"This recording belongs on anyone's list of the best folk music recordings ever made, preserving the best work of one of the folk revival's finest from the pioneer days in Boston in the early 60's. The best selections are the Jack Elliot reprisals like Diamond Joe and San Francisco Bay Blues, but Mobile-Texas Line and Nine Pound Hammer are extraordinary. There is not a weak song on the disk. Later seduced by amplification and other sound studio enhancements like Baez, Dylan and many others, Rush never again attained the heights reached in these first two recordings, preserved here on one fabulous and essential disk."
Classic Blues/Folk
A. Everett Logan | New Hampshire, USA | 06/13/2000
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This is a combination CD made from the original LPs "Got a Mind to Ramble" and "Blues, Songs, Ballads." An excellent example of the blues/folk revival of the early 1960s. The singing, guitar, and washtub bass are great. The only thing that keeps me from giving it five stars is that they left off the gospel classic "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" that was on the original "Got a Mind to Ramble" LP. But, it's still one of the best albums out there, and more than worth the price!"
The seminal urban folk revival album of traditional blues
A. Everett Logan | 08/23/1998
(5 out of 5 stars)
"These two albums came out of the Club 47 period in Cambridge, before Dylan and Phil Ochs and the rest started writing the new stuff. With his easy focused baritone, Tom Rush prefigured the urban warm/cool later perfected by James Taylor and Jackson Browne (two songwriters whose work he was among the first to popularize in "The Circle Game." While Tom Rush stole from everyone, he also did their material better, and his versions of Staggerlee, Cocaine, Sister Kate, San Francisco Bay Blues have stayed in my brain for more than three decades now, overpowering all the other versions. This album and the very-influential-at-the-time "The Circle Game," which also was among the first recordings of Joni Mitchell, are two of the bricks at the foundation of folk-rock."
Great early folk with blues overtones
A. Everett Logan | 01/13/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)
"If you want to get to the roots of folk music of the sixties, this is a good place to start. A major influence on artists from Joni Mitchell to James Taylor. Raise your voice and shout unfair that more of his work is unavailable to the public."
Sings and plays his way into your memory, for good!
Phil Rogers | Ann Arbor, Michigan | 07/02/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Yep, this is definitely one of the best of the best. And it's just Tom, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, backed up by [who was it?], Mitch or Bruce somebody or other on gut bucket, also known as washtub bass. Tom was young at the time he made this, but sounds like a real old-timer. At the time these two albums were made, he was one of the main characters in the Cambridge (Mass.) folk revival, along with the Baez sisters, Jackie Washington, Eric Von Schmidt, Debbie Green. Eric Andersen, and the like. This one starts out like a gunshot with "Duncan and Brady", and basically never lets up. Rush mixes pathos and humor and plenty of other assorted moods and reveries. The fellow can sing and play with the best of them. Check out the wonderful slide guitar playing on "Rye Whiskey". And he almost chews/ruminates on his words, with his terrific sounding, relaxed baritone voice. When he tells (sings) a story, you get lost in the believability of it. It's awesome, really.As of 3-4 years ago, Rush was still tremendous in concert, and his banter and joke telling are as good as his playing and singing. He can be truly hilarious, make you nearly fall off your seat a' laughing. I'd say he's as good a showman and interpreter of old tunes as Michael Cooney, but that's a tough contest given the fact that they inhabit somewhat different (though not too) emotional dimensions."