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Track Listings
1
Heavens Airplane
2
Banging Breakdown
3
Buck Creek Girls
4
Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss
5
Brown Skin Blues
6
John Browns Dream
7
The Cuckoo
8
Cripple Creek
9
John Greers 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
Soldiers Joy
17
Uncloudy Day
18
I Feel So Good
19
Cumberland Gap
20
Jim Along
21
Soldiers Joy
22
Railroad Bill (Intro)
23
Railroad Bill
24
Old Joe Clark
25
Wayfaring Stranger
26
Chatham Hill Serenade
27
Ill Meet You When the Sun Goes Down
28
Indian March
29
Walking Boss
30
Woman at the Well
31
Clog Dance with Guitar
32
Black Annie
33
Wildwood Flower
34
Full of Music As I Could Be
35
Katie Went A-Fishin with a Hook and Line
36
K.C. Moan
Editorial Reviews
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. Includes an 80-page book, with historical photos, lyrics, and two tablatures.
Review
On these 36 songs, Smith stands out most for his âbanjerâ picking. Heâs a speedy beast with the instrument -- The Washington CityPaper, Nov. 11, 2005
Very good stuff... you'll have to have this because of the warmth & depth... damn, could he ever play banjo! -- NO Depression,Nov/Dec issue, 2005
âMore than four decades later, the 36 songs that compose In Sacred Trust are as instructive as they are mesmerizing.â -- Harp Magazine, December 2005 issue
From the Artist
"Hobart Smith was a first-class musician and showman, all right. Played by himself. Didnt carry a band. Played all the string instruments, too, and was a mighty fine buckdancer. He was a good guitar bluesman, a great old time fiddler, and Id have to say,he was the best old-time banjo picker I ever heard." BILL MONROE
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This is an ear opening album. How he remains relatively unknown is a mystery to me. The recording quality is first rate and the liner notes are superb. This is a must have from all fans of old-timey and country blues.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 20, 2009
... 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."
My, the banjo picking on this CD is wonderful, lively, and irresistable. Mr. Smith, previously unknown to me, was quite a treasure. His singing, captured here toward the end of his life, reminds me of Ralph Stanley's work in the film "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" but it grows on you as you listen. On a couple of religious songs here, his vocals are near-perfect and quite pleasant to boot. The gems, however, are the instrumental numbers, on which he plays several instruments, although the banjo tunes are the best to my ears. Famous old tunes often have lyrics that vary from state to state, decade to decade, although the basic melodies tend to remain pristine. On this fine Smithsonian product, which comes with a fine Smithsonian booklet, you'll hear "Cripple Creek", "Old Joe Clark", "John Henry", "Soldiers Joy", "Uncloudy Day", "Railroad Bill", "Wayfaring Stranger" and "Wildwood Flower" each a famous and frequently recorded item. Then there are the more obscure tunes and songs, such as "Jim and Me" a religious lyric I never heard before but loved by Mr. Smith. Overall, this is an album to put in the CD player when you want 70 minutes of classic American folk that will make you smile.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 28, 2008
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.
"Hobart Smith was a first-class musician and showman, all right. Played by himself. Didn't carry a band. Played all the string instruments, too, and was a mighty fine buck-dancer. He was a good guitar bluesman, a great old-time fiddler, and I'd have to say, he was the best old-time banjo picker I ever heard." So wrote Bill Monroe, quoted on the back of the CD package; praise indeed! Hobart Smith was certainly all of these and these recordings, made by fellow musician Fleming Brown shortly before Smith's death, capture the essence of this virtuoso of Appalachian old-time music. With these 36 tracks, the notes state that "Smith brings us back to a vanished era in these deeply personal recordings". They certainly do and, as is usual with Smithsonian Folkways products, the music is handsomely packaged, with an 80-page book, packed with information and photographs. Highly recommended as a showcase for the talents of this talented practitioner of old-time mountain music.
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