Old Time Music, Indeed!-Part Two

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Maybelle Carter Performing "The Storms Are On The Ocean".

CD Review

Friends Of Old Time Music, various artists, 3CD set, Smithsonian/Folkways Recordings, 2006

This three disc compilation (including an incredibly informative booklet giving a mother lode of material, including photographs, about the how, when and why of bringing the mainly Southern, mainly rural talents to New York City in the early 1960s) will give the new generation and many older aficionados, in one place, a primer of great value. If you want to know the details of this part of the folk revival puzzle you certainly have to start here. For the beginner or the aficionado this is a worthwhile addition to the store of our common musical heritage.

Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe you should be sure to listen to:

Disc Two: Maybelle Carter on "Foggy Mountain Top” and “Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow,” Jesse Fuller on “San Francisco Bay Blues,” Roscoe Holcomb on “John Henry,” and Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers on “Before This Time Another Year”


Foggy Mountain Top

If I had listened to what mama said
I would not have been here today
Wishing for thing I'll never have
And weeping my sweet life away

If I was on some foggy mountain top
I'd sail way out to the west
I'd sail all around this old wide world
To the girl I love the best

You caused me to weep, you caused me to mourn
You caused me to leave my home
Oh that lonesome pine and the good old times
I'm on my way back home

Oh when you see that two-faced blonde
There is something you can tell her
She need not fool her time away
A-tryin' to steal my feller

Oh when you come to court me
Put on your navy blue
That long tail "roust-about" you wear
Don't do a thing for you