***The Voices Of The Old South- Alan Lomax's Southern Journey, Volume 1

Click Below To Link To YouTube's Instrumental Version of "Poor Wayfaring Stranger". Sorry that I could not locate film clips of the artists mentioned below but such items are either non-existent or not readily available. There are, after all, limits even to today's technological possibilities of recovering the past.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry4_7oVS_NI

CD REVIEW

The Hills And Islands Of The South -The Short Course

Southern Journey, Volume 1, Voices From The American South, various artists, Rounder Records, 1997

I have spent a fair amount of time recently reviewing, individually and on various artist compilations, performers from the 1960's urban folk revival. You know Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, Eric Von Schmidt and the like. I have also reviewed the earlier performers who influenced them on the more traditional folk side like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. There was another component of that search for roots that entailed heading south to the Mississippi Delta, the Georgia Sea Islands, and the hills and hollows of Southern Appalachia to get `religion' on the rural roots musical scene.

I mentioned in a review of the performers who influenced the 1960's urban folk scene that those efforts did not fall from the sky but had been transmitted by earlier performers. That, my friends, applies as well to the search for roots music. I also mentioned that we all, later when we understood things better, appreciated that John and Allan Lomax (here in this many-volumed series carrying on his father's work in the late 1950's) 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 music and other types of American traditional music. Most of us got our country blues infusion second-hand through our addiction to local coffeehouses and the performers who provided us with entertainment. The performers we listened to, in turn, learned their material from the masters who populate this CD.

This CD contains a nice assortment of Georgia Sea Island tunes, wage work songs, prisoner work songs and some of the most interesting simple religious music I have heard in a while. I would note in regard to that last point the version of "Beulah Land" done by John Davis and Bessie Jones (who also stands out on other selections here); Sidney Carter's "Pharaoh" and, by far my favorite, The Thornton Old Regular Baptist Church Congregation's "Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah". A few centuries ago during the Protestant Reformation, or a little later, during the English Revolution in England I would have heartily joined in on this one.

127. Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah
Text: William Williams, 1717-1791; trans. from the Welsh by Peter Williams and the author
Music: John Hughes, 1873-1932
Tune: CWM RHONDDA, Meter: 87.87.87
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1. Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,
pilgrim through this barren land.
I am weak, but thou art mighty;
hold me with thy powerful hand.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven,
feed me till I want no more;
feed me till I want no more.

2. Open now the crystal fountain,
whence the healing stream doth flow;
let the fire and cloudy pillar
lead me all my journey through.
Strong deliverer, strong deliverer,
be thou still my strength and shield;
be thou still my strength and shield.

3. When I tread the verge of Jordan,
bid my anxious fears subside;
death of death and hell's destruction,
land me safe on Canaan's side.
Songs of praises, songs of praises,
I will ever give to thee;
I will ever give to thee.