Customer Reviews

Gold In California: A Retrospective Of Recordings, 1975-1985

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Kate Wolf put this retrospective of her music together as she was dying of leukemia, aware that she would not perform again. It is an overview of the various aspects of her career, a roadmap of where this artist had been and where she might have gone if she'd been given more time. From meditations on lost love (Unfinished Life) to visionary songs of hope (Brother Warrior) through sheer poetry (She Rises Like the Dolphin) to simple songs of the joys of real friendship (The Trumpet Vine), this woman knew of life and had the genius-level talent to be able to sing it right into your heart. Her work never strayed much from the basic folk ballad form, but how she stretched beyond what most believed were the limits of that form! In her quiet, individual way, Kate was as significant an artist as the best you could name--Neil Young, Judy Collins, even (pardon the personal opinion) Dylan. And her music--as can be easily heard in this collection--is, in the best, finest sense of the word, timeless.

This CD, especially Volume 2, stayed in the CD alarm clock and became "wake-up" and "fall-asleep" music for about a year. Kate Wolf put this collection together as she was dying of leukemia. Songs like "Unfinished Life" allude to her coming to grips with mortality. Her lyrics are pure poetry infused with life wisdom. Her lovely voice is both soothing and tinged with a touch of sorrow.

My favorite song, "Here in California," contains wonderful maternal advice about falling in love:
"When I was young, my mama told mama told me,
she said, 'Child take your time.
Don't fall in love quickly,
before you know your mind.'
She held me 'round the shoulders,
and in a voice so soft and kind
She said, 'Love can make you happy
and love can rob you blind.' "

"Two-Way Waltz" evokes the pain and hope of the two lovers reuniting or considering a reconcilation after a difficult separation: "[T]he sweetest hello always comes after the hardest goodbye."

If you believe that the only way to cure a broken heart is to listen to the blues*, or if you are a hopeless romantic who can't hear too many love songs, "Gold in California" is a must. * Note: Kate Wolf is not a blues singer. Her style is modern folk.

I have had this on cassette since 1985 and when I play it, I still get chills. Her song, "Trumpet Vine" made me think she'd somehow gotten into my soul and saw things about me. This is my favorite of all her work. Her album "Give Yourself to Love" is second best. She preferred performing to smaller crowds which always made her performances intimate. I met her a couple of times during intermissions. She liked to discuss her work with her fans. If you've ever lived in California, you know that she had the true feel of the land and its people.

Kate's "Red Tailed Hawk" will always be inscribed on my brain its beauty its realness, its aptness, and the reality of the golden rolling hills of California. So perfect and beautiful even though I never had a tape or LP or a CD of it until 12 years after it came out, until after we lost Kate. Still its power comes to me as it did on an old radio sitting in an Oakland apartment, the signal fighting its way all the way up from KFAT ("because we need the bucks) down in Gilroy.

The vision of California that Kate weaves on all her records is preciseless, unique real, and a treasure even if much of it is sweetened myth.

I feel so bad that I lived in San Fransisco and Oakland and travelled up and down California and the West Coast in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Kate was doing her best work and only saw her sing once. When I hear something like Sweet love on this CD, I wonder why I am not always listening to Kate. There is something to her voice that gets through to me, something pure. Now that I sing and play guitar and banjo and fiddle, I tend to listen to any singer or player that I hear trying to scope them out learn something, evaluate, figure out how to put what they do into my performance. Even though Kate plays the kind of music I have always wanted to play, I just sit there and listen to the song and receive its thoughts in my heart and mind.

Part of Kate's magic is the superb arrangements and backup that she got from the musical genius Nina Gerber, her main accompaniest. Nina is now out there solo alot. If you like guitar and this kind music check out Nina too.

Oh Kate, why didn't we realize how much of a golden treasure you were when you were among us. In her memory think of a performer you might miss like we all miss Kate--well that isnt fair because thats a big ideal to measure up to--how about someone you would miss half or a quarter as much as I miss Kate, and make sure you go see them while you can, and maybe bring a friend, bring two.

