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on the dobro, or playing very crisply on man- dolin or tiple; and, of course, after all these years, he is still one the folk scene’s finest bassists. He offers all of these and more on the final track Morgan Rattler which is a glo- rious romp.
Apart from singing in unison with Ian on a pair of comedy numbers, it is Dan’s voice and his eclectic choice of material. Not many would have expected to hear a reworking of Endless Sleep but here it is. His treatment of interestingly different folk club standards, The Golden Glove and The Lakes Of Pontchartrain works very well; less suc- cessful is a rather lugubrious take on The Drowned Lover.
Oh and the title! In places Adam lets loose with his considerable percussive skills of a range of objects… including the kitchen sink.
duck-soup.org Vic Smith
GFVP Liqa’ Home Records 413309
Well, let’s start with the fact that the initials start for the Ghent Folk Violin Project and that the man behind it is that fine Belgian musician, Wouter Vandenabeele, something of a workaholic if all the album releases, teaching and live performances with a num- ber of ensembles he has been involved with is anything to go by.
The album opens with an exquisite mazurka played very slowly, but takes a totally different direction when Syrian expat Shalan Alhamwy leads us in a different direc- tion with another lovely piece, this time in the different modes of his homeland. The violin is accompanied by the oud of a fellow countryman, Elias Bachoura, but it’s not until the third track that we get to appreciate his virtuosity and the passion of his playing. After that we seem to alternate between Europe and the Middle East for the rest of the album while making a nod towards folk, jazz and African music. Three other younger musicians playing guitar, cello and violin complete the line-up.
And we need to call them violinists rather than fiddlers because the intention of all the bowed instrument players is to show the beautiful tone of their playing which the superb quality of the recording and master- ing enable us to hear to full advantage.
For all the excellent contribution of the violins, it is the pleading quality of a long improvisation on the oud that remains most in the mind after each playing. His solo segues into powerful ensemble playing of L’Oiseau S’envole. This is an album of many delights.
homerecords.be Vic Smith VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Best Country Blues You’ve Never Heard Rough Guides RGNET1362CD
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Classic Delta And Deep South Blues Smithsonian Folkways SFW40222
For those who have spent their lives search- ing out old country blues there won’t be many tracks on this new Rough Guide com- pilation that they won’t have heard before, as most have already been re-issued over the years. However, for the rest of the universe, this modestly titled CD might prove a varied treasure trove of rather wonderful, archaic items performed by a selected crop of rela- tively obscure (to the non-collector) pre-war artists. There’s much variety throughout the 25 tracks as the mix is expanded to include
items that are not strictly straight blues. Charlie McCoy’s miscredited 1930 Always In Love With You is a version of a Tin Pan Alley song recorded by the popular Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians in 1929. Another Tin Pan Alley song In A Shanty In Old Shanty Town, dating from 1932, was recorded the following year by Spark Plug Smith, proving how adept and quick some blues artists were at picking up on popular songs of the day. Other non-blues featured include a fun version of James ‘Stump’ Johnson’s The Duck’s Yas Yas by the mysterious Jack O’ Dia- monds, and Walter Colman’s Mama Let Me Lay It On You, a rag-timey piece that is a direct forerunner to Dylan’s Baby Let Me Fol- low You Down.
Plenty of twelve-bar pieces feature throughout the album but no two sound the same as each artist finds a different stylistic approach both in singing and accompani- ment. From the guitar mastery of Little Hat Jones on Kentucky Blues and Carl Martin with his unbeatable version of Crow Jane, to the bright jangle of Vol Stevens’s banjo-mandolin on his Baby Got The Rickets, from the high voice of Mississippi Matilda to the rough throaty edge of Uncle Bud Walker, there is much to savour on this nifty new release.
worldmusic.net
The Smithsonian in Washington, DC, is the custodian of a truly vast collection of recorded material. In 1987, shortly after the death of Moe Asch – the founder of the justly revered Folkways Record label – the Smithso- nian acquired the Folkways catalogue from the Asch estate. Their ongoing reissue series produces albums that are as good as reissues can be with superbly re-mastered sound and always sporting well-researched booklets, usually containing wonderful photographs. The new Classic Delta And Deep South Blues is yet another excellent album that explores the diversity and dissemination of various southern blues styles and stylists, most of whom are better known than those featured on the Rough Guide compilation.
