedmont blues guitar instrumentalist, plays the guitar everyday,and is constantly working on new arrangements. Etta maintains a beautiful yard and garden, and at the age of 91, is matriarch of 108 members in her immediate family. Taj Mahal has been a major recording artist since his debut album in 1967. For 35 years, he has been a tireless preacher of American roots music.

http://lix.in/-292880

Love

Posted by Joski at 4:16 PM | 0 comments  
Labels: Etta Baker, Taj Mahal

Etta Baker was born in North Carolina in 1913 and was influenced by the music of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Etta Baker is a virtuoso performer in a style heard infrequently these days--the finger-picked guitar tradition known as the Piedmont blues.

Using a two- and three-fingered technique similar to that of other North Carolina guitarists such as Elizabeth Cotten, Rev. Gary Davis, and Blind Boy Fuller, Etta creates music that is remarkable in its range and depth.

These recordings--her first since 1956--are masterworks from an exceptional artist.

Personnel: Etta Baker (vocals, guitar, banjo); Cora Phillips (guitar).

http://lix.in/-2aaeef

Enjoy

Posted by Joski at 4:14 PM | 0 comments  
Labels: Etta Baker

She was a master of the Piedmond blues style.

She was born Etta Lucille Reid in Caldwell County, North Caroline.

She played both the 6-string and 12-string acoustic guitar, as well as the five-string banjo.

Etta Baker played the Piedmont Blues for ninety years, starting at the age of three when she could not even hold the guitar properly. She was taught by her father, Boone Reid, who was also a long time player of the Piedmont Blues on several instruments.

Etta Baker was first recorded in the summer of 1956 when she and her father happened across folk singer Paul Clayton while visiting Cone Mansion in Blowing Rock, North Caroline, near their home in Morganton, NC. Baker's father asked Clayton to listen to his daughter playing her signature "One Dime Blues". Clayton was impressed arrived at the Baker house with his tape recorder the next day, recording several songs.

Over the years, Baker has shared her knowledge with many well known musical artists including Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal and Kenny Wayne Shepperd. Baker received different awards such as the Folk Heritage Award from the North Carolina Arts Council in 1989, the National Endowment for Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship in 1991 and the North Caroline Award in 2003..

Baker had nine children, one of whom was killed in the Vietnam War in 1967, the same year her husband died. She last lived in Morgantown, North Carolina, and died at the age of 93 in Fairfax, Virginia, while visiting a daughter who had suffered a stroke.

Here is a recording with her sister Cora Philips

This recording helps us glimpse the complex origins and development of both Appalachian string band and Piedmont blues music. Perhaps more important, it conveys how powerful these traditions are when carried on by master artists who are part of a deep family legacy of music making.

"A set of timeless beauty, spanning almost half a century, from a great lady of American vernacular music..."

"A handful of field recordings of Etta Baker's music, released in the 1960s, were enough to influence many aspiring traditional guitarists, from Bob Dylan to Taj Mahal."

http://lix.in/-2aaee5

Posted by Joski at 4:10 PM | 0 comments  
Labels: Etta Baker

Posted by Joski at 3:32 PM | 0 comments  
Labels: Stefan Grossman

In 1967 folk bluesman Grossman packed his guitar and left New York for Europe, where in the ensuing years he recorded these twenty-two songs. The onetime student of Reverend Gary Davis and Son House has mastered the techniques of those two and other heroes he knows from old shellac records, coalescing his ideas with borrowed ones in pleasant fretboard commentaries.

Grossman has spent so many years producing videos and how to books on acoustic guitar, it's hard to think of him as a guitarist himself, which is why albums like this are so valuable and reassuring.

