Roscoe Holcomb - High Lonesome Sound
|
List Price: Our Price: $10.50 You Save: $6.48 (38%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $8.00 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for High Lonesome Sound
Free Music Review: Peculiar, Strange, Moving, and Powerful
Hit: 5 Stars
My wife gave me this recording several years ago as a birthday gift. After listening to it once or twice (and reading the fascinating and impassioned liner notes), I set it aside as odd, strange, and most peculiar. Although Mr. Holcomb is a fluid instrumentalist, his voice is so high and unusual that I did not see how his songs could bear repeated listening.I was wrong, about as wrong as a body could be. A couple of years later, I picked up the recording again and listened to it with care. The peculiar and high-pitched voice grows on you, and the powerful and honest delivery is moving in the most compelling way. I now think that Roscoe Holcomb stands on a par with Blind Willie Johnson (in his time an equally obscure and strange singer) as one of the greatest exponents of American-born and bred music. This recording grows on you. I'm extremely grateful that this legacy of Holcomb's great artistry has been preserved for those of us who did not have the joy of listening to his searing voice and delivery while he still lived.
Free Music Review: No Power Remixes here...
Hit: 5 Stars
This music is so authentic it can almost be called a field recording. He lived this music, and he lived through this music. Here is a prime example of music intertwined with life, the way it should be for all of us. It is true music, warts and all. This is not Hollywood, nor is it "O Brother, where Art Thou?" You feel his joy and pain through his voice and through his playing (he even plays a damaged banjo on one of the tracks, which only enhances the music in the context). The songs have a feeling of meaty catharsis, of real unrequited pain, but where there's grieving there's also healing. To call it depressing is to miss half of the show. This music is true pain and true joy. "Trouble in Mind" sums it up very well. The healing power of music is well demonstrated here.I've played this for a friend, and he asked me "How can you stomach this?" My answer was "How can I NOT stomach this?"
Buy it. It will grow on you.
Free Music Review: Truly High and Really Lonesome
Hit: 5 Stars
Roscoe Holcomb is the real McCoy and my grandmother was a Kentucky McCoy who loved this sort of singing. I grew up with it and have heard most of the good ones, but Roscoe surely is at or near the pinnacle. This keening type of music is not for everyone, but if you love it, like it, or just are interested in it, you won't find a better performer in the genre than Roscoe Holcomb. He is high - makes Del McDoury, who is one of my best favorites, sound like a bass or a baritone, at least - and the sound does sound as though he is lonesome and soon, you are too. Roscoe's music hails back to the days before bluegrass became big, before Roy Acuff, and before the impossibly tight harmonies of Flatt and Scruggs, all of whose music grew out of the type that Roscoe lays out. Its hard to imagine a more just flat out enjoyable disk than this one.Free Music Review: I wonder if he knew what Sean Nos singing was?
Hit: 5 Stars
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I'll eat my hat if the penchant for dropping all sense of timing doesn't come straight from the Irish Sean Nos tradition. Although I doubt he knew that. If you like this stuff, a happy tangent might be to explore traditional Irish singing from Connemara where this music's great-grandfather is still a living form of music. Go to the Clo Iar-Chonnacta record label on the web for lots of more stuff like this. Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eirinn also sells cassettes of unaccompanied singing that give you a direct connection to where this music came from. Amazing.Free Music Review: Roscoe Holcomb is on my list for the best ever.
Hit: 5 Stars
I was first introduced to the music of Roscoe Holcomb when I became interested in folk music in the early 1960's. I regard his recording of "Little Bessie" to be amongst the best recorded songs I have ever heard. I was fortunate enough to attend a raucus Gary Davis concert in Edmonton, Alberta in 1970?, and that is about the only time I have ever seen a man deliver as heart felt songs as Roscoe did on the "High Lonesome Sound." And I would like to add an unmeasurable thanks to the Folkways people for the incredible gift they have given the world.