The CD contains 20 tracks topped and tailed by a couple of relaxed performances by Big Bill Broonzy. Between these tracks, old hands like Son House, Big Joe Williams and Bukka White play with undiluted Delta raw- ness, while old-timer Sam Chatmon contrasts with a more gentle approach. The other var- ied acoustic guitarists included are ‘Cat Iron’, KC Douglas, Fred McDowell, Scott Dunbar, Short Stuff Macon, and David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards who delivers a brilliant rendition of the Delta standard Catfish Blues. Further vari- ety is provided by pianists Little Brother
David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards
MICKEY HART RAMU Verve Forecast B0027530-02
RAMU is a scion of Mickey Hart’s Rolling Thunder. In the early 1970s the percussionist was on a self-imposed withdrawal from his parent group, The Grateful Dead. His father, the band’s manager Lenny Hart, had embez- zled and absconded, in the process also rob- bing his son. In 1972 Hart released his debut solo LP. Rolling Thunder opened with an invo- cation to the natural world by the Shoshone medicine man Rolling Thunder before dis- solving into a temperature-dropping down- pour. Out of the rain emerged Ustad Alla Rakha and his son Zakir Hussain.
RAMU is an acronym for Hart’s personal database, ‘Random Access Musical Universe’. What he has fed into RAMU is a world seen through his wall-eyed, clear-vision prism. He went on to become a world music guru and a champion fixer for the Library of Congress, rescuing or recording treasures like Music For The Gods: The Fahnestock South Sea Expedi- tion, Tibet’s Gyuto Monks and the Nigerian master-drummer Babatunde Olatunji. RAMU is a distillation of so much it is impossible to give it credit in a brief space. The list of per- sonnel in the world music frame alone is out- rageous. What he conjures from the Dead and the deceased alone is remarkable, whether Jerry Garcia or Babatunde Olatunji.
The album begins with Auctioneers. It wraps around field recordings of a tobacco auctioneer, made by Alan Lomax and John Becker, made in Tampa, Florida in 1944. Zakir Hussain, as does Hart himself, adds a new level of rhythmicality. To call it proto-rap would be lazy. What emerges from the sound collage is extraordinary. As the tale unfolds, traditions and genres bend and blur. The Mickey Hart/Robert Hunter song You Remind Me is typical. Sung by Avey Tate, it opens with the sitarist Niladri Kumar on zitar but also includes talking drum (Sikiru Adepoju) and sarangi (Sabir Khan) and more, all interwo- ven with field recordings from Peru. When The Morning Comes blends Tarriona ‘Tank’ Ball vocalising and nursery rhyming over Olatunji and Hart ‘percussing’ like rhythm devils. Original sound, archival recordings, spoken word and treated sound permeate this whole project with a spirit of adventure. Months into listening to it, RAMU is springing new surprises.
vervelabelgroup.com Ken Hunt
Montgomery, Memphis Slim, and Roosevelt Sykes, each with his own recognisable style, and by Dr Isaiah Ross blowing wild harmonica on Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.
Three band tracks illustrate new direc-
tions: Johnny Young belting out Sleeping With The Devil with Jimmy Dawkins on elec- tric lead guitar and Walter Horton on har- monica, John Littlejohn channelling Elmore James on Dream, and Clifton Chenier going off the dial with his stomping accordeon-led Why Did You Go Last Night. This Chenier track, plus another half dozen, are from Arhoolie Records, whose albums are now available mail order via Smithsonian Folk- ways. Oddly, the booklet identifies which Arhoolie or Folkways album each of the tracks is taken from, but gives almost no recording dates.
folkways.si.edu
Together these two CDs help form a con- tinuum of the southern blues line from the mid-’20s up until the early ’60s, from the early vaudeville and ragtime elements on up to the emerging modern electric blues that would eventually drown out the acoustic sounds of the pure Delta and southern blues.
Dave Peabody
Photo: Dave Peabody
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