Customer Reviews

Folk Duets

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This is a great folk collection. Some of the music is performed by the songwriters - not the artists that made the hit - so the versions of the songs are different and surprising. We bought the CD for the "Bold Marauder" which is a truly great piece of music!!

The recording of "It Ain't Me Babe" by Dylan and Joan Baez is so funny that this CD is worth buying just for the comedy value! Everytime I hear it I break out laughing!!

Frequently albums created from old material for the "nostalgia market" contain considerable second rate material. That is not true of this collection. Ian & Sylvia were the most prominent duo in the folk music era - they are represented by 5 tracks. Geoff and Maria Muldaur were best known as members of the Jim Kweskin Jugband where their duets were high points of the albums. Mimi & Richard Farina were less well known - primarily due to Richard's death which had a stiffling impact on the duo - but they are still represented by 4 tracks. From a more country orientation there are the duo's of Flatt and Scruggs as wells as Doc Watson and Merle Travis. The remainder of this collection are names big in the solo market - Joan Baez, Donovan, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Theodore Bikel ...

One could scarcely build a better cross-section of the best of the folk duets of the era. Mimi and Richard Farina's "Pack Up Your Sorrows" is a splendid rendition that often gets forgotten among the other excellent renditions. Their Bold Marauder is a dark gem that would fit well with some of the current Celtic resurgence. Doc Watson and Merle Travis' Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arm is another gem forgotten among the many renditions. The weakest piece is Judy Collins & Theodore Bikel's The Greenland Whale Fisheries ... simply because it remains simply one of several excellent interpretations. When Collins/Bikel can be the low point, one is speaking of an excellent album.

Lovely harmonies, especially "Pack Up Your Sorrows." Formerly idealistic romantics, now middle-aged and more have to have this to remind them of their youth!

I rummage through folk compilations, and an awful lot of them are duplicates. This compilation has some standouts. Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña never sing together. On this CD they do. Dylanand Pete Seeger do a song together, with Seegercoming off in his typical dorky way assuring every one they can all sing along since only one line changes, but its a song I hadn't heard before. There is a lot of Richard and Mimi Fariña, not just the typical Pack Up Your Sorrows, and they rock. A lot of compilations I get sick of, or listen to one cut of and want to dump the rest. This is a good one all the way through.

especially if you are already familiar with the music. I debated about buying it and then was riveted the first time it played. It transported me back about 35 years, and I enjoy hearing these songs now just as much as I did then. If you like Bleecker Street - and I think it would be had not to - get this and listen to the originals. You won't be sorry.