Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Now if that name doesn’t conjure up the image of cartoon rednecks in the styling of Family Guy I don’t know what will. Also it’s sentences like that which make me wonder how prejudiced I really am. Especially since I found out later on that he was born and raised into a Brooklyn-based Jewish family. Which goes to prove that you never really can tell.I have always been a bit of a sucker for folk music, however I have never really listened to the old stuff. For me it’s all modern stuff like Joanna Newsom, Sufjan Stevens and M. Ward. So it was greatly reassuring that upon the strumming of the first notes of San Francisco Bay Blues that I knew that this was going to be a record that I would like. None of these songs would feel at all out of place in the soundtrack of O’ Brother Where Art Thou?, with there being a great similarity between the track Mule Skinner Blues and Man Of Constant Sorrow.
One thing that comes across very well is the apparent impromptu nature of the music with the short introductions that pepper this album. Also the prompts that occur during songs, the most obvious examples being in New York Town.
As a whole this is one of those albums where you are able to so easily discern what it would later influence. However, unlike The ‘Chirping’ Crickets this album hasn’t really dated at all. In fact it sounds like it could have been made in the last ten years. It’s only some parts of the production that give it away to being as old as it in fact is. A very impressive album really.
7.5/10
Fab Four:
The Boll Weevil
New York Town
Mule Skinner Blues
Salty Dog
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