Style Wagon 6月 16, 2020

81 newly-remastered recordings on four CDs with a full-color, 144-page, cork-cover book in a cigar-style box.
Featuring archival images, original artwork by Harry Smith, and essays by John Cohen, Lance Ledbetter, and Eli Smith.
Liner note contributions by more than 80 artists, writers, and musicians that have been inspired by Harry Smith’s work including Daniel Bachman, Devendra Banhart, Sarah Bryan, Rosanne Cash, Dom Flemons, Steve Gunn, Will Oldham, Amanda Petrusich, Steve Roden, Art Rosenbaum, Nathan Salsburg, Peter Stampfel, and many more.

Clarksdale, Mississippi: birthplace of Ike Turner, Sam Cooke, John Lee Hooker and Son House and home to five taverns visited by Library of Congress researcher Lewis Wade Jones in 1941. In each of these taverns a jukebox. In each jukebox, a choice of records, painstakingly listed by Jones, who figured it was worth it. And now, sitting down in the comfort of your own home, you can pull yourself a beer and listen to the sounds that a 29 year-old Muddy Waters from nearby Stovall might have heard on a night out in Clarksdale, 1941.

81 newly-remastered recordings on four CDs with a full-color, 144-page, cork-cover book in a cigar-style box.
Featuring archival images, original artwork by Harry Smith, and essays by John Cohen, Lance Ledbetter, and Eli Smith.
Liner note contributions by more than 80 artists, writers, and musicians that have been inspired by Harry Smith’s work including Daniel Bachman, Devendra Banhart, Sarah Bryan, Rosanne Cash, Dom Flemons, Steve Gunn, Will Oldham, Amanda Petrusich, Steve Roden, Art Rosenbaum, Nathan Salsburg, Peter Stampfel, and many more.

UK collection. The big-voiced Ms Henske's two albums for Elektra Judy Henske from 1963 and High Flying Bird from the following year, released together on one CD. She had to be loud as she learned her trade warming up audiences, un-amplified, for Lenny Bruce in Sunset Strip coffee houses - her beat-keeping stamp occasionally destroying the stage. Eschewing "little girl" folk songs for the lure of whorehouse blues and murder ballads, Henske's renditions are totally her own while her charismatic spoken introductions are a perfect foil for the gutsy vocals which follow. She runs the entire gamut of emotions; often very funny but also tender, raunchy, yearning and sensual. This reissue captures a time when Judy Henske was a force of untamed nature in the safe folk world, maybe too big for the era then unfolding outside. Sleeve notes are by Kris Needs, based on an interview with the now 80 year-old Judy.

Don McLean released his debut album, Tapestry, at the dawn of the 1970s when the hangover haze of the 1960s still lingered strongly in the air. McLean specialized in that netherworld between '60s coffeehouse folk and '70s introspection, navigating the distance between confessional singer/songwriter and MOR pop. He'd never abandon this aesthetic, crafting a handsome, modest body of work over the course of nearly five decades, but he'd always be known for "American Pie," his fluke 1971 chart-topper. A long, winding elegy for rock & roll, "American Pie" spent four weeks on the Billboard charts but that smash success was eclipsed by its enduring afterlife in the culture, where it served as the fodder for nostalgia and parodies for decades, eventually earning entry into the National Recording Registry in 2017. So strong was the allure of "American Pie" that it suggested McLean only had one charting hit, which isn't true: its follow-up, "Vincent," peaked at 12, and throughout the '70s he was a mainstay on Billboard's adult contemporary charts, culminating in his final crossover hit in the form of a 1980 cover of Roy Orbison's "Crying." McLean faded from the charts not long after that, but he'd keep touring and recording all the way into the 2010s, relying as much on affection for his entire catalog as he did on "American Pie."

Few female singers matched the hard-swinging Anita O'Day for sheer exuberance and skill in all areas of jazz vocals: her splendid improvising, wide range, dynamic tone, and innate sense of rhythm made her one of the most enjoyable singer of the age. O'Day's first appearances in a big band shattered the traditional image of a demure female vocalist by swinging just as hard as the other musicians on the bandstand, best heard on her vocal trading with Roy Eldridge on the Gene Krupa recording "Let Me Off Uptown." After making her solo debut in the mid-'40s, she incorporated bop modernism into her vocals and recorded over a dozen of the best vocal LPs of the era for Verve during the 1950s and '60s. Though hampered during her peak period by heavy drinking and, later, drug addiction, she made a comeback and continued singing into the new millennium. Born Anita Belle Colton in Chicago, she was raised largely by her mother and entered her first marathon-dance contest while barely a teenager. She spent time on the road and occasionally back at home, later moving from dancing to singing at the contests. After bad experiences amid brief tenures with Benny Goodman and even Raymond Scott, O'Day earned a place in Gene Krupa's band in 1941.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s the music charts were positively crammed with girl groups of a very different kind. These all consisted of three or four close-harmony singers, usually dressed in matching outfits, with high heels and even higher beehive hairdos. The songs they sang were largely pop rather than R&B or what would come to be called soul. They chronicled the ups and downs of teen romance as it existed in that era. There were jealous boys and jealous girls and rivalry aplenty, not to mention supportive friends and disapproving parents and teachers. Of course, there was also True Love among the 100 songs assembled here.