Grossman can back up everything he says and believes musically, with an encyclopedic knowledge and feel for country-blues, rags, and fiddle tunes as demonstrated here. He runs through a gaggle of fine-sounding instruments, alternating between slide, 12-string, and fingerpicked six-strings in a plethora of tunings, and never fails to deliver top-notch playing on every track. A need to have for folk-blues guitar enthusiasts.

http://lix.in/-2927f4

Posted by Joski at 3:28 PM | 1 comments  
Labels: Stefan Grossman

Davy Graham was the son of a Guyanan mother and a Scottish father and he began learning the the guitar at the age of 12. As a teenager, he was strongly influenced by a guitar player called Steve Benbow, who had travelled widely with the army and played a guitar style influenced by Moroccan music. At the age of 19, Graham wrote what is probably his most famous piece, at least for aspiring guitarists: the acoustic solo tune Anji (see below).

One way he came to the attention of guitarists was through a 1959 feature item in the BBC TV news program Monitor. The segment was produced by Ken Russell.

He introduced the DADGAD guitar tuning to British guitarists, though it is not clear if it originated with him. Its main attraction was that it allowed the guitarist more freedom to improvise in the treble while maintaining a solid underlying harmony and rhythm in the bass. While 'non-standard', or 'non-classical' tuning was widely practiced by guitarists before this, especially by Blues and Slide guitar players, his use of DADGAD introduced a second standard tuning to guitarists.

During the 1960s he released a string of eclectic albums with music from all around the world in all kinds of genres.

He was always unpredictable, which did little to endear him to concert organisers and the more commercial elements of the music world. On one occasion, in the late 1960s, he was booked for a tour of Australia but, when his plane stopped for an hour in Bombay, he changed his plans and spent the next six months wandering through India.

His continuous touring of the world, picking up and then recording different styles of music for the guitar, has resulted in many musicians crediting him with founding World Music.

It is generally accepted that he also became addicted to drugs in the 1960s.. Nevertheless, he continued to teach the guitar, although (according to an article in The Guardian) a lesson with him might consist of his turning on a record and leaving his student to listen to it whilst he went to the pub.

He was the subject of a 2005 BBC Radio documentary Whatever happened to Davy Graham ?

Now he is playing concerts again, and working with other guitarists, including Bert Jansch, Mark Pavey, Duck Baker and Martin Carthy. He is planning to record a new album including some new material, as well as reworking of his earlier material.

This album is lesser known, but real good.

http://lix.in/-2c3522

Fill your ears

Posted by Joski at 3:18 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: Davey Graham

Derroll Adams (1925-2000) spent more than half his life in Europe, a good part of it in England, and the major part of it in Belgium where he settled down in the ’60s.

The name of Derroll Adams stands out as one of the most important of the pioneers of the European folk revival. In partial retirement from the music circuit since the end of the ’80s, he was celebrated in Kortrijk, Belgium in 1990 and annually maintained himself as an important guest of the Tønder Folk Festival in Denmark.

In July 2001, he was the posthumous star of the Brosella Folk Festival in Brussels, Belgium, and an album with his best friends’ contributions was released in 2002.

Again, he was a true inspiration

Oregon (Tucker Zimmerman) (as sung by Derroll Adams)

They crossed the Atlantic Ocean, their boats were made of wood
They landed on the eastern shore and saw the land was good
Most of them settled down, settled down

The others pushed on across the Appalachians into the wilderness
Some in wagons, some on foot, with horses for the rest
Most of them settled down, settled down

The others pushed on across the Mississippi, about a mile wide
To face the Great Plains, thirst and hunger, many many died
Some got left behind, left behind

The others pushed on across the Rocky Mountains, the salt flats of Utah
The wastelands of Nevada and the high sierra saw
That some got left behind, left behind

The others pushed on into California, those men that knew no rest
The Pacific Ocean stopped their restless movement west
Most of them settled down, settled down

The others turned around
Some turned to the south, down to Mexico
But the people of whose blood I am, they said, We'll go
And settle Oregon, Oregon
The people I come from

They settled Oregon
The people I come from

http://lix.in/-27a135

Posted by Joski at 3:04 PM | 0 comments  
Labels: Derroll Adams

The Serendipity Singers hit the charts briefly in the mid-60's and made their contribution to music through folk, pop and even some show tunes.

