El Mole Rachmim (Für Titanik) Cantor Joseph Rosenblatt
The Wreck Of the Virginian Alfred Reed
Fate of Will Rogers & Wiley Post Bill Cox
Down With The Old Canoe Dixon Brothers
Wreck Of Number 52 Cliff Carlisle
Kassie Jones Part 1 Furry Lewis
Kassie Jones Part 2 Furry Lewis
The Brave Engineer Carver Boys
The Sinking Of The Titanic Richard "Rabbit" Brown
Fate Of Chris Lively And Wife Blind Alfred Reed
Wreck On The Mountain Road Red Fox Chasers
The Unfortunate Brakeman Kentucky Ramblers
Altoona Freight Wreck Riley Puckett
The Fatal Wreck Of The Bus Mainer's Mountaineers
Last Scene Of the Titanic Frank Hutchison
Casey Jones Skillet Lickers
The Wreck Of The Westbound Airliner Fred Pendleton
The Titanic Ernest Stoneman
When That Great Ship Went Down William & Versey Smith
Track Listings (24) - Disc #2
The Story of the Mighty Mississippi Ernest Stoneman
Mississippi Heavy Water Blues Robert Hicks
Dixie Boll Weevil Fiddlin' John Carson
Mississippi Boweavil Charlie Patton
Ohio Prison Fire Bob Miller
Memphis Flu Elder Curry
Explosion in the Fairmount Mine Blind Alfred Reed
Storm That Struck Miami Fiddlin' John Carson
When the Levee Breaks Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie
Alabama Flood Andrew Jenkins
Burning of the Cleveland School J. H. Howell's Carolina Hillbillies
High Water Everywhere, Part 1 Charlie Patton
High Water Everywhere, Part 2 Charlie Patton
Ryecove Cyclone Martin & Roberts
McBeth Mine Explosion Cap, Andy & Flip
Dry Well Blues Charlie Patton
Baltimore Fire Charlie Poole
Tennessee Tornado Uncle Dave Macon
Dry Spell Blues, Part 2 Son House
The Santa Barbara Earthquake Green Bailey
The Death of Floyd Collins Vernon Dalhart
The Porto Rico Storm Carson Robison Trio
Boll Weavil W. A. Lindsey & Alvin Condor
The Flood of 1927 Elders McIntorsh & Edwards
Track Listings (22) - Disc #3
Peddler And His Wife Hayes Shepherd
The Little Grave in Georgia Earl Johnson
Kenney Wagner's Surrender Ernest Stoneman
Henry Clay Beattie Kelly Harrell
The Murder Of the Lawson Family Carolina Buddies
Naomi Wise Clarence Ashley
Railroad Bill Will Bennett
Frankie Dykes Magic City Trio
Trial of Richard Bruno Hauptmann, Part 1 Bill Cox
Trial of Richard Bruno Hauptmann, Part 2 Bill Cox
Lanse Des Belaires Dennis McGee & Ernest Fruge
Darling Cora B.F. Shelton
Billy Lyons and Stack O' Lee Furry Lewis
Tom Dooley Grayson and Whitter
The Story of Freda Bolt Floyd County Ramblers
Pretty Polly John Hammond
Fingerprints Upon the Windowpane Bob Miller
The Bluefield Murder Roy Harvey & The North Carolina Ramblers
Frankie Silvers Ashley & Foster
Fate of Rhoda Sweeten Wilmer Watts
Dupree Blues Willie Walker
Poor Ellen Smith Dykes Magic City Trio
"In the late 1920's and early 1930's, the Depression gripped the Nation. It was a time when songs were tools for living. A whole community would turn out to mourn the loss of a member and to sow their songs like seeds. Thi... more »s collection is a wild garden grown from those seeds."
- Tom Waits, from the Introduction Songs of death, destruction and disaster, recorded by black and white performers from the dawn of American roots recording are here, assembled together for the first time. Whether they document world-shattering events like the sinking of the Titanic or memorialize long forgotten local murders or catastrophes, these 70 recordings - over 30 never before reissued - are audio messages in a bottle reflecting a lost world where age old ballads rubbed up against songs inspired by the day's headlines. Produced and annotated by the Grammy winning team of Christopher King and Henry "Hank" Sapoznik with an introduction by Tom Waits, the accompanying 48-page three-CD anthology designed by Grammy award winning Susan Archie brims with many eye-popping historic images never before reproduced.« less
"In the late 1920's and early 1930's, the Depression gripped the Nation. It was a time when songs were tools for living. A whole community would turn out to mourn the loss of a member and to sow their songs like seeds. This collection is a wild garden grown from those seeds."
- Tom Waits, from the Introduction Songs of death, destruction and disaster, recorded by black and white performers from the dawn of American roots recording are here, assembled together for the first time. Whether they document world-shattering events like the sinking of the Titanic or memorialize long forgotten local murders or catastrophes, these 70 recordings - over 30 never before reissued - are audio messages in a bottle reflecting a lost world where age old ballads rubbed up against songs inspired by the day's headlines. Produced and annotated by the Grammy winning team of Christopher King and Henry "Hank" Sapoznik with an introduction by Tom Waits, the accompanying 48-page three-CD anthology designed by Grammy award winning Susan Archie brims with many eye-popping historic images never before reproduced.