I can't possibly enlarge on the beautiful, accurate, and thoughtful other reviews already here, concerning Kate Wolf's music and awesome talents.

Hers is the music I find myself playing most frequently, of ALL the hundreds of CDs I have, across all musical categories. This fact is the best statement I can make about Kate Wolf.

There are other CDs of Kate's that you can find on her family's website, (katewolf.com), but I have to recommend two retrospectives that you must have, if you love Kate's music.

One is called, "Treasures Left Behind, Remembering Kate Wolf", and the second is "A Kate Wolf Retrospective" (recorded live in 1996, in Sebastopol, California).

Well, what goes around comes around, as they say. I have spend much time this year in this space going through a litany of roots performers, folk revival of the 1960s performers and more contemporary performers, folk, root or rock. I have not, as yet, uttered the name, Kate Wolf, in any previous reviews. I make that omission right here.

Kate Wolf is a name that is well known among my musical acquaintances, although frankly, before I reviewed a Utah Phillips album a few years ago I was not familiar with her work at all. And that Phillips connection, my friends, is the key to why Ms. Wolf is being reviewed here today. The imprimatur of the late Utah Phillips, an old Wobblie (IWW) singer/songwriter/storyteller and general gadabout was enough to get me to listen to her. And although I cannot say that she is at the top of my musical list she certainly, based mainly on her lyrics, has my attention.

Unlike Utah, with whom she traveled with to various folk venues when she was getting her start and who cadged her a few of his songs (or ideas for songs), she did not write many overtly political songs (except maybe for some antinuclear ones, dear to the hearts of many Californians at the time, when they were trying to shut down the nuclear power plants there in the late 1979-early 1980s) that I know of. Mainly, as here, she wrote of love, longing for love, the misunderstandings of love, the traps and travails of love set out in the West, and particularly in those brown hills of California where she called home. Unfortunately, she died young so we will never know how good she really could have been, but off of this compilation of material we surely missed something. Stick outs here are "The Trumpet Vine," Across The Great Divide," and "Here In California".

I'm a big fan of Kate Wolf and only have a few songs left to add to my playlist. This CD was the first I bought and had me hooked, however most of her albums change things up a bit more than this one did. Still, the imagery of songs like "The Sun is Burning" are so strong for me they have inspired some of my own artwork. I used to be a camp counselor and one of my favorite things about Kate's work is that it's appropriate for all ages.

Her voice is so...real compared to most of what you hear today. You can hear the emotions seep from her, both ups and downs. It's music that I loved to learn as a camper, and loved to teach as a counselor.

I would recommend her in general but this album is a great place to start. It breaks the surface of her work with such honest lyrics and simple music but doesn't have quite the same affect as any other of her albums. I'd give it a 4.5 if that was an option.

It's really impossible to go wrong with Kate Wolf.

Wolf is much more mellow than most of the music I like, but her songwriting is lovely and her voice is one-of-a-kind. Different from, but easily as beautiful as Emmylou Harris or Judy Collins. It's only a pity we lost her so early.

As a young man who grew up in California it was such a treat to discover Kate Wolf this year. I am amazed that I had never heard her before I ordered this CD. She was so talented and this effort seems to reflect the spectrum of her career. Well worth the price of admission...........I wouldn't skip one song on this work.

This is a must-buy for anyone who likes music! I had never heard of her and as a music lover, I have all sorts of genres I love, with as much appreciation for folk as jazz and the blues, but when I heard this double CD I was blown away! The rich texture of her writing and pureness of her voice are magnetic. I've always been a Nancy Griffith fan, as well as Dave Alvin, and they covered two of her songs..."Here in California," and "Across the Great Divide," and that's how I came to find Kate Wolf. If you don't like this, you aren't alive.