Customer Reviews

Best of Friends

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I have checked Amazon several times over the last fifteen years hoping for this album to come out on CD. I had heard most, if not all, of the cuts on Dick Cerri's Music Americana when I lived in Washington DC, and I loved what I heard.

Bob Gibson, while perhaps one of the least well-known of the great singers of the folk revival, was my favorite folksinger while I was growing up. It has been said that his voice was "too good" for folk music. He had a wonderful warm baritone, and a great sense of humor. He demonstrated with this group as well as on his glorious recordings with Bob (or has he sometimes called himself- Hamilton) Camp that he could also blend beautifully in harmony.

Tom Paxton, of course, has a great knack for writing clever words and melodies with sly social commentary. He is perhaps the weakest pure singer of the three.

Anne Hills has a beautiful, pure, almost operatic soprano. I have listened to Anne Hills recordings where she sings on her own, and I have generally no liked them. Mostly because she tends to traditional old English folk material that doesn't resonate for me.

Combine the three of them and you have a great trio, reminiscent in some ways of Peter, Paul and Mary but more interesting.

Every song on this album is enjoyable. I particularly liked "Sing for the Song", "And Loving You", and "Let the Band Play Dixie". I liked every song on the album, but my favorites are those where there is significant harmonizing and I haven't heard the song ten thousand times as I have with most Tom Paxton songs.

The quality of sound on the CD is good, no complaints with the transfer. Much of this was recorded live, so the possibility of sound compression was very real, but I am very happy with this CD.

This is one of the greatest folk music CDs ever made. If you like folk music buy it.

I've heard a lot of this collection on vinyl and somehow missed that it had released on CD 4 years ago. This CD is the result of three of folk's most talented singers: Tom Paxton, Bob Gibson, and Annie Hillis touring for over a year.

Yes, a lot of this is still topical. Too many lawyers, politician's goofs (remember Ronald Reagan talking about trees being dangerous to the ecology), and just plain fun. This is folk music at it's classic best and a hard to find selection.

Rebecca Kyle, October 2008

I have been a fan of Bob Gibson for many years and am pleased to add this to my collection. Tom Paxton is a fine writer and entertainer. I had never heard Anne Hall - she has an incredable voice and I will seek out more of her work. The songs are wonderful and the show is just enough to give a glimps of the personalities without imposing on the music.

The following paragraphs are from a review of Tom Paxton's Greatest Hits CD that I reviewed in this space last year and that is germane to a review of this album- at least to Tom Paxton's role in it.

"If I were to ask someone, in the year 2008, to name a male folk singer from the 1960's I would assume that if I were to get an answer to that question that the name would be Bob Dylan. And that would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Dylan was (or wanted to be) the voice of the Generation of '68 but in terms of longevity and productivity he fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other male folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Dylan, today continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review Tom Paxton is one such singer/songwriter.

The following is a question that I have been posing in reviewing the work of a number of male folk singers from the 1960's and it is certainly an appropriate question to ask of Tom Paxton as well. I do not know if Tom Paxton, like his contemporary Bob Dylan, started out wanting to be the king of the hill among male folk singers but he certainly had some things going for him. A decent acoustic guitar but a very interesting (and strong) voice to fit the lyrics of love, hope, longing and sometimes just sheer whimsy, as in the children's songs, that he was singing about at the time. I would venture however, given what I know of his politics and the probably influence that his good friend the late folksinger and historian Dave Van Ronk had on him, that the answer above is probably no."

Well, those points made above apply to him her as well. Except that instead of just posing the question to Tom Paxton it is also a question that one can ask of the late Bob Gibson who, arguably, was as influential as anyone in the early 1960's folk revival. I will, when I can find some of his material, do a separate review on his work. Added here as well is the very fine voice of Anne Hall whom I was very unfamiliar with prior to listening to this CD. I will also make up for that lack at a later time. For now though, this is a very fine CD based on collective work that this trio did for a short time on the Chicago folk circuit in the mid-1980s. Most of the material was written by Paxton, including works containing his funny political slant, but the real treat here is the almost seamless harmony done on the songs. Outstanding here are "The Death Of Stephen Biko (a black activist murdered while in custody in South Africa in the 1970's); "And Loving You"; "She Sits On The Table" (a gripping and compelling tale of domestic abuse and the sometimes no way out dead end that women find themselves in with abusive men); and, Tom's classic "Ramblin' Boy". Nice stuff, and you will be seeing more about these artists in this space this year.