Old Time Music, Indeed!-Part Three

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Maybelle Carter Performing "Cannonball Blues".

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 Three: Jesse Fuller on “Guitar Lesson” and “Cincinnati Blues,” Maybelle Carter on “He’s Solid Gone" and “Sugar Hill," Roscoe Holcomb on “Rising Sun Blues,” Mississippi John Hurt on “Frankie And Albert,”
and The Clarence Ashley Group on “Amazing Grace”.

Note: I should mention that all five of Maybelle Carter’s tracks on this compilation have made my recommendations list. I might add that her performances here (in 1965, and accompanied by members of The New Lost City Ramblers) make me wonder out loud, very out loud, what the heck she was doing all those years as merely one member of the Carter Family trio. Off these performances I now know who held that operation together musically. Not just her well-regarded and influential country guitar work and her use of the auto harp but her finely-etched voice that comes out very nicely on something like “Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow”.


He's Solid Gone

One day I am happy
The next day I am blue
Now I’m so lonely
I don’t know what to do
He’s gone, he’s solid gone

Down here a crying cause he’s gone
Wish that I was dying cause he’s gone, he’s solid gone

Washed his jumper, starched his overalls
He caught that train they call the Cannonball
From Buffalo to Washington

Down here a crying cause he’s gone
Wish that I was dying cause he’s gone, he’s solid gone

Listen to that train
Coming down the track
Carried him away
But it ain’t going to bring him back
He’s gone, he’s solid gone

Down here a crying cause he’s gone
Wish that I was dying cause he’s gone, he’s solid gone

My baby left me
He even took my shoes
Enough to give a gal the doggone worried blues
He’s gone, he’s solid gone

Down here a crying cause he’s gone
Wish that I was dying cause he’s gone, he’s solid gone