Elizabeth Cotten

This disc offers a handful of performances from musical legends Elizabeth Cotton and Jesse Fuller. The disc offers a standard full-frame transfer. The English soundtrack is rendered in Dolby Digital Mono. There are neither subtitles nor closed captions on this release. Although there are no supplemental materials of any consequence on this Shanachie title, enthusiasts of the music will surely find it to be a valuable addition to a DVD collection.

Spirituals, guitar evangelists, "shout" bands, quartets, and choirs sing out the sacred sounds of African American gospel music. This Smithsonian Folkways "Classic" spans over a half century of select recordings to paint a broad panorama of this cherished American musical creation. Reverend Gary Davis, Sister Ernestine Washington, Sonny Terry, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and Elizabeth Cotten are among those featured on these 24 tracks of soulful song.

Before Woodstock and Monterey Pop, there was Festival. From 1963 through 1966, Murray Lerner visited the annual Newport Folk Festival to document a thriving, idealistic musical movement as it reached its peak as a popular phenomenon. Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Cash, the Staple Singers, Pete Seeger, Son House, and Peter, Paul and Mary were just a few of the legends who shared the stage at Newport, treating audiences to a range of folk music that encompassed the genre’s roots in blues, country, and gospel as well as its newer flirtations with rock and roll…

Although North Carolina native Algia Mae Hinton began playing guitar in the late '30s at the age of ten, Honey Babe, her first full-length album (an EP appeared in the mid-'80s on Audio Arts) wasn't released until 1999 when Hinton was nearly 70 years old. A casual collection of Piedmont blues, folk pieces, and gospel tunes, Honey Babe is full of warmth and joy, and even features a little of Hinton's trademark buck dancing. She sounds like a cross between Etta Baker and Elizabeth Cotten, also both from North Carolina, although she isn't quite as precise a guitarist as the former (Hinton's title tune, "Honey Babe," is a variation on Baker's signature "Railroad Bill" progression) or as timeless a writer as the latter (whose "Freight Train" and "Shake Sugaree" compositions have become folk-blues standards)…

Soundtrack to the second season of the critically acclaimed and eight-time Emmy winning HBO series, starring Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern and Meryl Streep. Big Little Lies: Music from Season 2 of the HBO Limited Series showcases an eclectic mix of soul, folk, blues, country and rock from Charles Bradley, the Spinners, Cassandra Wilson, Elle King, Willie Nelson and more. Several previously unreleased tracks are premiered, including “Piece of My Heart” by Christina Vierra and The Ryam Rehm Band (made famous by Janis Joplin’s Big Brother and the Holding Company), “Why Can’t We Live Together” by Jim James (originally by Timmy Thomas), and “That Was Yesterday” by Leon Bridges.