Donovan - Like it Is, Was, & Evermore Shall Be

I guess I’ll be disclosing my ancient age, but 1968 was a pivotal year in my life. The U.S. industrial-military complex decided that in order to expand & maintain their imperialist war in Vietnam that it was necessary to institute a Draft Lottery for the inscription of young men into the war machine. My lottery number was 40. I was destined for tropical Southeast Asia unless things in my life drastically changed. Donovan was a big influence on me at that time. Often mentioned together in musickal commentaries of the time, Dylan was the greater poet & probably the better musickian, but songs like “Universal Soldier” & “The War Drags On” put Donovan’s humanity squarely into the minds of a generation, while classics like “Catch the Wind” & "Sunny Goodge Street" touched that deepest spot within our souls where we all desired to reside.

Like it Is, Was, & Evermore Shall Be is a compilation album from Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan (Leitch) released in the U.S. on Hickory Records in April 1968. This was the second Hickory Records compilation using Donovan's 1965 Pye Records material, following the moderately successful The Real Donovan from 1966. By 1968, Donovan had released a string of hit singles & albums in both the U.S. & U.K.

Although most of the songs on Like it Is, Was, & Evermore Shall Be had been released on: What's Bin Did & What's Bin Hid (U.S. title: Catch the Wind); Fairytale; The Universal Soldier ep & the Turquoise single , the new compilation did contain "Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do" & a cover of Bert Jansch's "Do You Hear Me Now?", neither of which had been included on any of Donovan's U.S. lps.

The following are the original releases of each song:

"Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do?" b-side of "Catch the Wind" released March 12, 1965;
"Josie" & "Catch the Wind" from What's Bin Did & What's Bin Hid released May 14, 1965;
"Summer Day Reflection Song", "Colours", "To Try for the Sun", & "Sunny Goodge Street" from Fairytale released October 22, 1965;
"Do You Hear Me Now?", "Universal Soldier", & “The War Drags On” from The Universal Soldier ep released August 15, 1965;
& "Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)" b-side of "Turquoise" released October 30, 1965.

Year of Release: 1968
Label: Hickory Records LPS143
Genre: Alt-folk

Tracklist:
Side 1-
Summer Day Reflection Song
Do You Hear Me Now? (Bert Jansch)
Colours
Universal Soldier (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
Josie
Catch the Wind

Side 2-
Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do?
To Try for the Sun
Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)
The War Drags On" (Mick Softly)
Sunny Goodge Street

Download: Donovan - Like it Is, Was, & Evermore Shall Be
Download Size: 70.3MB (ripped from 40 yr. old vinyl at 320Kpbs)

Hedningarna - Fire (1996)

Hedningarna is a Swedish and, for some years partly Finnish, folk music band that mixes electronics and rock with elements from old Scandinavian folk music. Their music features Yoik or juoiggus, a traditional Sami form of song.
Hållbus Totte Mattson, Anders Stake and Björn Tollin formed Hedningarna in 1987. Hedning is Swedish for heathen, while arna is the plural definite article. Their music studies the roots of the Old Norse culture, including the use of ancient instruments not much used in current Swedish folk music (fiddles, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, etc.). Stake, a trained luthier, also began to invent and build new instruments, to produce new sounds.


Tracklist:
01. Aivoton
02. Tina Vieri
03. Gorrlaus
04. Vargtimmen
05. Joupolle Joutunut
06. Min Skog
07. Kruspolska
08. Tuuli
09. Grodan - Widergrenen
10. Räven

Download: Hedningarna - Fire (1996)
Download Size: 41.11 MB (128Kbps)

VA - Prison Songs: Historical Recordings from Parchman Farm 1947-48 Volume 2: Don'tcha Hear Poor Mother Calling

Here is the second volume of prison songs, a collection of field recordings made by Alan Lomax during his visit to Mississippi's notorious Parchman Farm state prison in 1947 and on February 9, 1948. The songs collected on Volume 1 were originally released by the Tradition label as Negro Work Songs. Volume 2 features songs that didn't make the cut for the original Negro Work Songs release, though one shouldn't let this fact persuade them from giving this a listen. The songs on Vol. 2 have somewhat of a harsher quality to them, which may be why they were excluded from the original release, yet the heartfelt soul of prisoner's . As with the first volume, there are also tracks featuring Lomax interviewing various prisoners on a variety of subjects, although this volume contains several more than the first.


