Search - Dave Van Ronk :: Sweet & Lowdown

Charming if lightweight retro album

N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 01/30/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This album is an unexpected one for Dave van Ronk, the sandpaper-voiced folk singer: a bunch of 1920s & 1930s jazz standards; he doesn't play guitar on this one, leaving the accompaniment to a bunch of revivalist jazzmen jed by the expat British pianist Keith Ingham whom one usually would find on a label like Arbors or Sunnyside. All in all it's quite a pleasant disc, assuming you're like me & like van Ronk's voice. If you're looking for smooth readings of tunes like "As Time Goes By" or "I Can't Get Started", you'd better head to John Pizzarelli; this album is more along the lines of the raspy, inimitable singing of Armstrong & Fats Waller. As with a lot of other singers who don't rely on beauty of tone, one of Van Ronk's methods of invigorating songs is by digging up the forgotten verses & 2nd choruses that have been dropped over time; this is for instance the only version of "Bye Bye Blackbird" I've heard with the original minor-key introduction. I tend to think singers can get too hung up on preserving the verses, but it's nonetheless interesting to hear some of these rarities.Van Ronk actually shines best on the ballads, which he lends quirky gravitas. The album is peppered with some novelty numbers which I find irritating ("Zoot Suit", Gershwin's forgettable "I'd Rather Charleston", the old Waller novelty "Your Feet's Too Big"), & a few of the tunes misfire ("Comes Love" is oddly laboured) but there's enough here that works that the disc is worth a listen. Scott Robinson does a really nice job on the reeds, though he's no great original: his tenor on "I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone" is patently pinched from Zoot Sims' great rendition on _If I'm Lucky_. The studio sound is pointedly old-fashioned, sounding rather like it was recorded by Columbia in the 1950s or 1960s instead of in 2001.The main reason for the rather low marks I've given this disc is contextual: this album is charming but lightweight, & given that it came out at roughly the same time as albums like Geoff Muldaur's _Password_ & Bob Dylan's _"Love and Theft"_, albums that came up with brilliantly fresh music by digging around in the music of the 1920s and 1930s, I can't help feeling that the treatments of the standards on this album are too insubstantial & fail to interrogate the material with much care. Still, it's not a bad disc--worth a listen."

Thanks For The Memories

gallanipper | Kenosha, WI USA | 05/05/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Dave,Thanks not only for the memories, but for all the years ahead in which new and old fans can discover or rediscover your music. You reminded us that rags could be played loose but not fast, taught us some old tunes that we'd forgotten, changed our idea of what could be done with one guitar and a ten fingers; you played some warm blues, cool jazz just like Louis (with Christine Lavin as your Ella), had some fun with a kazoo, plinked about on a uke, swung on a star, sang barbershop and drinking songs, went to the amoeba hop, hung out with Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear, traveled to Sunday Street and went with Jesus to meet the woman at the well, did Dylan better than Dylan himself, and got us to love Joni all over again. You absorbed the music of Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Josh White, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and many others and brought their music back with your incredible voice. We'll all miss you. You treated your listeners like friends. Each song was a postcard from some far flung place, (including Marion, MA.) If someone ever asks for any of the good things that came out of the 20th century and these first two years of the 21st, just put on a Dave Van Ronk record. You'll be sure to see 'em smile. I know I have."

A pleasure

N. Dorward | 11/14/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"It's wonderful to hear Dave Van Ronk stretching his stylistic range here...he obviously has great affection for this music, his diction is superb, he digs up many forgotten lyrics left out of earlier recordings, the band is tight...it's just all around lowdown sweetness. Van Ronk brings an abundance of personality to these pieces. I don't understand the negative review that says he doesn't know how to sing these songs: I think he brings out a lot of soul."