Essential

Ramblin' Jack Elliott | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 20, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Vanguard Records
• ASIN: B000000ECA
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,175 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #89 in Music > Country > Cowboy

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

In terms of song selection, this is, indeed, the essential Ramblin' Jack. Originally released as a two-LP set, this 23-song collection is split into studio and live halves. The studio portion consists of a bracing assortment of traditional tunes that Elliott picked up from his many travels. He was, after all, Woody Guthrie's last road companion, and the highlight of the first dozen tunes is Guthrie's dramatic "1913 Massacre." The last section of the CD was recorded in concert at the Town Hall in New York City. The Ramblin' Jack of 1965 was a versatile, likable performer as adept at essaying old cowboy tunes ("Buffalo Skinners," "Night Herding Song") as then-contemporary folk tunes (protégé Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"). One complaint, though: liner notes explaining this linchpin folkie's role as a bridge between generations of troubadours would make The Essential all the more indispensable. --Steven Stolder

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great But Not Quite Essential, February 25, 2003

By 

Mark Oliva (Muenchsteinach Deutschland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essential (Audio CD)

The essential Ramblin' Jack Elliott is to be found on CDs released on labels other than Vanguard. Nonetheless, this is the best on CD from RJE's middle period, the years when he almost became a star but with considerable effort on his own part managed to avoid it (for which we owe him thanks unending) after teetering on a dangerous brink at Warner Brothers in 1967. This package CD includes two vinyl Vanguard albums that have little to do with one another but certainly give us lots of slices of RJE at a very good price. The first dozen songs are studio takes that appeared on the 1964 Vanguard LP "Jack Elliott," also repeated on the mildly interesting Vanguard CD "The Vanguard Years." The various tracks include accompaniment by Bob Dylan on guitar and mouth harp, aliasing as Tedham Porterhouse, and Erik Darling on banjo ("Will the Circle Be Unbroken"), Ian & Sylvia, Eric Weissberg, John Herald and Monte Dunn ("Guabi Guabi"), John Hammond on mouth harp ("Roll On Buddy") and bassist Bill Lee on several numbers. No, don't look for this or any other information in Vanguard's liner notes. There aren't any liner notes. These studio takes - as one might expect with such helpers on board - made for the liveliest of all RJE's studio sessions up to that time. However, one only gets 100% of Ramblin' Jack when he's playing to an audience, and that's what he does on this CD's last 11 tracks, all taken from his superlative April 30,1965 concert at New York City's Town Hall. When RJE begins Track No. 13, Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues" in concert, the atmosphere begins to glow. In a sense, all 11 live pieces are highlights. If so, the first among equals are Leadbelly's "Blind Lemon Jefferson," Hank Williams' "Lovesick Blues" and Scottish comedian Will Ffyfe's "I Belong to Glasgow," which is one of several high points in the RJE discography, far better than the 1961 studio version for Prestige International, now on the Fantasy CD "Ramblin' Jack Elliott." If you're a Ramblin' Jack fan, you'd be downright foolish to avoid acquiring this CD.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I really like the way he plays guitar., November 27, 2001

By 

Bruce P. Barten - See all my reviews

This review is from: Essential (Audio CD)

The song selection on this disc is superb. My favorite song, "Guabi Guabi" is the only one that he gets credit for having written, and that doesn't make sense, because he is singing it like it is written in a foreign language. At one point in the song, he even gives up and says that he couldn't keep up, it goes too fast for him. That happens to me all the time when other people are using a language that I don't really know, but Jack makes it seem like anybody's brain could do that all by itself. The only Bob Dylan song here is "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and this is the perfect kind of album for that song to be on, since practically everybody likes to know at least one song right off the bat. Jack gives a couple examples of Huddie Ledbetter introducing some songs, and it's too bad he didn't have some kind of historical introduction for "Black Snake," a song which must have come from somewhere vaguely familiar, but this album doesn't say where. I like the pitiful part of Jack's version of "Shade of the Old Apple Tree," and I doubt if all of that is in the traditional way it is usually done. I even bought music for "Shade of the Old Apple Tree" without getting anything that is as funny as the way Jack does that song. "Sowing on the Mountain" is not a funny songs, but I think it is a song that people should know, like "San Francisco Bay Blues," which is one of the reasons that I bought this album. I don't listen to this every day, but this music is solid. He picked these songs well.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars JACK ELLIOTT IS AN AMERICAN ICON, November 18, 1999

By 

ANTHONY ALBO ([e-mail]) (los angeles, ca.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Essential (Audio CD)

I REGRET THAT I WAS FORTY YEARS OLD BEFORE I EVER HEARD RAMBLIN' JACK. I WAS USED TO LISTENING TO THE BEATLES, STONES, ETC. BUT JACK ELLIOTT KNOWS THE PROPER WAY TO DELIVER A SONG. A FRIEND OF WOODY GUTHRIES, HE LEARNED WELL. THIS ALBUM CONTAINS SONGS THAT WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH, AND MAKE YOU CRY. HOW DOES HE PLAY THE GUITAR SO WELL? EAT YOUR HEART OUT CLAPTON, SANTANA, ETC. ETC. THIS ALBUM IS A MUST FOR ALL MUSICIANS AND ALL MUSIC LOVERS.