Delta Momma Blues (Dig)

Townes Van Zandt | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 15, 2007)
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Fat Possum Records
• ASIN: B000OZ2CXY
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,481 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of TVZ's best..., February 17, 2008

By 

B. Bowman "Double B" (Jersey, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Delta Momma Blues (Dig) (Audio CD)

I own all of Townes Van Zandt's albums and would rank "Delta Momma Blues" as one of the best in his catalog of recorded work. In my opinion Townes' songs benefitted greatly from his fingerpicked guitar playing, which was all too often buried in overproduced mixes in his studio recordings. This was not the case with "Delta Momma Blues", which features Townes' guitar prominently. This album also contains some of his strongest songwriting collected on one release. I was only to find out years after first hearing this disc that the "Delta Momma" Townes refers to on the title track was his nickname for the DM in Robitussin DM, a tribute to his penchant for pounding bottles of the stuff to get high off of the codiene in the cough syrup. Not a great role model by any means, but that's TVZ! "Only Him or Me" is classic Townes, I don't think it gets articulated any better than lines like "You're gonna drown tomorrow if you cry too many tears for yesterday". "Tower Song" is also classic Townes, a song that he said he thought he wrote for someone else but later realized he could have written about himself. Songs like these speak volumes about the man and his talent for the written word. "Brand New Companion" is one of Townes' best original blues songs, he channels Lightnin' Hopkins with his own brand of laid back drive, and the harmonica part is excellent. "Where I Lead Me" is Townes' driving salute to life on the road, and totally rocks. The album closes with two of my favorite of TVZ's songs: "Rake", which upon first listen sounds autobiographical but after repeated listens sounds like some kind of vampire biography, and "Nothin", which was the song that first turned me on to Townes' music. I can't think of another song that displays the great guitar playing and lyrics of Townes better than the way "Nothin" does; he creates a mood of despair and melancholy on this one that is comparable only to the works of blues legends like Skip James and Robert Johnson. This album's mix of folk, blues, and country styles may explain why Townes didn't achieve mainstream success during the years he recorded this and his five other early albums, but listening to it now it doesn't sound like he's genre hopping, it just sounds like Townes. I would recommend this disc to any newcomer to his music. The liner notes make the good point that although Townes had a habit of re-recording songs from this period in later life, he rarely ever re-recorded the ones on this album, indicating that he really nailed them. I would have to agree.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A paradigm shift in my musical tastes, November 24, 2001

By 

R. A. Ward "speedbmp" (WV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Delta Momma Blues (Audio CD)

The first time my father put this CD on, I was neither a folk music fan nor a country music fan. I had no confidence I would enjoy any of it.
By the end of "Delta Momma Blues" (the title track, not the whole disc), I was sitting up in my chair, leaning forward with high interest. When "Brand New Companion," "Where I Lead Me" and "Rake" were done, I was a true believer in Van Zandt's powerful talent to evoke emotion and in his talent overall as a musician.
Van Zandt's work also was such a great experience for me that I was willing to listen to a lot of music I wouldn't give the time of day to before. It opened up whole new musical genres for me, and let me discover the joys of the Indigo Girls, Michelle Shocked, Hank Williams and many others.
Perhaps Van Zandt wasn't "popular," but he is certainly one of the more gifted songwriters of the 20th century, IMHO. This disc is a great example of his work, and an essential CD for me.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of America's Best Songwriter's Ever, July 3, 2002

By 

Lee Charles Kelley (NYC--the greaterst city in the world!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Delta Momma Blues (Audio CD)

If you don't know it by now, you should know that Townes van Zandt is one of America's best songwriters. To me, Delta Momma Blues is his overall best album. Though I also like For the Sake of the Song, and High, Low and In-Between, and several of his later albums, this one is the cream of the crop. In my upcoming mystery novel (A Nose for Murder) I couldn't resist putting a scene in the story where my main character is listening to The Tower Song on a listener-sponsored radio station in Blue HIll Maine. His girlfriend tries to turn it off and he tells her, "Leave it on, you'll get used to his voice." Later in the chapter she agrees that the rough sound of his voice makes the songs he sings that much prettier, sadder, and more beautiful. Yes, Townes van Zandt had a voice that wasn't polished or pretty, but there has never been an American songwriter outside of Woody Guthrie who could write songs that sounded as if they'd already existed for a hundred years. If I were stranded on a desert island with a CD player, this would be one of the ten records I'd like to have with me. It's that good.