Customer Reviews

Re-Inventions: Best Of The Vanguard Years

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Tears in my eyes is how I can best describe finding this album -- I was just about to pay just over 50 dollars for his vinyl with Blend and Little Maggie and Camina Brauna on it --and thought I ought to check one last time before I pushed the 'buy' button -- and here it was! And I didn't even need to worry about finding a turn table! Camina Brauna is, well, beyond words, and Little Maggie is one of those tunes I have been trying to play on the banjo for the past 20 years -- sets my foot tapping and makes my insides turn to Jell-O -- and makes me feel all crazy inside. Can't think of ANY tune that tops this. The wonder is that this album EVER went out of print! As an understatement all I can say is: He sure is a pretty amazing and talented musician.

My old college roomie in New Haven had this album in the mid-sixties, and Sandy was just about the most incredible guitarist we'd ever heard (and both of us played). If you've never heard or heard of this guy, you are in for a special ride. The fabulous, magical cut of "Memphis" -- quietly ethereal, sliding back and forth like Chuck Berry off in some cloud dream -- has haunted me for over 35 years, and it alone is worth ten times the price of this album.

Thank you Vanguard and Amazon! A search on Sandy Bull produced this great cd, each cut an old friend that resonates and renews. Incredible to hear Memphis again after 30+ years, amazed to anticipate each phrase and note. No disappointments here -- Sandy Bull's music making has stood the test of time and then some.

Every song on this CD is very diferent from the other but there is not a bad or boring one among them. There is something very unusual about the way Sandy Bull plays every instrument he picks up. I've never heard of this guy even though he's been around forever. Some of the recordings date back to the 60's but they don't sound dated at all. Re-Inventions would be right at the top of my list of desert island disks.

i almost peed myself when i found this album was recollected. i thought Sandy had bought the farm but bless the soul that has put this CD together! The Bull is an artist's artist. What can you say about a guy who plays Carmina Burana on the BANJO! and then slips into a Chuck Berry smoker on the electric guitar?? You gotta admire a guy who can jam with himself. Buy it.

In the early 80's I was a baker at a cafe in the San Juan Islands in Washington State. I was at work by 5 am to bake the croissants and this album was the early morning treat each day. The waitress had recorded this album on a cassette and we about wore the thing out. I had just started to play oldtime clawhammer banjo and was always attracted to the Indian Raga idiom...this album merged with rockabilly, classical, etc. thrown into the mix.

Sandy Bull is a master genre-twister, and a delight to behold! This album exemplifies the genesis of his astonishing musical journey and the absolute brilliance of both his and Vanguard's vision.

I had this album tucked away for quite a while, and having more or less forgot about it, never gave it a listen. Until last night, that is, and it completely blew me away. Sandy Bull was a true guitar virtuoso- capable of playing several different styles, each as masterfully as the next. Above all, the songs featured here are mood pieces; lengthy yet captivating ventures into a foreign world of sheer musical bliss. That may sound pretentious, but give it a listen and you'll see what I mean. The best cut is the opening 22-minute "Blend," a dark, beautiful Indian Raga for the guitar, played by Bull with great aplomb. There's also the haunting "Memphis, Tennessee," a transcendent and unforgettable blues number. This compilation is simply a must-have for anyone who enjoys moody, beautiful music, or astoundingly accomplished, but tasteful, guitar playing. R.I.P. Sandy Bull, you are missed.

I remember many of the cuts on this album when they were newly released. It's amazing, to me,that with all the innovation and broadening of our listening universe since the 1960s, how good this album still sounds. I have listened to the album the whole way through several times, and it still holds up and is a great joy to listen to.

After all these decades are there reasons to by this? Yup. 1) "Manha de Carnival" is about the most beautiful tune I've ever heard. The rhythm guitar rustles along as gently as a mild spring rain on your window, while the echo-y baritone voice of the oud takes the melody into so many undiscovered places on the scale that you'll almost forget what the original tune was. 2) The banjo playing is astonishing. The introduction to "Little Maggie" cuts right to the heart of Scots-Irish-hood, then explodes into a hoedown that's so friggin' mean you'd swear you were listening to Hooker 'n' Heat. "Triple Ballade" and the "Carmina Burana Fantasy" capture the feel of the middle ages so accurately that it would be great music to hold the funeral of Thomas Beckett by. I'll bet Bela Fleck wishes he'd thought of this. 3) "Gospel Tune" is an orgy of finger-pickin' that would have done Fahey proud, and the way he uses tremolo as a rhythm instrument is an eye-opener. 4) The massive "Blend" is a warm up for the sort of stuff McLaughlin was later to make famous with Mahavishnu Orchestra -- and the fact that Bull's playing is less flashy actually makes it more accessible; Billy Higgins' drumming is nearly as much the star of the piece as Bull's guitar. 5) Then, there's his multitracked "Memphis," which he turns into a free-associational country-swing love-letter to an America that started dying as soon as he recorded this; two-lane blacktop bubbling away in the sun, mom-and-pop burger-joints with deliriously crappy music on the nickel jukebox, itchy-wool seatcovers on the family Buick, and, of course, SURFIN'! And Billy Higgins' drumming smiles so much you can feel it on the tape. Pat Metheny covered much this area of musical territory in his signature tune "Are You Going with Me?" But Bull's take on the whole midwestern-highway mythos is a lot more immediate and fun, and for that reason maybe even more poignant.

Sandy Bull died within a month or so of the great John Fahey (as did Higgins, by the way). He was even less well known, and far less prolific, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't as much of an inspiration to the people who loved his music. RIP.

Back in 1964 as a high school sophomore I walked into a little head shop in the West Village just off Washington Square. Incense filled the air and Sandy Bull's album, Inventions, was on the turntable. Those were the best of times. Now nearly a half century later I'm still lovin it. Five stars all the way!!!