Search - Charlie Poole :: With the North Carolina Ramblers & The Highlanders

Great Recordings Carelessly Assembled

Todd A. Gracyk | Petaluma, CA USA | 01/30/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Here is another bargain box from JSP and here, too, is another mess (which I have come to expect from this fly-by-night label). On the surface this appears to be the complete Charlie Poole with assorted recordings by others, but it is not complete.



Banjoist Charlie Poole is truly one of the all-time greats in old-time country music and fans of his work have been well served with 3 excellent anthologies on the County label (featuring 48 tracks) and a great new, affordable box set on Sony/Legacy.



The sound quality of the material in this box set varies. Most of it is good but several sides on the last disc sound terrible. Liner notes are okay, but they are jumbled (the notes for the first and second discs got placed in the wrong booklets). The discography is error-ridden (mostly in regard to the artist/band name used on the various 78 RPM releases). "Coon From Tennessee" is mistitled as "From Tennessee." The discography lists dates, locations, and musicians but does not give label information.



In summary, there is a good deal of essential old-time country music here mixed in with marginal recordings, all presented in a haphazard fashion. I highly recommend the new Sony/Legacy release "You Ain't Talkin' To Me" instead."

Poor production, really sort of a rip-off of the County & So

Ben Dewberry | PA | 01/19/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I got this set just so I could have "all" the Charlie Poole sides. Big mistake! The Sony set has much better sound quality and very high production values. The County CDS do a decent job of sound and sort of cover the gaps. This sounds like basically a copy of inferior sources and the stuff that the above labels don't cover really sounds bad. I really wouldn't recommend this, even for the die-hard Charlie Poole fan."