Search - Various Artists :: Folk Classics

Shouldn't This Have Come With A Warning Sticker?

Anthony G Pizza | FL | 02/22/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Anyone who thinks Marilyn Manson or Snoop Dogg cornered the market on anti-social behavior in song should hear this CD. "Folk Classics" tells tales of sex, betrayal, corruption and murder (south by Southwestern style) reaching back more than 100 years. By the time you're through the first half of the disc, you get two Wild West shootouts ("Jesse James," "Streets of Laredo") a bankruptsy ending in murder ("Buffalo Skinner") a marriage refusal ending in murder (Johnny Cash with his future wife and in-laws, the Carter Family, on "Banks of The Ohio") and a call for all good Irishmen to battle (the rousing "Rising Of The Moon.") Of course, it helps that at least a couple villains got caught ("John Hardy" and Flatt & Scruggs' "Worried Man Blues.") And then there's Burl Ives, whose "Wayfaring Stranger" indicated that he, too, was making his final crossover trip. Traditional instruments and musical styles (banjo, guitar, fiddle, and no drums to speak of), are the hallmarks of folk music and while this is not the only CD you'll need at the hootenany (no Baez, no Dylan, only one Phil Ochs song and he doesn't sing it), "Folk Classics" fulfills its title nicely. Just don't do any of this at home, kids."

"R" for violence; "A" for banjos

Smallchief | 04/22/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Most of the songs on this collection are good and most are violent. It seems that in Merrie Old England the jilted husband of "Mattie Groves" "cut off her head and throwed in agin the wall." In the U.S., the rejected lover in "Banks of the Ohio" stabs her in the breast and "throws her in to drown." Two definitive versions of familar folk tunes are on this CD. It don't get any better that Johnny Cash and the Carter family on "Banks of the Ohio." Cash's gruesome voice goes with the gruesome lyrics and the Carter family does an angelic chorus. Ralph Stanley's high, lonesome sound is perfect on another violent tune "Pretty Polly" and the banjo work is fabulous. Other good ones are the Clancy Brothers who call on all good Irishmen to kill Englishmen in "Rising of the Moon," and Pete Seeger's banjo playing on "East Virginia" The bad songs are the oily Brothers Four messing up a good song,"Mule Skinner's Blues," and the unspeakable "Little Boxes" which is so awful it should be denied first amendment rights."