The Land Where the Blues Began [Original recording remastered] Review

The Land Where Blues Began is Alan Lomax's master ensemble of the music that shaped American music. It is the music that influenced the works of Miles Davis, Tom Waits, Ewan McColl and most recent Norah Jones. Take the tour of the Mississippi Delta of the 1930s and 1940s and listen to the story who gave birth to the Blues with such legends as Muddy Waters, Leadbelly and Fred McDowell.We need more music hunters like Lomax to record our music heritage for future generations. Lomax cross many towns and landscapes to get these first time field recordings of the now Blues greats. Lomax 'cornbread-and-poteen odyssey' across the American heartland is well documented in his candid conversations with the bluesmen and the story of how the blues became daddy of all modern-day music. It's told through those legends and through work songs, hymns, ballads, sermons, stories and smoky bars. The album captures the vivid sounds and the impossible to hold back energy and soul of the Blues fathers that changed American history.NOTE: The CD is chronicled in the book of the same name by Alan Lomax as an addition to adding to your Blues collection. The book also includes a 4 track CD sampler as well. It won the 1993 National Book Critics Award for nonfiction.

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The Deep River of Song: Alabama Review

I have heard some of these recordings, particularly"Knock John Booker (To The Low Ground)" for more than 40 years. This is the real thing, the core of Black traditional music. Too much is focused on the blues which sprang out of this kind of music and other traditions at the turn of the century. I came to this music in part out of my own leading participation in the current revival of Black string band music, especially fiddling and banjo.

Now even if there isno real string band here, no fiddling, and no banjo player, the real music and ethos of Black music, the basic rhythms of the church and play music that came from West Africa, as well as the more linear progressions of the blues that point to the area between the coast and the Sahara, are all here in their glory.

Much is said about the great Vera Hall. It is a shame that no one has put out an all-Vera Hall CD so one does not have to collect a dozen different Lomax collection reissues on various labels to have a CD's worth of her singing.

What seems important here is the versions of Black or general folk songs and blues we are used to hearing from white folk singers and white traditional sources like "Railroad Bill," "Hush Little Baby," and "Ain't Gonna Rain No More."

Also the music captured here as children's game songs, or children's games remembered by older people, show a side of blakc music reaching back to the earliest of times."Knock Johnnie Booker" such a song, as I said, has echoed in my mind since I first heard it on a Library of Congress sampler back in the early 1960s.The tune isn't about the funny character Johnny Booker, many white singers sing about following a minstrel version of the song.Instead it is about the reality of being a slave and getting beaten by the Master or the Mistress.But what a rhythm.My friend Clarke Buehling has been trying to teach the world the importance of the Juba Rhythm not just to patting it, but to his 19th Century minstreal banjo playing. But one listen to the Johnny Booker here, especially if you have heard the rhythm around you again in children's games growing up Black, you know what it is.

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Songs of Christmas from the Alan Lomax Collection Review

As a child, my mother sang Christmas songs over me to lull me to sleep.Her voice wasn't trained, but the sound was lovely and heartfelt.Listening to this CD allows me to listen to other ancestors in other lands performing in the same untrained but honest way.Regardless of the musician's skills, the spirit of Christmas lives in these recordings.Primary sources can be fun too!

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Southern Journey, Vol. 7: Ozark Frontier - Ballads And Old-Timey Music From Arkansas Review

The liner notes for and actual field recordings on this album will both hopefully open your eyes as wide to the wonderfully mongrelized nature of folk balladry as they did mine...This is purely visceral stuff, some of themost powerful singing, especially, that I have ever heard in mylife...[Aside to "Gummo" fans: if you ever wondered who sang theopening "My Little Rooster" song, it was Almeda Riddle, one ofthe unbelievable balladeers on this collection...]

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