"For those who may not know, the worksong tradition was a practice carried over from Africa, which manifested first in slave plantations and then in the prison work gang. John Lomax, together with his son Alan, began recording these songs in Southern penitentiaries in 1933. In 1947, and again in 1948, Alan returned to Parchman Farm to gather in the songs we have here. So charged with passion are they that claims of a declining tradition make very odd reading. Yet, when I listen to the Lomaxes earlier collections, I have to agree. Pre-war, the ages of the singers was lower and the melodies were richer and more plentiful. Where the present material wins out is in the march of technology. Pre-war equipment was too limited to record the convicts while they worked. Instead, most of the material was gathered after hours, with the singers worn out from performing the very songs the Lomaxes were trying to capture. By 1947, however, the first modern tape recorder was on the market. With this device it was possible to preserve the sound of negro worksong in full flight."In and out" was a common pattern in Southern penal institutions. It developed from a system of race relations and social attitudes moulded in slavery days and dragged into the twentieth century like a feudal relic. The penitentiary was an important element in the suppression of the negro population. Along with lynch law, the Klan and a system of injudiciously administered floggings, the threat of a spell in the pen kept a potentially unruly black populace in a state of servility. The prisons held their share of hard cases, but for most of the inmates, sentences were short, sharp, frequent and brutal, and they were usually meted for trifling misdemeanours.

Impressions of a high turnover of prisoners are supported by these two CDs. Volume 1 is exclusively from Lomax's 1947 recordings and features protagonists with such colourful nicknames as Bama, Tangle Eye, 22, and Hard Hair. Volume 2 is mostly from Lomax's return trip in 1948, by which time additional singers seem to have found their way into the pen. They include Dobie Red, Curry Childress, and 88. The impression is strengthened when one reads John Lomax's reminiscences of collecting songs in Parchman Farm before World War 11. Of the singers he mentions, only Dobie Red and Tangle Eye were in the pen between 1947 and 1948.

So influential was Murderers' Home that the name Parchman Farm has become synonymous with axe wielding convicts roaring ferocious choruses. However, the institution embraced much more than group worksongs and some of this is reflected in the programming. Axe and hoe songs predominate, but there are one or two solo work songs, several field hollers, including Bama's superb Stackerlee, and a couple of blues. There is also an interview, split over two tracks, during which Bama talks about song leading and about his lot as a three time loser caught in the web of the Mississippi penal system. "In and out, in and out, for the last eighteen years." It fades, heart-rendingly, into a mournful holler by another long time prisoner, Tangle Eye

Listening to the lyrics and how they were sung, I form the opinion that the songs were far more about making it through the can than they were about synchronising work. In all these verses you will not find the slightest iota of fantasy or escapism. If there were any would-be lottery winners in Parchman Farm or Angola they do not show up here. Instead the songs are vested with stark reality and sweat. They are the channelling of rage and resentment against the iniquity and brutality and rank injustice of a penal system which was nothing more than the legitimised extension of plantation slavery. All folksongs involve catharsis but, inside the pen, song was the only voice which allowed prisoners to kick against the system. Shared songs did more than alleviate the work, they alleviated the misery." - Fred McCormick


"These songs belong to the musical tradition which Africans brought to the New World, but they are also as American as the Mississippi River. They were born out of the very rock and earth of this country, as black hands broke the soil, moved, reformed it, and rivers of stinging sweat poured upon the land under the blazing heat of Southern skies, and are mounted upon the passion that this struggle with nature brought forth. They tell us the story of the slave gang, the sharecropper system, the lawless work camp, the chain gang, the pen." - Alan Lomax

Year of Release: 1958/Reissue 1997
Label: Tradition/Rounder
Genre: Field Recording, Folk, Blues

