In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes

Hobart Smith | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 30, 2005)
• Original Release Date: 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Smithsonian Folkways
• ASIN: B000A3EJOA
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #168,343 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Heaven’s Airplane

2. Banging Breakdown

3. Buck Creek Girls

4. Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss

5. Brown Skin Blues

6. John Brown’s Dream

7. The Cuckoo

8. Cripple Creek

9. John Greer’s Two-Step

10. Wabash Blues

11. Jim and Me

12. Old Joe Clark

13. John Henry

14. Give Me Your Heart

15. What Did the Buzzard Say to the Crow

16. Soldier’s Joy

17. Uncloudy Day

18. I Feel So Good

19. Cumberland Gap

20. Jim Along

See all 36 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

The Washington CityPaper, Nov. 11, 2005

On these 36 songs, Smith stands out most for his “banjer” picking. He’s a speedy beast with the instrument

Product Description

On this album of never-before-released work, mountain music virtuoso Hobart Smith(1897–1965) plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and piano in addition to singing, clog dancing,and reminiscing. Taped shortly before he died by fellow banjo player Fleming Brown,Smith brings us back to a vanished era in these deeply personal recordings. 80-page book, historical photos, lyrics,two tablatures, 36 tracks, 72 minutes. Produced and annotated by Stephen Wade.

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential collection, February 6, 2006

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes (Audio CD)

Smith plays fiddle, banjo, guitar, and piano. He sings. His foot stomping and dancing while he plays is like another instrument. How did I survive as a fan of blues and old time music without this CD before it came out. What we get is an entire span of music that must have been played when he was young and the music he played was the music everyone wanted to hear. His banjo playing is in a class of its own which may at first be frightening to other banjoists who can't equal the speed, the power, and the musicality he provides. I love his guitar playing which is swingier than most old time guitar playing. His slide blues are wonderful. Even his piano music makes me want to dance. His voice is pretty good too. You get a real sense of this man, his strength, his longing, and the mighty joy that music brings

Having all of this on one CD creates an environment, a backgroup that transmits the traditional rhythm and techniques to the present. The blues and the banjo songs, the fiddle tunes and the sacred songs, all blend together.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Approaching the Divine..., August 20, 2009

By 

Pharoah S. Wail (Inner Space) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes (Audio CD)

... I believe that's how I remember John Cohen describing Wade Ward's best banjo playing in a set of liner-notes. It's a most appropriate tag for Hobart Smith found as he is here in october of 1963 on banjo, fiddle, acoustic guitar and piano. With this set, with the recording of the tapes from which this set was born, Fleming Brown set his place in history alongside Harry Oster (I'm as Blue as a Man Can Be, Poor Bob's Blues), Mike Seeger (Dock Boggs: His Folkways Years 1963-1968, Masters of Old-Time Country Autoharp) and John Fahey (Vanguard Sessions: Blues From The Delta) as one of those visionaries of the 1950s and '60s who were progressive enough to go to the root, the source, the True Vine before some of its most outstanding muscians were gone.

Notes To Wandering Deadheads and Garcia/Grisman Fans: Yes, Walking Boss is the tune you know from Grisman & Garcia, though here on Hobart's banjo it joins Cuckoo and Wabash Blues in reaching an almost cruel intensity of beauty and attack.

I also have Blue Ridge Legacy - The Alan Lomax Portait Series and love it but there's something unspeakably special about these Fleming Brown tapes... about this whole production, liner-notes, interview snips and all. Old-timers and newbies alike, this is essential.

When the genuine mountain banjo masters are doing it, I mean really doing it, there's nothing else like it. It doesn't happen when Bela Fleck plays banjo. It doesn't happen when Earl Scruggs plays banjo. The 5-string, hypnotic, ancient magic happens in a major way when Hobart Smith played the banjo.

I get chills during this disc. There's more going on here than just music. There's the fading of memory, there's America, there's life and there's death. There's family and tradition and some things that never will be again. There's Being in this world, in the best possible sense. Then again, all those things are in Hobart's music, so maybe another wise man was right.

"In the end there's just a song
comes crying like the wind
through all the broken dreams
and vanished years."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Out of the Past, August 27, 2008

By 

David Ralstin (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes (Audio CD)

I am astounded to find Hobart's music on amazon. He was my great uncle and I was privilaged to hear him play and sing for me in 1957 when I traveled by train from Portland Oregon to visit my grandmother, Texas Gladden. She was also a large part of appalachian music history. I wasn't fully aware of their contribution until I was much older.