Norman Blake

Norman & Nancy Blake - The Morning Glory Ramblers (2004) {Plectrafone 80302-01160-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 334 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 150 Mb
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© 2004 Plectrafone Records / Dualtone / Norman & Nancy Blake | 80302-01160-2
Bluegrass / Country / Folk / Old-Timey

It's hard to believe that Morning Glory Ramblers is the first full-length recording by Norman and Nancy Blake in eight years. Certainly they've been active, from playing on all 47 Down From the Mountain dates, performing on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Cold Mountain soundtracks, June Carter Cash's final album, Wildwood Flower, and various other projects. This album, recorded on the soundstage of the Western Jubilee Warehouse in Colorado Springs, is a dynamite setting for the material found here. There are 17 songs in this collection, seven of them traditional melodies, still others so old they've seldom been heard over the last century, a Hank Williams' tune, and a couple by friends of Norman and Nancy's that are so saturated in the deep country, they could have been written decades before.

Tribute albums frequently betray their subject, but not this homage to Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears, the country giant’s 1964 salute to Native Americans. A concept album about a discomfiting cause – the US’s treatment of its indigenous people – Tears was a radical statement resisted, to Cash’s fury, by the Nashville establishment. For its 50th anniversary, producer Joe Henry gathers a stellar house band that takes turns to lead. Gillian Welch delivers an entrancing As Long As the Grass Shall Grow; Emmylou does likewise with Apache Tears. Steve Earle drawls: “I ain’t no fan of Custer” and instrumentals evoke North America’s haunted plains. Very fine.

Sony’s Legacy Recordings continues the long running Bob Dylan ‘Bootleg Series’ as they announce Travelin’ Thru 1967-1969: The Bootleg Series vol 15 which revisits Dylan’s musical journeys to Nashville from 1967-1969, focusing on previously unavailable recordings made with Johnny Cash and unreleased tracks from the John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, and Self Portrait sessions.