Classic Folk From Smithsonian Folkways
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Music CD Cover
Brand: Smithsonian Folkways RecordingsEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2004-07-27
Model: SFW40110
Music Label: Smithsonian Folkways
Soundtracks:
- Pastures Of Plenty - Woody Guthrie
- We Shall Overcome - Pete Seeger
- Rock Island Line - Lead Belly
- No More Auction Block - Paul Robeson
- Deportees (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos) - Barbara Dane
- John Henry - Doc Watson
- John Hardy - Mike Seeger
- Betty And Dupree - Brownie McGhee
- Gallis Pole - Fred Gerlach
- Polly Von - Paul Clayton
- Butcher Boy - Peggy Seeger
- Duncan And Brady - Dave Van Ronk
- Railroad Bill - Hobart Smith
- Wayfaring Stranger - Burl Ives
- Big Rock Candy Mountain - Haywire Mac
- Born 100,000 Years Ago - Cisco Houston
- Sugar Babe, It's All Over Now - Mark Spoelstra
- Changes - Phil Ochs
- Black And White - Earl Robinson
- Most Fair Beauty Bright - Jean Ritchie
- Cielito Lindo - Pete Seeger
- Tom Dooley - The New Lost City Ramblers
- Freight Train - Elizabeth Cotten
- Down On Me - Mary Pickney
- This Train (Bound For Glory) - Big Bill Broonzy
Free Music Notes for Classic Folk From Smithsonian Folkways
Free Music Review: Folk Music-The Graduate Course
Hit: 5 Stars
Recently, in a review of a three volume set of CDs entitled "Troubadours of The Folk Era" containing songs done by many of the folk singers then coming in prominent in the 1960's, I headlined the entry "Folk Music 101-There Are Many Rooms In That Mansion" . That entry however, in a way, begged the question of how those singers (or listeners like me) traced their ways back to the roots of folk.
Well, my friends, I have the answer, or at least part of it, here in this little gem of a CD. Sure we all, later when we understood things better, appreciated that John and Allan Lomax did yeomen's service to roots music by their travels into the hinterlands in the 1930's and 1940's (and had Pete Seeger tag along for a year and thus serve as a little transmission belt to the latter generation) to find blues, mountain and other types of American traditional music. However, most of us got our folk infusion second-hand through our addiction to local coffeehouses and the fledgling performers who provided us entertainment there. They, in turn, learned their material from the masters who populate this CD.
You doubt the truth of that statement? Well, let's go through the litany. On one CD we have Woody Guthrie doing "Pastures of Plenty"; Pete leading "We Shall Overcome; Lead Belly on "Rock Island Line"; Doc Watson on "John Henry"; Elizabeth Cotton on the super-classic "Freight Train (a right of passage for virtually every 1960's performer); Paul Robeson on "No More Auction Block" (it will give you goose bumps to hear that voice); Big Bill Broonzy on "This Train" and on and on. This is the core of folk, take my word for it. No don't. Get this CD and get `religion' on your own.
A word is also in order about the role of Moses Asch, his Asch recording studio in New York City and his role as the producer of many of the classic folk songs in the 1940's and 1950's that I have gleaned from the always excellent liner notes provided by Smithsonian Folkway. As I have noted previously in this space the folk revival of the 1960's did not form tabula rasa. Asch's commitment is a testament to that proposition. It therefore is no accident that the early flowering of the folk revival was in New York City as that is where one could find the `refugees' from elsewhere from the `red scare', during the hard political winter of the 1950's.
Nor is it accidental that left-wingers blacklisted, like Pete Seeger, Woody and Paul Robeson, by the government are liberally represented in this collection. When one is searching for some kind of critique of society there is bound to be a folk song by some damn radical that reflects that outrage. Or gets prominence due to that struggle. Witness in that regard the history of the song "We Shall Overcome" and its relationship to the black civil rights movement.
I should also point out that the liner notes provide an interesting fact about the older generation of folk performers like Woody Guthrie and the young revivalist of the 1960's. The notes point out that a fair proportion of the folk revivalists came to love the music from songs they learned as children at summer camp. Woody and Pete Seeger are well-known for their children's songs. So, maybe the government was right to see "reds" under every bunk bed corrupting the morals of the youth. Oh, well.
As a general observation the producers of this CD, Smithsonian Folkway (the name itself should be a give away about the quality of this production) went out of their way, way out of their way to get the best renditions available of the songs by the individual artists represented and to provide the best range of what folk meant to those who wrote the songs, sang them and listened in. As I mentioned above in that earlier review of the 1960's folk scene for those too young to have heard the music then you have been given a reprieve- take advantage of it.
Classic Folk From Smithsonian Folkways Poster
We often take for granted the supremacy of artists such as Doc Watson, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Brownie McGhee, and other folk music legends. Classic Folk sheds new light on the success of the urban intellectual-driven movement that made rural white and African-American artists and their music favorites of audiences everywhere. This recording features classic performances by classic artists doing some of their classic songs during the great folksong revival of the 1940s through 1960s. It features some of the great performances from the vaults of Folkways Records. Compiled and annotated by Jeff Place.Folk Music CDs
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