Roots Music Rec's Request

[sisabet]

So apparently there is a ton of interest in American Roots Music - so yay! I've drafted help on the essay front from two very intelligent and musical sources, so this might actually make sense. This is my goal for May/June.

Before that - I do want to do an actual *music* post of Americana, kinda like Lum did with the blues posts, just so there is a starting point. I mean, I can bring up King Wilkie or North Mississippi Allstars or Uncle Tupelo or Professor Longhair or Alison Moore or Steve Earle (and believe me, I *will*) but music is a strange beast in that we can talk all day long about what makes *this* Americana and how this is actually folk music but since it was so heavily influenced by such and such artist that it sounds kinda country and how this is classic country but if you listen carefully, you can definitely hear a blues influence and this is classic blues by way of southern rock and this is not any of the above, but something totally different, but is important because it helped shape all of the above.

And it can all be called Americana because it all arises from roots music.

But none of this means anything if we are just talking about it - we gotta listen to it as well (so we have something to talk about). So now I need your help - if you are reading this and are into roots music -- please post a couple of essential rec's in the comments cause, as you know, this is an extremely large playing field.

And my definition of roots music is extremely wide - so if you think it fits, go ahead and suggest it and tell me why (if you can, you don't have to).

Also - you can just give the name of the artist and album/song - uploading mp3s is not a requirement to play.

Comments

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Leadbelly - Irene Goodnight
Jimmy Driftwood - the Battle of New Orleans
Woody Guthrie - So Long, It's Been Good to Know Ya
Harry McClintock - Big Rock Candy Mountain; Hallelujah, I'm a Bum
Win Stracke, Big Bill Broonzy - I Come For to Sing

This is just shit off the top of my head - lemme do some thinking.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

I knew I could count on you. "The Battle of New Orleans" should be a vid.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

The authorship of many traditional Americana pieces is impossible to trace - but I can give a sense of who made the pieces famous, or whose version we take as the standard:

Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey - Big Bill Broonzy
Freight Train - Elizabeth Cotton
Hobo's Lullaby - Goebel Reeves
House of the Rising Sun - Woody Guthrie
John Henry - Alan Lomax collection
Roll in my Sweet Baby's Arms - The New Lost City Ramblers

Actually, the smart thing to do would be to look into Smithsonians Folkways label and the Moses Asch collections - he compiled, researched, and preserved more Americana than anyone else in our history.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

a small compilation you might look into (http://btobmusic.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?userid=pY6wmAjAZw&sourceid=00395996645644787198&btob=Y&EAN=93074009024&ITM=3).

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Man - I want it.

::yearns::

[gwynnega]

Oh, I was going to rec that comp as well. The original LP comps that the CDs collect were enormously influential to a whole generation of musicians. (A few years back the Getty Center actually did a conference about Harry Smith and his folk compilations...it was pretty cool.)

[renenet.livejournal.com]

Cross your fingers that it's downstairs in the media department like the catalog says it is, and I'll be coming home with that and more from Harry Smith's compilations.