I have often written on how good the Folk Å Rock record store in Malmö is. I went there yesterday with a pal of mine to buy tickets for the Will Kimbraugh concert at the end of March, which I am super stoked for.
Any way, I don't get to go to Malmö that often, so I browsed through the country/folk/bluegrass section and found this Lunsford record, which I bought. To be honest, I hadn't heard Lunsford before, but the fact that this record is released on the Smithsonian/Folkways label is enough to know that it's good.
Fans of more contemporary country music must forgive me for writing so much on banjo pickers of the 30's, but I really enjoy that kind of music and would like to see it gaining in popularity, so I do my bit for spreading the word.
Well, well, what you get here is perhaps not the best singing voice in the world, but Bascom makes up for that with his superb banjo skills. The totality of the music is just pure dead brilliant.
The full title, Ballads, banjo tunes and sacred songs of western north Carolina, says it all. On this record, you get 18 top tunes of that description. As a practicing Christian (Evangelical Lutheran), I could have settled for some more spiritual tunes, but I'm quite content. The secular songs are top notch. It would be a shame to complain when you get such a brill record for your money's worth.
People have often spoken loads of the Irish roots of American folk and I agree to some extent, though I would rather like to call the influence "Gaelic", as some of the tunes, most notably Bonny George Campbell, with it's fiddle and it's unaccompanied singing, sound really Scottish to me. I'm not an expert on Scottish (nor American, really) folk, but I think there are clear similarities.
If you like old American folk, you'll definitely like this. It's not the holy Grail of American folk, but it's still pretty good.
A record as good as this gets 77,3% in rate of satisfaction.
No comments:
Post a Comment