Track List:
1. Don'cha Hear Poor Mother Calling
2. John Henry
3. Strongest Man I Ever Saw
4. Well, I Wonder
5. Lies
6. I'm Goin' Home
7. More Lies
8. O' Berta
9. Disability Boogie Woogie
10. O Rose
11. Hollers
12. Stewball
13. Fox Chase
14. Katy Left Memphis
15. About Prison Singers
16. Rosie
17. High Rollin' Sergeant
18. Garbage Man
19. When I Went to Leland
20. Prodigal Son
21. I'm Goin' to Memphis
22. (Untitled) - (hidden track)

Download: Prison Songs Vol. 2 - Don'tcha Hear Poor Mother Calling
Download Size: 105MB

VA - Prison Songs: Historical Recordings from Parchman Farm 1947-48Volume 1: Murderous Home

I have several very unique and important albums that I am very excited about sharing. Unfortunately, once again time is not on my side as of late, and I won't be able to post them all in the time frame that I would prefer to. The first is a glimpse into the prison work system of the not to distant past. Prison Songs: Historical Recordings from Parchman Farm 1947-48 is a reissue of Alan Lomax's legendary album, Negro Prison Songs, originally released on the Tradition label in 1958. It was reissued under the new title by Rounder in 1997; however, it is currently out of print. The recordings were made during Alan Lomax's visit to Mississippi's notorious Parchman Farm state prison in 1947 and on February 9, 1948.

"For those who may not know, the worksong tradition was a practice carried over from Africa, which manifested first in slave plantations and then in the prison work gang. John Lomax, together with his son Alan, began recording these songs in Southern penitentiaries in 1933. In 1947, and again in 1948, Alan returned to Parchman Farm to gather in the songs we have here. So charged with passion are they that claims of a declining tradition make very odd reading. Yet, when I listen to the Lomaxes earlier collections, I have to agree. Pre-war, the ages of the singers was lower and the melodies were richer and more plentiful. Where the present material wins out is in the march of technology. Pre-war equipment was too limited to record the convicts while they worked. Instead, most of the material was gathered after hours, with the singers worn out from performing the very songs the Lomaxes were trying to capture. By 1947, however, the first modern tape recorder was on the market. With this device it was possible to preserve the sound of negro worksong in full flight."In and out" was a common pattern in Southern penal institutions. It developed from a system of race relations and social attitudes moulded in slavery days and dragged into the twentieth century like a feudal relic. The penitentiary was an important element in the suppression of the negro population. Along with lynch law, the Klan and a system of injudiciously administered floggings, the threat of a spell in the pen kept a potentially unruly black populace in a state of servility. The prisons held their share of hard cases, but for most of the inmates, sentences were short, sharp, frequent and brutal, and they were usually meted for trifling misdemeanours.

Impressions of a high turnover of prisoners are supported by these two CDs. Volume 1 is exclusively from Lomax's 1947 recordings and features protagonists with such colourful nicknames as Bama, Tangle Eye, 22, and Hard Hair. Volume 2 is mostly from Lomax's return trip in 1948, by which time additional singers seem to have found their way into the pen. They include Dobie Red, Curry Childress, and 88. The impression is strengthened when one reads John Lomax's reminiscences of collecting songs in Parchman Farm before World War 11. Of the singers he mentions, only Dobie Red and Tangle Eye were in the pen between 1947 and 1948.

So influential was Murderers' Home that the name Parchman Farm has become synonymous with axe wielding convicts roaring ferocious choruses. However, the institution embraced much more than group worksongs and some of this is reflected in the programming. Axe and hoe songs predominate, but there are one or two solo work songs, several field hollers, including Bama's superb Stackerlee, and a couple of blues. There is also an interview, split over two tracks, during which Bama talks about song leading and about his lot as a three time loser caught in the web of the Mississippi penal system. "In and out, in and out, for the last eighteen years." It fades, heart-rendingly, into a mournful holler by another long time prisoner, Tangle Eye

