Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of one of the fiddlers on the CD under review, J.P. Fraley.
CD Review
The Art Of Old-Time Mountain Music, Various Artists, Rounder Records, 2002
Over the past couple of years my interest in mountain music, the music that formed part of my parental heritage, has increased as a quick search of such entries in this space attest to. Those reviews have run the gamut from the famous, and important, work of the various Carter Family combinations (and generations) to the "discovery" by the folk revivalists of the 1960s of the likes of banjo player Roscoe Holcomb to the interest by urban folk artists of that period like the Greenbriar Boys and The New Lost City Ramblers. One of the driving forces of that simple, plain music is the banjo. Another is the fiddle. On this CD we get various combinations of both. To our benefit.
Previously, in reviewing another Rounder traditional music series CD (featuring fiddles) , in this space, I noted that I was also reviewing a tribute album celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Appleseed Records (2007), now a fixture in preserving folk and protest music. I mentioned there that certain record labels have gained a niche for themselves in music history by establishing, driving, or preserving certain traditions. That is the case here with Rounder Records who for over forty years has put together off-beat, but extremely valuable, compilations of traditional music from the shores of Cape Breton to Appalachia to Western America. This CD holds to that fine and honorably tradition.
For this CD there is also a very informative booklet (as is usual with Rounder products), also including plenty of discology-type information about each track. That leaves the final question of what is good here. This compilation, like the tradition fiddle CD is driven more by mood than anything else. The mood here, as described in the headline- mountain breezes, lonesome fiddles and slam jam banjos (and other back-up instruments, of course). And you should think of this compilation that way as well, especially as some of the pieces are very short. Here are few to feast on: Roscoe Holcombe’s Rocky Mountain, Protecting the Innocent, The House Carpenter,, Kicked up a Devil of a Row, and Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.
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This version of the lyrics date back to the early 1800s.
O bury me not on the lone prairie-culled from Wikipedia
"O bury me not on the lone prairie."
These words came low and mournfully
From the pallid lips of the youth who lay
On his dying bed at the close of day.
He had wasted and pined 'til o'er his brow
Death's shades were slowly gathering now
He thought of home and loved ones nigh,
As the cowboys gathered to see him die.
"O bury me not on the lone prairie
Where coyotes howl and the wind blows free
In a narrow grave just six by three—
O bury me not on the lone prairie"
"It matters not, I've been told,
Where the body lies when the heart grows cold
Yet grant, o grant, this wish to me
O bury me not on the lone prairie."
"I've always wished to be laid when I died
In a little churchyard on the green hillside
By my father's grave, there let me be,
O bury me not on the lone prairie."
"I wish to lie where a mother's prayer
And a sister's tear will mingle there.
Where friends can come and weep o'er me.
O bury me not on the lone prairie."
"For there's another whose tears will shed.
For the one who lies in a prairie bed.
It breaks me heart to think of her now,
She has curled these locks, she has kissed this brow."
"O bury me not..." And his voice failed there.
But they took no heed to his dying prayer.
In a narrow grave, just six by three
They buried him there on the lone prairie.
And the cowboys now as they roam the plain,
For they marked the spot where his bones were lain,
Fling a handful o' roses o'er his grave
With a prayer to God his soul to save.[10]
Showing posts with label banjos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label banjos. Show all posts
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