From Half Price Books and Waterloo Records (mostly from Half Price):
awRIGHT . . . Fromholz’s solo debut, released in ’76 at the height of the Progressive Country Scare.
Damn . . . if I was gonna have to have just one Stan Rogers album, this’d be the one. Almost every track on here is essential.
Classic high-style Dan Hicks. He swings!
I haven’t listened to this yet, but it has promise just because of who’s on it (i.e., most of Enya’s siblings).
Haven’t listened to this one either, but Norman Blake has been a Name for years in folk/old-time music circles.
Homer and Jethro were badly underrated for much of their career. Get past the cornball and hokum in their act, and you discover that they were both good jazz players, especially Jethro, who had a fluid, Django-influenced solo style. Fortunately Steve Goodman picked up on this, and both toured and recorded with Jethro in the years after Homer’s death.
Along with Silly Wizard (see below), the Battlefield Band provided a model for many céilídh bands then and since.
Hmm. This may not survive in my collection that long; the whole thing screams “contractual obligation album”. Annie Ross abruptly left the group in ’62 to try to beat heroin addiction, and Lambert and Hendricks had to find someone in a hurry to take her place. They found Yolande Bavan, a Sri Lankan singer/actress, and carried on for another two years, but Bavan, though talented, just wasn’t Annie Ross.
But I’m sure they meant well.
Silly Wizard wrote the book and cut the demos for a thousand céilídh bands to come after them. This is their second release.
British folk-pop, emphasis on the folk side. My main complaint about Pentangle is that Jacqui McShee had this breathy, wispy little soprano that makes the lyrics bleedin’ unintelligible, and all of John Renbourn’s and Bert Jansch’s playing put together can’t make up for that.
Folk-pop chapter the next, with two of Steeleye Span’s founders putting out a quiet, not-electric but not-quite-acoustic-either disc. Chronologically, this comes right after Hark! The Village Wait.
Recorded on Joe’s 1980 tour of the UK opening for The Clash, this album catches him rocking harder than ever, backed by a band that included both Ponty Bone and Lloyd Maines.
A bonus EP enclosed in the previous release; more live Panhandle hard rock with a faint country tinge.
Wow. Great early Guy Clark—not quite as shining as his debut, but full of solid songs, including the title track, an ode to the jillion or so good cooks you can find in the state.
Hard to find on the now-defunct Watermelon label, and even harder to find on that label in vinyl. This catches one of the best Lizard line-ups ever, with mandolin wizard Paul “Tex” Sweeney right out in front.
MA-jor grooves going on, this album. You got two hits for The 5th Dimension and one for Blood, Sweat & Tears, recorded right here at the source.
Usually cited by fans as Laura’s best album, my jury’s still out on it. This album isn’t a casual listen.
I dunno what to think about this yet. I wasn’t really expecting the Spanish In an album of covers, coming from such a naturally strong songwriter.
(The rest of what I got will have to wait for another post; this is getting too long.)
Henry has never been anything but the second prize. Fnord.