Listening to the lyrics and how they were sung, I form the opinion that the songs were far more about making it through the can than they were about synchronising work. In all these verses you will not find the slightest iota of fantasy or escapism. If there were any would-be lottery winners in Parchman Farm or Angola they do not show up here. Instead the songs are vested with stark reality and sweat. They are the channelling of rage and resentment against the iniquity and brutality and rank injustice of a penal system which was nothing more than the legitimised extension of plantation slavery. All folksongs involve catharsis but, inside the pen, song was the only voice which allowed prisoners to kick against the system. Shared songs did more than alleviate the work, they alleviated the misery." - Fred McCormick


"These songs belong to the musical tradition which Africans brought to the New World, but they are also as American as the Mississippi River. They were born out of the very rock and earth of this country, as black hands broke the soil, moved, reformed it, and rivers of stinging sweat poured upon the land under the blazing heat of Southern skies, and are mounted upon the passion that this struggle with nature brought forth. They tell us the story of the slave gang, the sharecropper system, the lawless work camp, the chain gang, the pen." - Alan Lomax

Year of Release: 1958/Reissue 1997
Label: Tradition/Rounder
Genre: Field Recording, Folk, Blues
Bitrate:

Track List:
1. Jimpson & Group - The Murderer's Home
2. Jimpson & Axe Gang - No More, My Lord
3. B.B. & Group - Old Alabama
4. B.B. & Group - Black Woman
5. Tangle Eye, Fuzzy Red, Hard Hair, & Group - Jumpin' Judy
6. C.B. - Whoa Buck
7. "22" - Prettiest Train
8. "22" & Group - Old Dollar Mamie
9. "22" & Group - It Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad
10. C.B. & Axe Gang - Rosie
11. Bama - Levee Camp Hollar
12. Bama - What Makes a Work Song Leader (Interview With Bama)
13. "22" With Little Red, Tangle Eye, & Hard Hair - Early in the Mornin'
14. Bama - How I Got in the Penitentiary (Interview With Bama)
15. Tangle Eye - Tangle Eye Blues
16. Bama - Stackerlee
17. Alex - Prison Blues

Download: Prison Songs Volume 1: Murderous Home
Download Size: 100MB

VA - Anthology of American Folk Music

There isn't much that I can say about this legendary collection that hasn't already been said. If you have an interest in early American folk or blues, then this compilation is absolutely essential. I have seen this collection posted on other blogs, so I thought that I would make mine stand out from the crowd by including a couple of relevant additions. The first is a pdf file of the liner notes included with the Smithsonian Folkways reissue. These include both the revised liner notes, as well as Harry Smith's original liner notes. I should point out that revised modern liner notes precede Harry Smith's original liner notes. The second is a scanned copy of a book entitled Anthology of American Folk Music, which was published by Oak Publishers in 1973. This book is rare and long out of print. I have included more info concerning both of these additions below. The following information concerning the anthology is taken from Wikipedia.

Compilation and Release:
The Anthology of American Folk Music is a 1952 six-album compilation of eighty-four American folk recordings from 1927 to 1932. Experimental filmmaker and notable eccentric Harry Smith compiled the collection from his personal collection of 78 rpm records. The collection is famous due to its role as a touchstone for the US folk music revival in the 1950s and 1960s. Harry Smith, the project's complier, was a West Coast filmmaker, bohemian, and eccentric, who, around 1940, had begun to develop a hobby of collecting old blues, jazz, country, hillbilly, and gospel 78s. At a time when many people considered these records to be ephemeral, he took them seriously and accumulated a collection of several thousand recordings, and began to develop an interest in seeing them preserved and curated.

In 1947, he met with Moses Asch, with an interest in selling or licensing the collection to Asch's label, Folkways Records. Smith, in his own words, chose for this compiliation records from the period between "1927, when electronic recording made possible accurate music reproduction, and 1932, when the Depression halted folk music sales." Interestingly, upon the time of its initial release in 1952, neither Folkways nor Smith possessed the licensing rights to these recordings, many of which had initially been issued by record companies that were still in existence (including Columbia and Paramount), which technically qualifies the project as a high-profile bootleg. (Folkways would later obtain some licensing rights, although the Anthology would not be completely licensed until the 1997 Smithsonian reissue.)

