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Another Manteca double CD collection isn’t
a blues recording as such but looks at the American musical tradition
from the broader folk, bluegrass and roots-country perspective.
That’s not to say there isn’t any blues here. Skip
James’ Hard Time Killing Floor Blues is surely
one of the most chilling statements of folk art-music ever recorded
and there are sterling entries by Sonny Terry &
Brownie McGhee, Mississippi John Hurt and Taj Mahal.
However in the main this album covers the wonderful variety of
white performers who not only performed bluegrass, country, folk
and rockabilly but blues as well. It would be impossible to fairly
present such a collection without examples of songs that have
become part of the collective consciousness. Still it is almost
humbling to hear the unforced artistry of Gene Autry singing
his revival of the Jimmie Davis classic You Are My Sunshine
or Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is your Land.
With scarily virtuosic pieces from banjo or violin or mandolin
from Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs, Alison Brown
et al and wonderful entries from traditionalists such as the Carter
Family, Jimmy Rodgers and too many to mention, the open-minded
naysayer might even take pause for thought before proceeding to
side 2 which evinces a more contemporary bent with such artists
as Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Poco, David Grisman, Charlie
Daniels Band and Hank Williams Jr’s outrageous
country-rock version of I Fought The Law.
You really do have to give a hand to the compilists for avoiding
the slightest hint of drebbage and giving you people out there
the chance to hear something that will certainly become a landmark
of its kind in the years to come. RJ Feb 2003
