Customer Reviews

The Many Faces of Yusef Lateef [Vinyl]

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This recording belongs on anyone's list of the best folk music recordings ever made, preserving the best work of one of the folk revival's finest from the pioneer days in Boston in the early 60's. The best selections are the Jack Elliot reprisals like Diamond Joe and San Francisco Bay Blues, but Mobile-Texas Line and Nine Pound Hammer are extraordinary. There is not a weak song on the disk. Later seduced by amplification and other sound studio enhancements like Baez, Dylan and many others, Rush never again attained the heights reached in these first two recordings, preserved here on one fabulous and essential disk.

This is a combination CD made from the original LPs "Got a Mind to Ramble" and "Blues, Songs, Ballads." An excellent example of the blues/folk revival of the early 1960s. The singing, guitar, and washtub bass are great. The only thing that keeps me from giving it five stars is that they left off the gospel classic "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" that was on the original "Got a Mind to Ramble" LP. But, it's still one of the best albums out there, and more than worth the price!

These two albums came out of the Club 47 period in Cambridge, before Dylan and Phil Ochs and the rest started writing the new stuff. With his easy focused baritone, Tom Rush prefigured the urban warm/cool later perfected by James Taylor and Jackson Browne (two songwriters whose work he was among the first to popularize in "The Circle Game." While Tom Rush stole from everyone, he also did their material better, and his versions of Staggerlee, Cocaine, Sister Kate, San Francisco Bay Blues have stayed in my brain for more than three decades now, overpowering all the other versions. This album and the very-influential-at-the-time "The Circle Game," which also was among the first recordings of Joni Mitchell, are two of the bricks at the foundation of folk-rock.

If you want to get to the roots of folk music of the sixties, this is a good place to start. A major influence on artists from Joni Mitchell to James Taylor. Raise your voice and shout unfair that more of his work is unavailable to the public.

Yep, this is definitely one of the best of the best. And it's just Tom, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, backed up by [who was it?], Mitch or Bruce somebody or other on gut bucket, also known as washtub bass. Tom was young at the time he made this, but sounds like a real old-timer. At the time these two albums were made, he was one of the main characters in the Cambridge (Mass.) folk revival, along with the Baez sisters, Jackie Washington, Eric Von Schmidt, Debbie Green. Eric Andersen, and the like.

This one starts out like a gunshot with "Duncan and Brady", and basically never lets up. Rush mixes pathos and humor and plenty of other assorted moods and reveries. The fellow can sing and play with the best of them. Check out the wonderful slide guitar playing on "Rye Whiskey". And he almost chews/ruminates on his words, with his terrific sounding, relaxed baritone voice. When he tells (sings) a story, you get lost in the believability of it. It's awesome, really.

As of 3-4 years ago, Rush was still tremendous in concert, and his banter and joke telling are as good as his playing and singing. He can be truly hilarious, make you nearly fall off your seat a' laughing. I'd say he's as good a showman and interpreter of old tunes as Michael Cooney, but that's a tough contest given the fact that they inhabit somewhat different (though not too) emotional dimensions.

Rush's beautiful guitar picking style and his deep voice are peerless. He won't win plaudits for orginality or breaking moulds but if you're tired of folk music full of nasal whines and sloppy finger-pricking Tom is your only man. Some poeple may find this twee or too easy-going but I can't give it less than five starts as to me it is perfect.

The thing I like most about Tom Rush is the emotion he puts in the guitar playing. His voice too sounds like of sad a lot of the time but still comes across like somone who would actually be good craic!

The production on this album is great too. Just a voice, a guitar a washtub bass, and harmonica.

This is a truly delightful set of songs! A friend taped this for me back in the early eighties, and I wore the tape out within a year or two, and I never could find another copy of the album. Nevertheless, I'd find myself singing the songs anyway; they never seemed to leave me. And when I finally found the CD--hallelujah!--it was as if I'd never been without it. From start to finish, this is a great song set: hilarious at times, moving at others, and always delivered by Rush expertly. A supremely underrated work that won't disappoint you.

I was going through my LP collection the other day and tried to play my copy of this album. My, how bad they sounded as I've just about worn it through over the years. I heard Tom live many years ago and have been a fan ever since. I was overjoyed to find that this recording as well as some of his others was now out on CD. This album belongs in everyones collection of Folk classics.

Classic example of the Cambridge folk scene of the 60's. A true gem for any folk music library.

Note to Amazon - there are two people on this album Tom Rush singing and playing guitar and Fritz Richmond on washtub bass (and maybe jug). Yusef Lateef is NOT on here anywhere, so why is this album listed under his name???????

In the early sixties music was in the doldrums (sound familiar?) Elvis was in the army, Chuck Berry (nearly thirty) was in jail after bring caught with an underage Sweet Little Sixteen, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash (the Day the Music Died), Jerry Lee Lewis was in disgrace after marrying his fourteen year old cousin, Little Richard found religion. The innovators were gone. Into this gap jumped the Mafia, pushing Payola, forcing DJ's to play Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, and let's not forget the fabulously talented Fabian Forte.

More sophisticated listeners were turned off. The Next Big Thing was Folk Music, especially with the college crowd! There were two movements here, the "authentic" group, where a song had to be old, traditional, to be "folk" , Joan Baez, Ian and Silvia, early Judy Collins were of this group and the new "relevant protestors" like Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, et al, writing new music in a traditional folk idiom. Tom Rush was from the Cambridge authentic group. His songs are black blues, chain gang songs, Woody Guthrie, cowboy songs, gathering eclectically from the best available.

What makes Rush so great is his tart delivery and his deep baritone voice (too many wimpy high tenors out there). He sings with a twinkle in his eye and his tongue in his cheek. He sings likes he has stones. He takes that line "these Big City women they really mess my mind/ They got two hands full of gimme/ And a mouth full of much obliged" (Drop Down Mama) and uses it in three different songs on three different albums. And why not, great line. That's how blues/folk was, Robert Johnson wrote a line and if you liked it, you stole it and put it in your song. So many of these songs and lyrics overlap. None of these songs are Rush originals, but for years I thought they were, his was the first and best versions I heard.

He sings Rag Mama Rag - "If you got two women, you'd better get five/ two might quit you, the others might die".

To another reviewer, I heard Jessie Fuller (the writer) perform "San Francisco Bay Blues" in Blacksburg Virginia, just before he died, and for my money Tom Rush does a much better job.

"You know I'd be up to date/ if I could shimmy like my sister Kate".

In an open tuning, Rush plays Eric Von Schmidt's "Big Fat Woman, get your fat (legs) offa me/ Big Fat Woman, get your fat (legs) offa me/ Feels so good it scares the hell outta me"!

Eventually the fashion or zeitgeist went to singer-songwriters, the new original folkies like Dylan or John Fahey. Tom Rush was less effective in later albums singing ballads from Joni Mitchell, et al. He was a classic but, now he's pretty much forgotten, a footnote. The best of Rush is early, this ('62-'63) Prestige/Fantasy album "Got a Mind to Ramble" and "Blues, Songs and Ballads", and his first on Elektra ('65) Here Rush does a damn fine job of playing guitar with authority. That's Tom Rush, singing with authority. There isn't a bad song here, highly entertaining!

Recording quality on this version is quite good.

Highly Recommended.