The compilation was divided (by Smith) into three two-album volumes: Ballads, Social Music, and Songs. As the title indicates, the "Ballads" volume consists of ballads, including many American versions of Child ballads originating from the English folk tradition. Each song tells a story about a specific event or time, and Smith may have made some effort to organize to suggest a historical narrative, a theory suggested by the fact that many of the first songs in this volume are old English folk ballads, while the closing songs of the volume deal with the hardships of being a farmer in the 1920s. The first album in the "social music" volume largely consists of music likely performed at social gatherings or dances. Many of the songs are instrumentals. The second album in the "social music" volume consists of religious and spiritual songs. The final volume consists of regular songs, dealing with everyday life: critic Greil Marcus describes its thematic interests as being "marriage, labor, dissipation, prison, and death."

Smith's booklet in the original release makes reference to three additional planned volumes in the series, which would anthologize music up until 1950. In 1972, Asch, interviewed by Sing Out! magazine, claimed that tapes for two additional volumes of the project had survived, although the documentation necessary to make a meaningful release of the volumes had been lost. Revenant Records, in 2000, worked in conjunction with the Harry Smith Archive to recreate and release the fourth volume, associated by Smith with the element of Earth. This volume, apparently organized around a theme of "work" includes (for the first time in the Anthology) a selection of union songs, and anthologizes material released as late as 1940.

Design:
Smith also edited and directed the design of the Anthology. He created the liner notes himself, and these notes are almost as famous as the music, using a unusual fragmented, collage method that presaged some postmodern artwork. Smith also penned short synopses of the songs in the collection, which read like newspaper headlines-- for the song King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O by Chubby Parker, a song about a mouse marrying a frog, Smith notes: "Zoologic Miscegeny Achieved Mouse Frog Nuptuals, Relatives Approve."

Each of the three two-record sets carried the same cover art (a Theodore de Bry etching of an instrument Smith referred to as the "Celestial Monochord," taken from a mystical treatise by scientist/alchemist Robert Fludd). This etching was printed over against a different color background (green, red, and blue) for each volume of the set. Smith had incorporated both the music and the art into his own unusual cosmology, and each of these colors was considered by Smith to correspond to an alchemical element (Water, Fire, and Air, respectively).

In the 1960s, Irwin Silber replaced Smith's covers with a Ben Shahn photograph of a poor Depression-era farmer, a choice Harry Smith was said to have objected to, although others have considered this a wise commercial choice. In 1997, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, having acquired Folkways Records in 1986, reissued the collection on six CDs, including replicas of Smith's original artwork and liner booklet.

Influence:
The Anthology has had enormous historical influence. Smith's methodology of sequencing tracks, along with his inventive liner notes, called attention to the set, imbuing it with a talismanic aura. This reintroduction of near-forgotten popular styles of rural American music from the selected years to new listeners had impact on American ethnomusicology, and was both directly and indirectly responsible for the aforementioned folk music revival.

The music on the compilation provided direct inspiration to much of the emergent folk music revival movement. The Anthology made widely available music which previously had been largely the preserve of marginal social economic groups. Many people who first heard this music through the Anthology came from very different cultural and economic backgrounds from its original creators and listeners. Many previously obscure songs became standards at hootenannies and folk clubs due to their inclusion on the Anthology. Some of the musicians represented on the Anthology saw their musical careers revived, and made additional recordings and live appearances.

This document is generally thought to have been enormously influential on the folk & blues revival of the '50s and '60s, and brought the works of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, Dick Justice and many others to the attention of musicians such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. The "Harry Smith Anthology," as some call it, was the bible of folk music during the late 1950s and early 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene. As stated in the liner notes to the 1997 reissue, the late musician Dave van Ronk had earlier commented that "we all knew every word of every song on it, including the ones we hated."

