Hard Times Come Again No More 2

Hard Times Come Again No More (Series) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 18, 1998)
• Original Release Date: August 18, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Yazoo
• ASIN: B000009Q00
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #456,693 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Price Of Cotton Blues - Allen Brothers

2. Keno The Rent Man - Cofer Brothers

3. Bad Time Blues - Barbecue Bob

4. Wreck Of The Tennessee Gravey Train - Uncle Dave Macon/Sam McGee

5. The Arkansas Sheik - Clayton McMichen/Riley Puckett

6. Away From Home - Peg Leg Howell/Jim Hill

7. I'm Satisfied - Earl Johnson & His Dixie Entertainers

8. Got The Farm Land Blues - Carolina Tar Heels

9. Times Is Tight Like That - Bo Carter/Walter Vinson

10. Weave Room Blues - Fisher Hendley

11. Boll Weavil - W.A. Lindsey/Alvin Conder

12. Providence Help The Poor People - Joe Williams

13. The Tramp - McGee Brothers

14. Cotton Mill Colic - Dave McCarn

15. Starvation Blues - Charley Jordon

16. Broke Down Section Hand - Ernest Stoneman

17. Little Old Sod Blues - Jules Allen

18. Down South Blues - Sleepy John Estes

19. No One's Hard Up But Me - Red Brush Rowdies

20. Cotton Mill Blues - Lee Brothers

See all 23 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have, September 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Hard Times Come Again No More 2 (Audio CD)

This CD along with volume 1 is a must have for fans of old time music. This music kind of gets your bones down in the dirt and puts shivers in your soul.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Once, Again On The "First Wave" Great Depression, March 5, 2009

By 

Alfred Johnson (boston, ma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hard Times Come Again No More 2 (Audio CD)

This review covers both volumes of this two-part CD set.

Yes, I am aware that the 1930's Great Depression was not the first depression that this country had faced but it was the first in which the United States, as a world power anointed by its successes in World War I, created worldwide economic chaos in its wake. However we will leave aside economic history and concentrate on today's impeding great depression, as the daily news most painfully reminds us seems to be coming. Today I want to discuss what to do about that eventually in the short haul. Obviously, in the long haul we have to fight for a more rational system based on production (and distribution) for need, not for profit. In the meantime what are all of our fellow unemployed to do- right now! Well, now we do have to look back at history, and at least with a little tongue-in-cheek. Back in the 1930's its seems that on every corner of every town and village one found an "Apple Annie" selling her apples for a nickel to survive or a "Pencil Slim" hawking his pencils for spare change. Tough times indeed. And to while away that long lonely, sometimes empty-handed, vigil many times they sang songs to get attention.

This brings us to the two volume CD set under review that contains some forty-six songs, almost solely from the rural southern part of the United States. The set features themes of hard times, harder times and then the merely desperate ones. For poor blacks and whites alike. The milieu covered in this set appears to be away from the Mississippi Delta that created the country blues and rather are songs from places like Arkansas (that takes a beating in a couple of songs here that will not sit well with Chamber of Commerce-types), North Carolina and Georgia. The jobs, or lack of jobs complained of, run from small unsuccessful tenant farming and sharecropping fighting off the boll weevil and, as several songs make clear, the Boll Weevil landlord or his agents to cheap labor in the textile mills. The instruments used, to my ear, include simple guitar (especially whatever odd-stringed one , as usual, Joe Williams has concocted on "Providence Helps The Poor People"), fiddles galore (a staple of country music and a real plus when, as here, some of the vocals, are reedy), mandolin, washboard, harmonica and whatever else could make noise cheaply with what was at hand.

Clearly with forty- six songs to choose from the quality, even on a Yazoo production that prides itself on both inclusiveness and getting the best sounds possible (and excellent liner notes as well), is uneven. However the following stand out here; obviously the Joe Williams tune mentioned above; Sleepy John Estes on "Down South Blues"; Blind Blake on "No Dough Blues"; Blind Lemon Jefferson on the classic "One Dime Blues" (f you could have put his voice together with Etta Baker's guitar version you would have an incredible sound on that one); Mississippi John Hurt on "Blue Harvest Blues"; and The Graham Brothers on the title track "Hard Times Come Again No More" (an old Stephen Foster tune from the 1840's so there is nothing new about hard times).

All of those names above have been mentioned before in this space and reflect their then emergence as country performers. However there is a second layer of performers here that intrigue me and bear further listening. Of that group The Bentley Boys on the now well-known "Down On Penny's Farm" sticks out (a song, by the way, that Bob Dylan used as an idea for his early "Talking New York Blues"). Another is Blind Alfred Reed on "How Can A Poor Man Stand" as is the great guitarist Barbecue Bob on "We Sure Got Hard Times". There are not many women on these CDs but Samantha Bumgarner is fine on "Georgia Blues". The real sleeper on this whole compilation however is Elder Curry & His Congregation whooping it up on a gospelly "Hard Times". Okay, so now you have the songs that you can sing on those lonely street corners. Now all you need is some apples or pencils. Hard times come again no more, indeed.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars contains many rare gems, October 14, 2001

By 

nadav haber (jerusalem Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hard Times Come Again No More 2 (Audio CD)

The combination of black blues musicians and white songsters on the same CD is very interesting, but it does not make for coherent listening. As a blues fan I was surprised to find how there was a lot of mutual influence among white and black musicians in the South.
Most blues musicians in this CD are also great songsters - such as Blind Blake and Peg Leg Howell, but the blues of Barbecue Bob, Charly Jordan and Big Joe Williams have very little in common with any of the white songsters. I Would include songs by Furry Lewis, Blind Boy Fuller or Blind Willie Mctell instead - to add some coherence.
Nevertheless, there is plenty of good music on this compilation - from both songsters and bluesmen. I would recommend this CD to anyone interested in the Southern Songster tradition.