1995 American Folk Blues Festival

Adding ten bonus tracks to the original release, 1995's This Ain't No Rock N' Roll is an impressive, extensive collection of the later work of Mississippi Fred McDowell. Though he uses a backup band consisting of second guitar, bass, and drums, the majority of the tracks simply feature McDowell…..

This 1980 concert film captures blues legend John Lee Hooker performing at the Montreal Jazz Festival. The man performs close to a dozen songs including "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer," "Boom Boom," "I'm in the Mood," and "Chicken and Gravy." The DVD release of the film includes additional footage of the guitarist. ~ Perry Seibert

He was beloved worldwide as the king of the endless boogie, a genuine blues superstar whose droning, hypnotic one-chord grooves were at once both ultra-primitive and timeless. But John Lee Hooker recorded in a great many more styles than that over a career that stretched across more than half a century. "The Hook" was a Mississippi native who became the top gent on the Detroit blues circuit in the years following World War II. The seeds for his eerily mournful guitar sound were planted by his stepfather, Will Moore, while Hooker was in his teens. Hooker had been singing spirituals before that, but the blues took hold and simply wouldn't let go. Overnight visitors left their mark on the youth, too: legends like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and Blind Blake, who all knew Moore. Hooker heard Memphis calling while…

Doc Watson - The Vanguard Years (1995) {4CD Set Vanguard Records 155/58-2 rec 1961-1971}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 944 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 402 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 24 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1963-71, 1995 Vanguard Records | 155/58-2
Folk / Country / Old-Timey / Appalachian / North American Traditions / Guitar

Four-CD, 64-song collection drawn principally from Doc's Vanguard releases of the 1960s and early 1970s (tapped his solo LPs and performances at the 1963 and 1964 Newport Folk Festival). This was Doc's best period recording-wise, and certainly you couldn't hope for a better document of his virtuosity, as the guitarist covers all manner of American folk and blues styles over the course of the set. It's too much, however, for listeners who aren't big fans; Vanguard's Essential Doc Watson is a more economical survey. If you are a big fan, though, you'll be especially interested in the 16 previously unreleased performances. Comprising the whole of disc four, these are mostly taken from live duets with Merle Travis or Doc's son, Merle Watson.

The Network Media Cooperative (Network Medien-Cooperative) was founded in October 1979 – by April 1990 we had already issued 19 titles, at the time as audio-cassettes with a comprehensive booklet in a small package that looked like a chocolate box. The covers and layouts were produced using Letraset on a light-table installed over a bath tub. Among those first records were the musical themes that were to preoccupy us for 30 years: an extensive document of the “Gypsies Music Festival”; meanwhile the music of the Roma has been documented on numerous Network CDs, including the anthology “Road of the Gypsies” (often copied but never achieving the same level). A double musíccasette packet was devoted to cult music from Haiti and the sounds and life philosophy of the Rastafarians in Jamaica. Recording trips were undertaken, among others, to Cuba, Trinidad, St. Lucia, and Curacao, but also to Latin America, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Belize. We also approached the music worlds of Africa in our portrait of the South African pianist and vocalist Dollar Brand (today Abdullah Ibrahim) and in the first studio recordings of Soukous music. These were followed by trips to Liberia, Senegal, Mali, Tanzania, Zanzibar.

This is a great record, with one important caveat – anyone looking for the Donovan of AM radio and upbeat ditties like "Sunshine Superman" will have to go for more recent live albums. Donovan in Concert has been neglected over the decades by the fans, who apparently would have preferred a set that encompassed the hits, yet it presents a surprisingly vital side of Donovan's music, as well as excellent versions of some of his best album cuts and good versions of the two actual hits that are here. In contrast to his studio sides, which often reflected the sensibilities of producer Mickie Most more than those of Donovan, the live material here, cut at the Anaheim Convention Center in early 1968, features Donovan doing his music, his way…

This program offers three lively, colorful, and captivating orchestral works by two United States composers, born almost a century apart. These pieces exhibit the fruitful exchange and flow of musical material between North and South America that has long played a role in popular music, apparent not only in commercial song and dance music using Latin American melodies and rhythms but also in early jazz and blues where tango rhythms are so often heard, as in W. C. Handy's St. Louis Blues. And both Gottschalk in the 1850s, close to the beginning of a creative American musical tradition, and Gould in the 1950s, when such a tradition had flowered considerably, show a combination of seriousness of approach with a popular touch.