Track List:

Disc 1:
1. Dick Justice - Henry Lee
2. Nelstone's Hawaiians - Fatal Flower Garden
3. Clarence Ashley - The House Carpenter
4. Coley Jones - Drunkard's Special
5. Bill & Belle Reed - Old Lady and the Devil
6. Buell Kazee - The Butcher's Boy (The Railroad Boy)
7. Buell Kazee - The Wagoner's Lad (Loving Nancy)
8. Chubby Parker - King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O
9. Uncle Eck Dunford - Old Shoes and Leggins
10. Leonard Rutherford & Richard Burnett - Willie Moore
11. Buster Carter & Preston Young - A Lazy Farmer Boy
12. The Carolina Tar Heels - Peg and Awl
13. G.B. Grayson - Omie Wise
14. Kelly Harrell - My Name is John Johanna

Disc 2:
1. Edward L. Crain - Bandit Cole Younger
2. Kelly Harrell - Charles Giteaux
3. The Carter Family - John Hardy Was A Desperate Little Man
4. Curry & The Williamson Brothers - Gonna Die With My Ham
5. Frank Hutchinson - Stackalee
6. Charlie Poole & North Carolina Ramblers - White House B
7. Mississippi John Hurt - Frankie
8. Versey & William Smith - When That Great Ship Went Down
9. The Carter Family - Engine 143
10. Furry Lewis - Kassie Jones
11. The Bently Boys - Down on Penny's Farm
12. Masked Marvels - Mississippi Boweavil Blues
13. The Carolina Tar Heels - Got The Farm Land Blues

Disc 3:
1. Uncle Bunt Stephens - Sail Away Ladies
2. Jilson Setters - The Wild Wagone
3. Prince Albert Hunt's Texas Ramblers - Wake Up Jacob
4. Blind Uncle Gaspard Delma Lachney - La Danseuse
5. Andrew & Jim Baxter - Georgia Stomb
6. Eck Robertson - Brilliancy Medley
7. Hoyt Ming and His Pep Steppers - Indian War Whoop
8. Henry Thomas - Old Country Stomp
9. Jim Jackson - Old Dog Blue
10. Columbus Fruge - Sat' Crapaud
11. Joseph Falcon - Arcadian One-Step
12. The Breaux Freres - Home Sweet Home
13. Cincinnati Jug Band - Newport Blues
14. Frank Cloutier Victoria Cafe Orchestra - Moonshiner's Dance (Pt. 1)

Disc 4:
1. Reverend J.M. Gates - You Must Be Born Again
2. Reverend J.M. Gates - Oh Death, Where Is Thy Sting
3. Alabama Sacred Harp Singers - Rocky Road
4. Alabama Sacred Harp Singers - Present Joys
5. Middle George Singing Convention - This Song of Love
6. Rev. Sister Mary M. Nelson - Judgement
7. Memphis Sanctified Singers - He Got Better Things For You
8. Elders McIntorsh and Edwards' Sanctified Singers - Since I Laid My Burden Down
9. Moses Mason - John The Baptist
10. Bascom Lamar Lunsford - Dry Bones
11. Blind Willie Johnson - John The Revelator (Song)
12. The Carter Family - Little Moses
13. Ernest Phipps and His Holiness Singers - Shine On Me
14. Rev. F.W. McGee - Fifty Miles of Elbow Room
15. Rev. D.C. Rice and his Sanctified Congregation - I'm in the Battle Field for My Lord

Disc 5:
1. Clarence Ashley - The Coo Coo Bird
2. Buell Kazee - East Virginia
3. Cannon's Jug Stompers - Minglewood Blues
4. Didier Hebert - I Woke Up One Morning In May
5. Richard Rabbit Brown - James Alley Blues
6. Dock Boggs - Sugar Baby
7. Bascom Lamar Lunsford - I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground
8. Ernest Stoneman & Hattie Stonemen - The Mountaineer's Courtship
9. The Stoneman Family - The Spanish Merchant's Daughter
10. Memphis Jug Band - Bob Lee Junior Blues
11. The Carter Family - Single Girl, Married Girl
12. Cleoma Breaux & Joseph Falcoln - Le Vieux Soulard et Sa Femme
13. Blind Lemon Jefferson - Rabbit Foot Blues
14. Sleepy John Estes - Expressman Blues

