Customer Reviews

Muleskinner Blues: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 2

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I bought this CD to complete the Asch set of 4, not especially enthusiastic about it because I knew that none of the compositions were penned by Guthrie. I'm not sure what I was expecting, exactly - maybe square dance tunes and cornball folk songs. In fact, the disc attests to Guthrie's excellent taste in "traditional" music. These songs are memorable, funny, melancholy, weird and delightful, among other things - here is simplicity without schmaltz or stupidity. Guthrie's performances are generally adequate, often inspired, and some tracks offer rare opportunities to hear Woody play the fiddle! Of all the Asch recordings, this disc is the most fun through and through - a Dust Bowl Bacchanale.

This album is a must for any fan of folk music, acoustic blues, or country/western. The songs are all excellent. Guthrie plays an integral role in american music, and this album shows some of his influences. There are no original songs. The liner notes are great. They often mention the influence of the Carter family on Guthrie, and some of the songs were done by them. Guthrie is often with Cisco Houston; some songs are solo, and Sonny Terry occasionally plays. Guthrie's music is essential, and hopefully with two recent tribute albums more people will listen to him, rather than only having heard of him.

Woody Guthrie influenced loads of singers, songwriters, folk singers, poets, activists, and storytellers. In turn, he also had his own influences. When he popped onto planet earth in 1912, nineteenth century culture, with its vast repertoire of popular songs and stories, still lingered in people's everyday lives. Some of the songs Guthrie grew up with date back to that previous looming century, and he recorded many of them later in life. This second volume of Moses Asch recordings compiles some of these songs as well as other traditional songs Guthrie picked up in his wanderings throughout the 1930s. Many of them also showed up on his popular California radio shows. Guthrie penned none of the tunes on this disc, but he arranged most of them to his own style and added his own lyrical touches here and there. Nonetheless, his indefatigable style shines on every track.

The title track, "Muleskinner Blues", shows Guthrie taking on a Jimmie Rodgers song (also known as "Blue Yodel #8). But Guthrie, unlike Rodgers, rarely yodeled (though he yodels with gusto on "Bed on the Floor"). The stylings of the immensely popular Carter family instead influenced his development. And many of Guthrie's early melodies came from Carter family compositions. Folk music tended to work this way. Tunes and lyrics radiated through the multitudinous regional music scenes scattered throughout the country. The composers and origins of some songs remain forever obscured in murky mystery. But some musicians won writer's rights through the legal system. Recording technology truly changed music forever. Guthrie came of age in this era, and so borrowed many songs and tunes for his own purpose. This wasn't unusual.

Some of the songs nonetheless do possess recorded histories. "Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet" traces back to a Scottish ballad from the 1790s. And the heartstring tuggers "Stepstone" and "Put my Little Shoes Away" date to 1880 and 1873 respectively. Some songs have eyebrow raising origins. "Take a Whiff on Me" comes from an era, according to the CD booklet, "...when opium and cocaine could be purchased at the drug store, and songs about cocaine, like 'Rye Whiskey' about alcohol, were known nationally." The song celebrates the sharing of a good snort between pals. Times change.

Guthrie also played fiddle, but his skills apparenly remained somewhat unremarkable on this particular instrument. Three tracks nonetheless feature Guthrie's fiddling: the rousing "Sally Goodin'", "Hen Cackle", and "Rye Straw".

Accompanying Guthrie on many of these tracks is Cisco Houston (Guthrie even backs Houston on the Biblical "Sowing on the Mountain"). Their long partnership lasted for over a decade and helped spread the popularity of folk music. The influence of these songs on them, and their subsequent influence on twentieth century music remains incalculable. Out of this era evolved country, folk, and eventually rockabilly. Most modern music has its roots in folk music and African-American spirituals. This great collection of songs emphasizes the folk side of the spectrum, though many of these songs do originate from spirituals ("Little Black Train", "Bed on the Floor", "Stackolee", "Crawdad Song", and the haunting "Train 45"). Though most know that Guthrie influenced such twentieth century musical giants as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, this CD offers a rare and underappreciated glimpse at the songs that influenced Guthrie.

If you are determined to collect all recorded Guthrie tracks, you may want this one, but there is a new multi-disc set available just this year which features a lot of these same performances in a remastered version from sources better even than those available to the Smithsonian back in the 1990's. If that is too pricey, this will do. However, the main effect of this compilation is to remind us that Woody's peculiar, sporadic genius, which offset somewhat his tragic life, was in poetic song composition. As a singer and guitarist, he was not particularly wonderful, especially on songs he did not create. His friend Cisco Houston did a lot of these numbers on his 1950's solo LP's for Folkways, and if you want to hear these traditional songs performed beautifully, his versions are so much better. On a lot of these, he accompanies Woody, but really took a minor role during these 1944 sessions. For those who want to have a collection of Guthrie's "cover versions" buy it. There are people, (like me) who appreciate that aspect of those who achieve fame by their own songwriting. I like Hank Williams' recordings of songs written by other people, for instance...but, as with Woody, not as much as him doing his own stuff. As for Woody's own songs, for my money Cisco Houston's versions are even better than Woody's own, and luckily some of those are still available on CD. If you are a beginning fan of Woody's, branch out to Cisco. You won't be sorry.

I am glad to see that certain folksingers such as Woody
Guthrie are now also considered country singers. After all,
some folk music is traditional nonpopular country music, and
some folk music is not country music.