Customer Reviews

Live at Mccabe's

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This album is up in the rarified air of the very finest flatpicking albums ever recorded; in the same class as Dan Crary's "Guitar" or "Doc Watson On Stage". The playing is sensational, unbelievable. This is Norman Blake with flatpicking as his primary interest, unlike later material which focused on ensembles and then on recreating old time music. The musicianship is dizzying; experimental, vibrant, flashy, lyrical, audacious; it doesn't have the polish of a studio album, but has a wonderful live ambience. It is astonishing what a real master can do with well-known material. This album will rightly be one of the standards by which flatpicking is measured.

This live performance recording of Norman Blake, solo and with his ex-wife Nancy, should be essential to your collection of acoustic recordings. This is vintage Norman, captured in an intimate setting almost 25 years ago, just being himself. The recording quality is excellent for a live performance, the between-songs banter is preserved and adds to the laid-back ambience, and the picking is superb. The mix of traditional and original songs melds perfectly. If you haven't had a chance to see Norman live, this is as close as it gets. Highly recommended for old-time, bluegrass, and acoustic music lovers.

I was in the audience the night of this performance, and I've owned the vinyl version for, holy cow, has it been twenty-five years? It is by far my favorite recording of Norman Blake's, simply because of the warmth that can come only from a live performance. With his wife accompanying him on cello, every note filled the little room with a clarity at once deep and sharp. Beautiful. Inspiring. If you get only one Norman Blake CD, get this one.

Nine pound hammer is absolutely a masterpiece for acoustic guitar and a very hard piece to play. Overlooked guitarist

What can I say, one of the all time benchmark flatpicking albums of all time. An absolute must have for any aspiring or veteran guitar player who enjoys this genre....This album changed my musical mindset as a serious guitarist when it first came out in 1976. I put my Les Paul down and picked up a D 18....still going strong.