Disc 6:
1. Ramblin' Thomas - Poor Boy Blues
2. Cannon's Jug Stompers - Feather Bed
3. Dock Boggs - Country Blues
4. Julius Daniels - 99 Years Blues
5. Blind Lemon Jefferson - Prison Cell Blues
6. Blind Lemon Jefferson - See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
7. Cleoma Breaux/Joseph Falcoln/Orphy Breaux - C'est Si Triste Sans Lui
8. Uncle Dave Macon - Buddy Won't You Roll Down the Line
9. Mississippi John Hurt - Spike Driver Blues
10. The Memphis Jug Band - K.C. Moan
11. J.P. Nestor - Train on the Island
12. Ken Maynard - The Lone Star Trail
13. Henry Thomas - Fishing Blues

Download: Anthology of American Folk Music (Disc 1) (56MB)
Download: Anthology of American Folk Music (Disc 2) (56MB)
Download: Anthology of American Folk Music (Disc 3) (53MB)
Download: Anthology of American Folk Music (Disc 4) (53MB)
Download: Anthology of American Folk Music (Disc 5) (53MB)
Download: Anthology of American Folk Music (Disc 6) (53MB)

Liner Notes:

These liner notes were included in the boxed set reissued by Smithsonian Folkways. Included is an award-winning 100-page "Booklet of Essays, Appreciations, and Annotations Pertaining to the Anthology of American Folk Music." The booklet follows Harry Smith's original vision and features his "scientific/aesthetic handbook" of songs, an essay by noted critic and author Greil Marcus, additional essays, song notes, photos, graphics, a reproduction of the originally liner notes, and recollections by well known artists about the impact of this anthology on their own lives. Compiled and edited by Smithsonian Archivist Jeff Place, the booklet received the 1997 Grammy Award for "Best Album Notes."

Download: Anthology of American Folk Music Liner Notes
Download Size: 62MB

Anthology of American Folk Music - E-Book

Anthology of American Folk Music is a rare and currently out of print book published by Oak Publications in 1973. It was edited by Josh Dunson and Ethel Raim. It collects the musical tablature of the majority of the songs included in Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, as in addition to a number of photographs of the artists themselves. It also contains an interview with Frank Walker, in which he describes how the tracks for the anthology were chosen, as well as an interview with Moses Asch, who describes the birth and growth of early American folk music.

This book was scanned by Malcolm Lawrence. The downloadable file was nested within many folders, so I have taken the time to re-organize the contents and re-upload the file. An online version of the entire book which can be found on his website.

Download: Anthology of American Folk Music
Download Size: 15MB

Damien Youth - Festival Of Death

Re-up - Originally posted 3/14/08


This gem was originally posted over at Mutant Sounds If you aren't familiar with Mutant Sounds, go ahead and kick yourself in the ass, because you've been missing out on one of the best music blogs around.

A mysterious cassette-only artist who began putting out material on tape in the late 1980s, although some of it started to appear on CD in the late 1990s. His music is haunting, acoustic rock with a sense of British whimsy akin to Robyn Hitchcock or Donovan (although, as his tapes were distributed from Louisiana, it's uncertain whether the singer is British). It's solid, melodic stuff that would most likely appeal to Hitchcock fans, despite the sparse production. His Bride of the Asylum CD of 1998 put some of his work into slightly larger circulation, in better fidelity. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide

His music is haunting, acoustic rock with a sense of British whimsy akin to Robyn Hitchcock or Donovan.Damien Youth is an independent singer/songwriter/musician who works in a number of rock sub-genres. He has been a part of various musical projects including The Cosmic Cult Of Adam Strange, Featherbox, Kyte, Magic Island, Surprise Symphony and Walter Ghoul's Lavender Brigade. He has also recorded with Peter Daltrey of the classic '60s band Kaleidoscope. The common quality in all of Damien Youth's music is his uncanny understanding of the melodic heart of the song. Damien Youth's songs are like yellowed pictures from another time. But as it's true with old pictures they come alive - contradictingly so - out of the yellowness, colours seep through - clear and imagination invoking, like a Dali painting.
Sometimes reminding early Julian Cope, Paul Roland, of course Syd Barret, while on the tape "Festival of Death" some dark metal hints can be found (but so beautifully composed that you will not even be a bit bothered) - Mutant Sounds

