Search - Michael Davis, Michael Goodwin :: Songcatcher II: The Tradition That Inspired the Movie

Even Better Than The First!

06/23/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As tireless a defender as I am of the first Songcatcer album against those who dismiss it as little more than slick, overproduced Nashville product (interesting country radio has shunned it, if such is the case) or who gripe that it isn't the music from the film (most of the songs in the film were only sung in short snippets, and the exceptions, such as Iris DeMents stunning version of "Pretty Saro," WERE included) I must admit that the second volume is even better.Whereas the first volume was mostly of songs that were inspired by the movie, this second consists of songs that, in their own way, inspired the movie. All the songs here are traditional songs, hundreds of years old with origins from the British Isles that were preserved well into the 20th century by residents of rural parts of the southern Appalachians. Not quite field recordings, but hardly pop versions of these songs, the tracks here are all taken from Vangaurd's remarkable archive of folk recordings.The Doc Watson tracks as so exemplary that they alone are worth the price of admission, his take on the old British ballad "Georgie" (aka "Geordie," in some versions) creating such an evocative tale that the song almost sounds like it could have been recorded anytime over the past 450 years. Other songs here follow suit and the whole package (which comes with good liner notes) makes one yearn for even more."

The tradition, true and unvarnished

Jerome Clark | Canby, Minnesota | 06/02/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Songcatcher was a flawed and peculiarly unlikable film, but if nothing else, it brought two worthy CDs into the world. The first, released last year, featured contemporary artists, mostly Nashville-based acts, who reinterpreted the Southern-mountain tradition in innovative modern settings. Entertaining as its predecessor was, Songcatcher II has the virtue of being the real deal. Its artists grew up in that tradition without ever thinking of it as "folk music." Their performances are unadorned, sometimes even unaccompanied, as in the stark singing of Arkansas's Almeda Riddle and Kentucky's Sarah Ogan Gunning (whose "Girl of Constant Sorrow" is a radical -- in both senses of the adjective -- rewrite, not simply a gender-altered version, of the by now well-known ballad). A number of the performances are live, taken from Newport Folk Festival appearances in the 1960s. All four Doc Watson pieces, however, come from his classic Home Again! disc of the same period. This is not a complaint, just an observation; it's one of Doc's finest albums, and the most purely traditional of his Vanguard period. His unforgettable reading of the lyrical "Winter's Night" is mountain music at its most chillingly, achingly lovely. Whether you're hearing Watson, Cousin Emmy, Roscoe Holcomb, Dock Boggs, Maybelle Carter, and the rest, for the first time or catching their songs yet again, you're going to be moved and thrilled. How fortunate, in an age that needs its beauty and truth more than ever, that this deep and honest music is finding a broad audience once more."

A Rustic Treasure

James E. Bagley | Sanatoga, PA USA | 05/15/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In Appalachian lingo, a songcatcher is someone who "catches" (learns) ballads, preserving them with a recording device. The surprise success of O Brother, Where Art Thou? naturally encouraged projects such as the film Songcatcher and its spinoff Songcatcher: Music From And Inspired By The Motion Picture. Songcatcher II moves backward from Vanguard's earlier Songcatcher cd. Here are 17 tracks from the 1960s by 10 true songcatchers (most in their autumn years), with four ballads each from Almeda Riddle and the disc's sole surviving singer, the blind guitar wiz Doc Watson. Some tracks come from 1960s Newport Folk Festivals. Others, such as Watson's and Riddle's, enjoy the studio sound that justified Vanguard's old motto "recordings for the connoisseur." Variants of two O Brother classics appear: Doc Boggs' fearful "O Death" and Sarah Ogan Gunning's a cappella "Maid Of Constant Sorrow." The latter reflects Gunning's life in an impoverished Kentucky mining town where, to paraphrase Merle Travis, folks owed their souls to the company store. My favorite is Watson's six-minute tale of deadly infidelity, "Matty Groves," - one of the songs brought to America by Scottish and English settlers."