CD Reviews
Grandpa's Death Metal
B. Bruton | The Great Beyond | 11/26/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Close your eyes and hear the suffering through the ages, as disasters both great and small are relived in song by roving musicians with only a fiddle or a guitar to stake their claim on history.
Close your eyes and see the carnage reenacted. In Frank Hutchison's "Last Scene of the Titanic," see all the pretty ladies in their evening gowns and all of the tuxedoed gentlemen plummet over the deck of the great juggernaut as it collides with a massive iceberg, sending them wailing and flailing and thrashing in a demonic ballet into the icy Atlantic waters.
Open your ears and hear the plaintive cry of a child in the night, who wakes from a portentous dream in which his daddy is trapped in the interminable blackness of the coal mine (Blind Alfred Reed's "Explosion in the Fairmount Mine"), only to discover that dear daddy was indeed trapped in a mine explosion and is one of 200 unrecovered miners never to see the light of day again.
True-life scenes such as these are the subject of this massive 3-cd set, in which seemingly congenial-sounding folk and blues songs from the early twentieth century document disasters and real-life tragedies with a quiet intensity that disturbs the casual listener far more than any contemporary death metal band could. This is not Sturm und Drang, this is real pain and suffering devoid of fantasy or romanticism. These are songs for the legions of anonymous dead, musical coffin markers for the ones who were lost along the way.
Highlights range from the grim to the funny. In "Mississippi Heavy Water Blues," Robert "Barbecue Bob" Hicks complains that the murky brown flood waters have washed all the wimmenfolk away. The original version of "When the Levee Breaks" by Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie remains a haunting testament to the 1927 Mississippi Flood. Charlie Poole's "Baltimore Fire" is spectral in its account of hundreds consumed by the flames of a raging inferno. Then there's my personal favorite, Bob Miller's "Ohio Prison Fire", in which a distraught mother is asked to identify the charred remains of her late lamented son:
"I'll take my boy back now. The state's finished with him. The state's finished with all of these bodies. These poor, charred bodies!"
Disc Three switches the focus to murder ballads, showcasing songs of cold-blooded homicide that have influenced the work of such hardboiled musical greats as Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, and Tom Waits, the latter providing the eloquent introduction to this set. Early versions of such blood-soaked ballads as "Billy Lyons and Stack O'Lee" (the legend of Stack O'Lee or "Stagger Lee" exists in many forms) and "Darling Cora" (also known as "Darling Corey") stand alongside lesser-known death row oddities like "The Trial of Richard Bruno Hauptmann, Pts. I & II," an ode to the murderer of the Lindbergh baby. True crime buffs may favor this disc as much as musicologists.
Special mention should be made to the impeccable sonic reproduction by Christopher King, who understands the mystical power inherent in the snap, crackle, and pop of old 78 records and faithfully reproduces the elusive sound of the victrola, cranked up and wailing away like a banshee in a tin can. The static of these old grooves perfectly encases the sadness of bygone eras like ancient beetles trapped in amber. Timeless and lifeless.
In today's post-9/11 world, the fear of arbitrary annihilation is almost taken for granted, yet this collection serves as a moving reminder that tragedies of every kind have always lived on in the music of American folk musicians, perhaps to serve as a talisman for future generations."
As hip and as dark as old time music gets!
A Rothchild | nova | 10/01/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is one really stunning project but for many reasons! I got it initially because I love pre-war blues and Tom Waits but I didn't realize how beautifully put together the whole thing was until I opened it up. When the whole book is opened up, the inside spreads almost 22 inches and there are several fully reproduced panorama photographs of disasters: one of the aftermath of the Baltimore Fire looks like an atom bomb went off and another of a train wreck really captures the devastation of these early disasters. The introduction by Tom Waits is beyond cool. It has the archaic cadence of these songs and yet perfectly describes how these pieces were written and spread throughout communities. Besides the beautiful writings, photographs, and annotations, I am most impressed with both the wide variety of songs (there were many I had never heard before) and the actual sonic clarity of the collection. What is truly a revelation is how great certain songs sound compared to other cd issues. If you like cool eye and ear candy, then this is for you."
An amazing project!
Richard Remsberg | North Adams, MA | 11/07/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Wow, this is really something! The songs are great, of course - well chosen, beautifully remastered, great mix of obscure and mythically familiar. Tom Waits' notes really bring out the darkness of the stories (and the American character), and I seriously doubt that Hank Sapoznik is capable of creating a project that's anything less than brilliant and engrossing. (Check out his Yiddish Radio Project or the Charlie Poole box set.) The historic photos are amazing, and the long format of the package really features them nicely. You won't find anything else like this project."
A Brilliant Slice of History
Daniel J. Peck | Ruckersville, VA. | 11/10/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The ballad, a song that tells a story, in the modern world is something of a fading form. But in the age before cable news and internet immediacy, much of the world got their news of important events from song. In this brilliant work, Chris King and Hank Sapoznik have created a remarkable collection of songs that told of disasters, man-made and natural. The stories range from the sinking of the Titanic and famous train wrecks, floods and fires to murders and mine disasters.