The group was formed at the University of Colorado by three students, Bryan Sennet, Mike Brovsky and Brooks Hatch. They assembled a group that comprised nine members including vocalists Lynne Weintraub, Diane Decker and Tommy Tieman, guitarists John Madden and Jon Arbenz and bass player Bob Young. The group began to perform on college campuses, mostly in the Western United States.

The Serendipity Singers became more noticeable following a performance at the Bitter End in New York's Greenwich Village. They appeared on the scene shortly after groups such as Peter, Paul and Mary and the New Chisty Minstrels had helped to make folk music popular. The Serendipity Singers projected a squeaky clean image. In the Spring of 1964 their song Don't Let The Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man) was a top ten hit. They appeared on the popular television show Hootenanny. The group followed with their final top forty song, Beans In My Ears, later in 1964.

This is their first album

http://lix.in/-2c3518

Peace

Posted by Joski at 2:54 PM | 0 comments  
Labels: Serendipity Singers

Tom Rush is a gifted musician and performer, whose shows offer a musical celebration...a journey into the tradition and spectrum of what music has been, can be, and will become. His distinctive guitar style, wry humour and warm, expressive voice have made him both a legend and a lure to audiences around the world. His shows are filled with the rib-aching laughter of terrific story-telling, the sweet melancholy of ballads and the passion of gritty blues.

After three albums on Prestige, this was his debut on Elektra in 1965

Tom Rush was among that group of educated urban folk/blues musicians in the '60s--a group that included John Hammond Jr., Dave Van Ronk, Eric Von Schmidt, Geoff Muldaur, Danny Kalb, John Sebastian, etc. in the East and Jorma Kaukonen and John Fahey in the West.

Rush is faithful to the traditions on this album which features excellent acoustic guitar work and vocals that are uniformly convincing. Half of the songs on the record are traditional songs. He treats these with reverence and interprets them originally.

There is nothing fake or posed in the way Rush presents folk music and blues songs. Further, the collection is eclectic--not just blues or just folk songs but a delightful mix. The first song "Long John" combines the title song with "Another Man done Gone." On "If Your Man Gets Busted," Rush combines elements of Robert Johnson blues songs accompanied by fine bottleneck work in a convincing performance. The line about the big city women: "Got both hands full of gimme / Got a mouth full of 'much obliged'" has been my mental description of a particular behavior for years. From this blues classic, Rush shifts to some clean country picking on Woody Guthrie's Okie anthem "Do-Re-Me" where he is accompanied by Rambling Jack Elliot. This version is among the best recordings of the classic. Kokomo Arnold's "Milk Cow Blues" features fine guitar accompanied by Fritz Richmond's jug and John Sebastian's blues harp. Indeed, Sebastian's harp is brilliant on this track. Sebastian, the heart of the Lovin' Spoonful, is on half the tracks on the album--including "Black Mountain Blues" originally a Bessie Smith song; "When She Wants Good Lovin'," a Coasters song written by Leiber and Stoller; and "Solid Gone" (aka "The Cannonball").

The record has three songs by Woody Guthrie. I've mentioned "Do-Re-Mi." There are two other Guthrie songs. Rush's treatment of "Poor Man," the model for Dylan's "Ballad of Hollis Brown," is sensitive and persuasive, and "I'd Like to Know" was as current a protest in 1965 as when it was written (and now, too, I suppose). Rush includes a gambler's song, "The Cuckoo"; "Windy Bill," a cautionary cowboy song; and a train song--Bukka White's bottleneck classic "Panama Limited." This last song is effectively a workshop for playing bottleneck train songs and a fine conclusion for the disc. While Rush was eventually eclipsed by some of his contemporaries, he was true to tradition and the idioms of American music. Moreover, his virtuoso acoustic guitar playing was fresh and authentic.

http://lix.in/fdfc4608

Personnel includes: Tom Rush (vocals); Felix Pappalardi, John Herald (guitar); John Sebastian (harmonica); Bill Lee (bass).

Peace

Posted by Joski at 6:05 PM | 2 comments  
Labels: Tom Rush