Garden of Joy: Jim Kweskin's America

Jim Kweskin | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 15, 2005)
• Original Release Date: 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Collectables
• ASIN: B000B2WJTW
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #128,124 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. If You're a Viper

2. Minglewood

3. Garden of Joy

4. The Circus Song

5. My Old Man

6. Kaloobafak (I'm Confessin' [That I Love You]

7. The Sheik of Araby

8. When I Was a Cowboy (Western Plains)

9. Mood Indigo

10. I Ain't Gonna Marry

See all 12 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Back in the Saddle

2. Sugar Babe

3. Okie from Muskogee

4. 99 Year Blues

5. Rambling Round Your City

6. Amelia Earhart's Last Flight

7. Stealin'

8. Old Rugged Cross

9. Dark as a Dungeon

10. Old Black Joe

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kweskin's finest, December 30, 2005

By 

bgandl (Detroit) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Garden of Joy: Jim Kweskin's America (Audio CD)

For Garden of Joy, Kweskin fleshed out his simple jugband sound with stellar jazz/folk violinist Richard Greene and Bill Keith (later of Neil Young's Stray Gators). The result swings to high heaven and is reminiscent of Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks' "Last Train to Hicksville (Home of Happy Feet)" a few years later. Easily his most sophisticated and jazzy album. I bought my cd version for $50 from Japan...and it was worth that price. Play it for your unititated friends...the sheer goofy joy of this music will force a smile on any face!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a find!, March 22, 2006

By 

Linwood I. Greer (Richmond, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Garden of Joy: Jim Kweskin's America (Audio CD)

Stumbling across this set was magical for a number of reasons. Every few months, I would check the internet music sites for a reissue of Kweskin's "America" and it never showed up until... Likewise, for years, I had been trying to remember where I first heard "Minglewood (Blues)" and "If You're a Viper". Ka-Ching! So many wishes granted in one package. Two sides of one of the most estoteric musicians of the sixties and both wonderful. Someone make a movie on the life of Gus Cannon and maybe we'll have a brief rebirth of jug band music up in here.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a welcome rediscovery!, January 16, 2006

By 

Alexander P. Simack (Avoca, IN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Garden of Joy: Jim Kweskin's America (Audio CD)

I'm referring to Jim Kweskin's America, which I had feared I would not hear again for many a year. My old lp and tapes are lost, and this is the first reissue I've seen. What deep healing music!

It's an odd repackaging. The old Jim Kweskin before the reborn man, quite a contrast to say the least. The old Jim sings on Garden of JOy, the new man on America.

I don't believe America is for the casual listener, unless he's ready for quite a deep transformation. "Are they all 'in the Spirit'?" my new wife asked me when I recently played it for the two of us. Afterwards she announced herself totally healed of a deep malaise she'd been suffering. I heard it anew myself. It always sounds different to me. Sometimes my thoughts will come crowding in and the "old-timey" music seems suddently far away, and I feel guilty. But I relax and open up again and it's as powerful as ever. It's the saddest, most joyful, far-ranging, profoundest music of America ever sung. Unbelievable that it hasn't reached a larger audience -- but then, maybe it has and people still don't know how to talk about it.