|
|
Music CD - Roscoe Holcomb: An Untamed Sense of Control
|
Music CD: An Untamed Sense of Control
Artist: Roscoe Holcomb
List Price: $16.98
Our Price: $11.40
Your Save: $ 5.58 ( 33% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Smithsonian Folkways
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Tracks:
|
1. Swanno Mountain
2. Across The Rocky Mountain
3. Graveyard Blues
4. Single Girl
5. Little Maggie
6. Born And Raised In Covington
7. Barbara Allen Blues
8. Coal Creek
9. Rock Island Prison
10. I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow
11. Combs Hotel Burned Down
12. The Hills Of Mexico
13. Knife Guitar
14. Mississippi Heavy Water Blues
15. Coney Isle
16. Train That Carried My Girl From Town
17. Milk Cow Blues
18. Black Eye Susie
19. Darling Cory
20. I Ain't Got No Sugar Baby Now
21. Sitting On Top Of This World
22. Frankie And Johnnie
23. Foggy Mountain Top
24. Fair Miss In The Garden
25. Willow Garden
26. True Love
|
|
|
Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0093074014424
Label: Smithsonian Folkways
Manufacturer: Smithsonian Folkways
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Smithsonian Folkways
Release Date: 2003-03-25
Studio: Smithsonian Folkways
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: ROSCOE HOLCOMB: AN UNTAMED SENSE OF CONTROL
Comment: Excellent. This shows the greatness of the hills music of the time. He does an excellent job on fiddle work, vocal, and resatational work. This is a collection of his home recordings. It puts you in a relaxed and happy mood and sets you back to the times when things were great.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Harrowing
Comment: Roscoe Holcomb must be one of America's most under-rated cultural treasures. This collection is consistently haunting, hair-raising and intense, with some of the most chilling banjo and guitar you'll ever hear. A far mountain cry from the slick, soulless pap of modern bluegrass. It all went wrong when we lost sight of Roscoe...
Customer Rating: 
Summary: there's a really cool picture on the back i just noticed
Comment: mr holcomb doesn't sound very healthy. each song is sort of like a prolonged whiskey-laden death rattle. but they're also very full of life. as sweet as his voice is, i think my favorite songs here are the few instrumentals. "knife guitar" just rocks.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A real gem, Thank You John Cohen
Comment: John's long essay on Roscoe Holcomb the person that comes in the booklet with the CD is worth the price of the CD. Cohen describes the contrast between Holcomb's recognition as a folk musician on a national level while he struggled to make a living in his home in Kentucky where the only result of his national fame was that he was cut from the public assistance he received.There are some sections of letters Roscoe sent Cohen that speak to Holcomb's struggle with life.
If anyone wants to see this illustrated, pick up the film John Cohen made called High Lonesome Sound (make sure you get John's film not the several copy cats later made about bluegrass using similar names). You see the contrast between Roscoe's old time music that seemed to be left behind by all the people around him for Nashville drivel or rock and roll. You see a determined hard working man proud to stick out like a hard horny thumb with his music in a world going another direction.
We get reminded here of the multiple sources of Holcomb's music. Rather than being the product of some prestine tradition, Holcomb's tunes and his ways of playing them show the profound mixture of cultures and influences that marked him and the mountain communities. We old English ballads played on blues harmonica, traditional unaccompanied sounding songs learned from 1950s Bluegrass records, and, of course, the blues blues blues played on guitar, banjo, and harp. We even have Roscoe Fiddling.
There are some nice versions of songs we're accustomed to hear in other people's versions like Darling Corey, Little Maggie, I Ain't Got no Sugar Baby Now.
Holcomb's music is a good antidote to current trends in revivalist old time music that tend to want to reduce fiddling and banjo playing to one or two regional styles--not real even regional but narrow local or even family styles-as doctrinally reinterpreted and "taught" by one or two virtuosi. Other variations, or having your own individual styles tends to be frowned on.
Yet, Roscoe Holcomb's unique style and fascinating music speak to that fact that traditional music in this country encompassed thousands of styles, regional styles, personal styles, left such great room for the personal expression of a true artist like Holcomb who could make each tune his own tune, not just a representative of some general type. It speaks to all the opportunities for ideas about music to flow to someone from old traditions, the radio, records, and people of all kinds coming up and down the mountains.
Likewise contemporary old time music focuses almost exclusively on fiddle tunes and banjo versions of them, without much recognition or orientation to songs sung for their content and expression. Yet, such songs are at the heart of Roscoe's work on both of the CDs. He uses his music fundamentally not only to move dancers around floors, which I am sure Roscoe could do and do well, but to concentrate the utter meaning of the songs to his life into his performances.
Finally, much contemporary old time music seems to follow the white flight middle class population that produces it and their fantasies about a less diverse past and the white purity of the music. Holcomb's music is so infused with blues and African American influence that when Cohen met Holcomb the first time and asked what he did, Roscoe Holcomb said he was a "blues singer!"
Customer Rating:
Summary: The greatest exponent of American mountain music
Comment: My wife gave an earlier Holcomb recording several years ago as a birthday gift. After listening to it once or twice (and reading the fascinating and impassioned liner notes), I set it aside as odd, strange, and most peculiar. Although Roscoe Holcomb is a fluid instrumentalist, his voice is so high and unusual that I did not see how his songs could bear repeated listening.I was wrong, about as wrong as a body could be. A couple of years later, I picked up "High Lonesome Sound" again and listened to it with care. The peculiar and high-pitched voice grew on me, and I found the powerful and honest delivery moving in the most compelling way. I now think that Roscoe Holcomb stands on a par with Blind Willie Johnson (in his time an equally obscure and strange singer) as one of the greatest exponents of American-born and bred music. Imagine my surprise when this new recording of Holcomb's was released. To my amazement, the leftovers that were not included in Holcomb's earlier ("High Lonesome Sound") album are at least as good. This is a wonderful and astonishing set of recordings. Lovers of American mountain music should be grateful that this legacy of Holcomb's great artistry has been preserved.
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
Bob Dylan stated, "Roscoe Holcomb has a certain untamed sense of control, which makes him one of the best." Eric Clapton called Holcomb "my favorite [country] musician." Holcomb's white-knuckle performances reflect a time before radio told musicians how to play, and these recordings make other music seem watered-down in comparison. His high, tense voice inspired the term "high lonesome sound." Self-accompanied on banjo, fiddle, guitar, or harmonica, these songs express the hard life he lived and the tradition in which he was raised. Includes his vintage 1961 "Man of Constant Sorrow."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
