Customer Reviews

Folk Classics (Roots Of American Folk Music)

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Anyone who thinks Marilyn Manson or Snoop Dogg cornered the market on anti-social behavior in song should hear this CD. "Folk Classics" tells tales of sex, betrayal, corruption and murder (south by Southwestern style) reaching back more than 100 years. By the time you're through the first half of the disc, you get two Wild West shootouts ("Jesse James," "Streets of Laredo") a bankruptsy ending in murder ("Buffalo Skinner") a marriage refusal ending in murder (Johnny Cash with his future wife and in-laws, the Carter Family, on "Banks of The Ohio") and a call for all good Irishmen to battle (the rousing "Rising Of The Moon.") Of course, it helps that at least a couple villains got caught ("John Hardy" and Flatt & Scruggs' "Worried Man Blues.") And then there's Burl Ives, whose "Wayfaring Stranger" indicated that he, too, was making his final crossover trip.

Traditional instruments and musical styles (banjo, guitar, fiddle, and no drums to speak of), are the hallmarks of folk music and while this is not the only CD you'll need at the hootenany (no Baez, no Dylan, only one Phil Ochs song and he doesn't sing it), "Folk Classics" fulfills its title nicely. Just don't do any of this at home, kids.

Folk Classics/ Roots of American Folk Music (Columbia): This has an interesting assortment of songs and artists that represent the American Folk Music tradition. It is obviously a teaser, that is, it seems designed to draw you into looking for more tunes from every one of these artists. This disk also leads right up to the Folk revival of the early 1960's in that the it ends with Malvina Reynolds' classic "Little Boxes" which she wrote in the early 60's concerning the conformity of houses (and people) that arose after WW2 and continued throughout the 1950's. Overall, a beautiful compilation that begs you to go out and find more.

I have spent a fair amount of time recently reviewing, individually and on various artist compilations, performers from the 1960's urban folk revival. You know Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, Eric Von Schmidt and the like. I have also reviewed the earlier performers who influenced them on the more traditional folk side like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. There was however another component of that search for roots that entailed heading south to the Mississippi Delta, the Georgia Sea Islands, the hills and hollows of Southern Appalachia, the prairies of Texas, the plains and the Mountain West to get `religion' on the rural roots musical scene.

This compilation reflects the results of that search with a selection maybe not of the best versions, technically best done or best representative of the genres but a good sampler nevertheless. Stick outs here include Lead Belly's "Alberta" (although this song has been done using other female names as well); Pete Seeger's "Jesse James" (although it is long past time to correct the historical record concerning this craven outlaw who, moreover, for this Northern unionist and abolitionist was on the wrong side in the American Civil War); Ramblin' Jack Elliot's "Buffalo Skinners"; Carolyn Hester's "Swing and Turn Jubilee" (what a voice she projected when she was on and she is on here); and, an interesting combination of Johnny Cash and the Carter Family on "The Banks Of The Ohio" (retelling that same old story of misbegotten love, betrayal and murder and mayhem). This one is NOT filled with a lot of my folk favorites but very good as a cross-section of what the 1960's folk revival was all about.

Most of the songs on this collection are good and most are violent. It seems that in Merrie Old England the jilted husband of "Mattie Groves" "cut off her head and throwed in agin the wall." In the U.S., the rejected lover in "Banks of the Ohio" stabs her in the breast and "throws her in to drown."

Two definitive versions of familar folk tunes are on this CD. It don't get any better that Johnny Cash and the Carter family on "Banks of the Ohio." Cash's gruesome voice goes with the gruesome lyrics and the Carter family does an angelic chorus. Ralph Stanley's high, lonesome sound is perfect on another violent tune "Pretty Polly" and the banjo work is fabulous. Other good ones are the Clancy Brothers who call on all good Irishmen to kill Englishmen in "Rising of the Moon," and Pete Seeger's banjo playing on "East Virginia"

The bad songs are the oily Brothers Four messing up a good song,"Mule Skinner's Blues," and the unspeakable "Little Boxes" which is so awful it should be denied first amendment rights.

Buffalo Skinners, Matty Groves-- stories that creep into your soul through your ears.