The collection, presented in a beautifully packaged 3 CD boxed set, is expertly produced with the sound of the original 78 RPM recordings preserved with a minimum of noise and all of the original musical content. This is typical of King's Grammy Award winning work. Sapoznik's (a noted historian of both old-time American and Yiddish music) excellent notes offer both historical context and a deep musical insight. The introductory essay from Tom Waits is one of the most insightful takes on the ballad I have ever read.
I can't recommend this highly enough. For anyone who wishes to understand American musical history (or just loves the music), this is a serious must-have."
It Ain't Always About Politics- The Topical Song in American
Alfred Johnson | boston, ma | 07/12/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Yes, for the umpth time, I am deep in research of the roots, the many roots of American folk music. As part of this search I have spilled plenty of ink over the folk revival of the 1960's, and its links to today's folk scene, that I have the most intimate knowledge about. But that is hardly the end of the story. In fact the 1960's folk revival is something of the tail end of a vast exploration done by a few musicologists, most famously the father and son team of John and Alan Lomax. While the revival itself explored many kinds of music from the mountains of Appalachia to the plains of Texas and beyond the "rage" for roots then, exploited most effectively by the likes of Bob Dylan, centered on the topical songs of the day done by in the age old manner of the traveling troubadours of yore.
While the subject matter of the 1960's scene, naturally, tendered toward the overtly political around the issues of conventional war, nuclear disarmament, the fierce civil rights struggle in the American South that dominated all serious talk, social isolation, the rebellion against social conformity and the like historically the "singing" newspaper tradition was far from those "deep" concerns. The tendency was to be more personal either with songs of love. longing for love or of thwarted love or on a more mundane level disaster, manmade or natural, murders and other sensational crimes and whatever other local gossip could be turned into a ballad. But beyond that, as this compilation bears witness to every song seemingly had to provide a cautionary note.
Whether that note was to beware of getting to dependent on the emerging whirlwind of the newest technologies like the airplane or "unsinkable" ships, the mysteries of natural disasters like floods and fire or the hazards of pre-martial sex, being a vexing wife or coveting another man's the hand of "God" was written all over these things. People take warning was not only, or merely, a convenient metaphor to set the parameters of the song. That is what this three CD set is all about. So if you want to know about train wrecks ship wrecks, grizzly murders, the sorrows of the Great Depression and other obscure tales from the early 20th century then here is your chance to those subjects all in one place. And, incidentally, with a very nice and informative booklet of liner notes included, a grand piece of the puzzle of roots musical history and a small capsule of American everyday history.
Disc One: Man Versus Machine. If your thing is plane wrecks, train wrecks and ship sinkings then this disc will provide you will all you need to know about the hazards involved in the early stages of the modern transportation revolution, especially if you need to know about 57 versions of the sinking of the "unsinkable" Titanic. The best of that lot is the William and Versy Smith cover of "When That Great Ship Went Down" that I remember Cambridge resident folkie Eric Von Schmidt covering in the early 1960's. As for trains there is nothing better than the legendary country blues guitar impresario Furry Lewis, an artist whose work I have reviewed individually in this space, performing his two part of "Kassie Jones". The Skillet Lickers "Wreck of The Old 97" also deserves a listen. Finally Blind Alfred Reed, another artist covered individually here, has a couple of things, most prominently "The Wreck Of The Old Virginian" you must listen to.
Disc Two: Man Versus Nature. Although the marvels of modern technology have provided an increasing share of stories about the vagaries of the machine age old "Mother Nature", especially when observed up close as is the case down on the farm or out on the prairies still confounds us with her fury. We need only go back a few years to Hurricane Katrina to get very quickly reminded of our sometimes precarious position in the scheme of things. Floods and fires are center stage in this disc and no such compilation on this subject can be complete without the work of the "pre-blues" man Charlie Patton here on several tracks, most importantly those two parts of "High Water Everywhere". Uncle Dave Mason deserves a nod for "Tennessee Tornado" as does a young Son House for "Dry Spell Blues". Also of note is Charlie Poole's "Baltimore Fire" that Kate and Anna McGarrigle covered several years ago.
Disc Three: Man Versus Man (And Woman, Too). If you think man-made machine disasters or the handiwork of old "Mother Nature" have gotten a serious workout in the topical selections here, and in life, you ain't seen nothing yet until you get to this third disc about the short tempers, ill-advised motives and general ne'r -do- well happenings when men and women, their loves, hatred, sorrows and misadventures get a musical rendering. Watch out, murder and mayhem are the least of it. Someone is going to jail, or the gallows. No question about it. Tops here are the old saga about poor old Dupree and his life of crime trying to please his lady in "Dupree Blues". Needless to say the male of the species is not the only one subject to temptation and revenge as "Frankie" a much covered song with many variations is done here by the Dykes Magic City Trio. Of course the better known murder and outlaw tales of the ill-fated "Railroad Bill" and the likewise cursed "Tom Dooley" get a play here. Listen on.
Track Listings (24) - Disc #1