Customer Reviews

Hard Times Come Again No More 2

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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.

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.

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.

This is an 'acquired taste.' You'll need to have some prior experience with depression era lamentation style and actually enjoy that before you consider taking this trip. Uneven compilation of rare tracks from the 1930's with all the attendant technolgical glitches that implies. If you enjoy this sort of thing... then this is the sort of thing you'll enjoy!

Yeah I know... well how about this then: Do you prefer "authentic" ? This is the authentic stuff. This is Sour Mash cooked up in a copper kettle with a copper coil over a wood fire on a wooded mountainside... don't use no green wood - it makes too much smoke an' the G-men will see your hidey place. Still... Pass that jug.