Year of Release: 1995
Label: Westgate Group
Genre: Folk/Psychedelic/Rock
Bitrate: 128kbps

Track List:
1. Strange
2. Distant Star
3. I'm Afraid
4. Carolyn Grey
5. Dead Flowers
6. Ares Child
7. God Of Violence
8. Sex Cult
9. The Priest
10. Ghost of Semarias
11. Holy Circle
12. Final Orisen To His People
13. I Plant The Seed
14. The Serpent and the Fool
15. Lover's Mask

Download: Damien Youth - Festival Of Death (54MB)

Vàli - Forlatt

Year of Release: 2004
Label: Foreshadow Productions
Genre: NeoFolk

This terrific piece of neofolk beauty was recently reviewed by the Rock Blogger. I have been in love with this album for some time and was very happy to see it mentioned. The rock blogger is an artist and musician also known as Damien Van Vroenhoven. I've been reading his Blog for the past few weeks, and Mr. Vroenhoven has a real way with words and produces the types of reviews that make me really envious of his writing skills and a bit disappointed in my own. I urge you to check out it out.

Here is a brief snippet of the Rock Blogger's review of Vali's "Forlatt" album..."So what makes this masterpiece such a standout? Maybe its own reluctance to being a masterpiece is key, as its soothing compositions move with calm patience, letting each arpeggio descend and cello ache organically. Nothing about this album can be called pretentious, overwrought or overwhelming, its performances hold a power that is emotionally resonant and deeply comforting."

Track List:
1. Vali - Naar Vinden Graater
2. Vali - Dypt Inne I Skogen
3. Vali - Et Ensomt Minne
4. Vali - Nordlysets Dans
5. Vali - Lengsel
6. Vali - Sorg
7. Vali - Skumringens Omfang
8. Vali - Her Ute I Moerkret
9. Vali - Taake
10. Vali - Doedens Evige Kall

Download: Vali - Forlatt
Download size: 45 MB zip file

Terry - Rojvi LP

I had originally planned on posting some material by contemporary composer Igor Stravinsky, however Sharebee is giving me trouble. Instead I've decided to offer up this obscurity that was posted over at Mutant Sounds. If you haven't had a chance to check out Mutant Sounds be sure to do so. There's plenty of great stuff to be found there.

This loner acid folk-into psych curio came down the collector pike along with a companion piece by Jim Collins And The High Mass (which I'll include with my next batch of posts), both of 'em sans any pertinent info whatsoever. I've yet to find anyone online or elsewhere that seems to have the real scoop on these releases; the timelessly odd nature of their contents rendering a clear "read" on it's cultural context difficult. it might be new material. It might be newly released archival material. Or it might be that a cache of old copies were found and spread through the collector network (Chris Freeman at Fusetron guesses that these date from the early 90's). An uneven but sometimes hair-raising record, the true depths of this album eluded me at first, as the rather prosaic nature of the singer/songwriter structures that initially hem in these tracks suggest little of the creeping weirdity that leaks (and later spills) into his compositions as the album progresses and the plot thickens. "Clown Clouds" and "What A Day" (the two best and longest cuts here...roughly half the album) find introspective acid folk themes thrumming and cycling before being subsumed under gossamer residues of protoplasmic/ placental psychotropic space gloop on the former and resounding organ drones, fore-grounded rhythmic perambulations and electronic treatments swaddling Terry's escalating gruff vocal histrionics on the latter to supremely memorable ends. It's an insular, brooding and sometimes ponderous sound world that Terry engenders here and it's not always one that's 100% inviting, but the hot shit half will send your head spinning nevertheless. - mutantsounds
(Year of Release: Unknown)

Track List:
1. Feel It Coming On
2. Born In A Hole
3. Clown Clouds
4. Watch The Man
5. What A Day
6. Harvest Time
7. Let Me See You Smile

Download: Terry - Rojvi (69MB)