Appalachian music reviews

"A silly girl/I am you know/To hang myself/For the Butcher's Boy" Stark, unflinching early American folk recordings from 1925-26. The sound quality is great considering the age of the recordings.

This a great intrduction to what is sometimes called "white country blues". Hutchison was an incredible talent when allowed to showcase his blues leanings. Unfortunately he had to record what the labels thought would sell so some of the tracks on this disc are not what one would call traditional blues. That should not stand in your way of checking him out. Just listen to "Logan County Blues" or "Train That Carried My Girl From Town". Wonderful slide work is all over this disc. I will warn you that on a small number of tracks the sound quality is somewhat poor but overall that is not a problem For an even better intro to this genre of music, pick up Columbias "White Country Blues: A Lighter Shade Of Blue". This is a fantastic 2-cd set featuring a wide variety of artists (including Hutchison). This disc opens with a devastating instrumental version of KC Blues. Snatch it up!!

This a great intrduction to what is sometimes called "white country blues". Hutchison was an incredible talent when allowed to showcase his blues leanings. Unfortunately he had to record what the labels thought would sell so some of the tracks on this disc are not what one would call traditional blues. That should not stand in your way of checking him out. Just listen to "Logan County Blues" or "Train That Carried My Girl From Town". Wonderful slide work is all over this disc. I will warn you that on a small number of tracks the sound quality is somewhat poor but overall that is not a problem For an even better intro to this genre of music, pick up Columbias "White Country Blues: A Lighter Shade Of Blue". This is a fantastic 2-cd set featuring a wide variety of artists (including Hutchison). This disc opens with a devastating instrumental version of KC Blues. Snatch it up!!

These performances of familiar and unfamiliar Copland works were recorded as a memorial to the composer by Hugh Wolff shortly after Copland's death. "Appalachian Spring" appears here in its complete score (about 7 minutes longer than the familiar suite) and, more importantly, in its original, intimate scoring. Copland himself was fond of this version, and it's easy to see why -- the clarity and intimacy is breathtaking, while lacking none of the beauty of the full orchestral scoring. If you love Appalachian Spring, you will love it even more after hearing this version. The sonorities of the less familiar works (Music for the Theater; Dance Suite) are astonishing and delightful -- it's a wonder that these works aren't better known. So even if you have a recording of "Appalachian Spring," this CD is worth having for the substantial additional works.

If like me you got started listening to Aaron Copland through Spike Lee's generous quotes from AC in the Denzel Washington basketball film HE GOT GAME, you've been trying to find the extended mix of Appalachian Spring, not merely the snatches we get to hear in the film or on the soundtrack LP. This recording of 40s versions of Copland's Appalachian Spring and also his Lincoln Portrait are stunning. Here the great actor Melvyn Douglas, who starred in the nihilist-themed film BEING THERE and the enchanting Lubitsch romance NINOTCHKA with Greta Garbo, is given lines to speak, actual quotes from Abraham Lincoln's letters and speeches, and Lincoln is the MAN!

As for Melvyn Douglas, well, we all remember him as Paul Newman's tyrannical Pops from HUD, but here his voice thunders from speaker to speaker inspiring and charming and chasing down the instruments under Serge Koussevitzky's sterling direction. The brasses sound a little tinny on the third item, the symphony no 3 of Hanson. That's all right, you won't be playing that anyway, not that much, as long as you can hear the whole ballet score of Appalachian Spring and listen to the dulcet sentiments of A LINCOLN PORTRAIT.

The Everest Recording was and is probably the highest form of analog recording, the quality and range are tremendous. I've had this in Vinyl, Cassette and CD, it's the best rendition of Appalachian Spring (suite) I have ever heard, bar none. Sadly to say, I haven't listened to the other pieces as much though I started getting into the Gould work several years ago and the Gershwin is as good a recording as you can find of an American in Paris.

This CD gives you two of Aaron Copland's most popular ballets, with Appalachian Spring being a performance conducted by the composer himself. Both Copland and Ormandy give wonderful readings of both works and the Boston Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra are excellent. This CD also includes a wonderful performance of a work that I feel is often unfairly neglected, the Tenderland Suite. In my opinion, this is some of Copland's best and most beautiful music, and the conductor's excellent reading with the Boston Symphony deserves to be listened to.

Here are two of Copland's early and to some extent experimental works together with a certified classic, maybe his finest piece. The Piano Concerto, premiered in 1928, is the last of Copland's purely jazz-influenced works. Like the earlier Organ Symphony, it created quite a stink when it was premiered in Boston. To a critic--let alone a mere music lover--of the 1920s, it must have seemed outrageously forward-looking with its polyrhythms and dissonances, its brash orchestration and pop-musical roots. In fact, the critic Philip Hale wrote that the concerto "shows a shocking lack of taste, proportion." Actually, it's hard to argue with Hale on this score: the concerto isn't a very good work, and as far as the use of jazz is concerned, it's far less attractively done than in Gershwin's popular Piano Concerto in F of a couple years earlier. Ditto if you're looking for a truly sophisticated integration of jazz and classical music: Ravel's two concertos, written just a year or two later, make Copland's sound absolutely scrappy if not downright trashy. Sorry, that's just the case. Hollander and Schwarz do their level best by the concerto, but they can't redeem it from mediocrity.

On the other hand, Copland himself thought highly of his little-known Symphonic Ode, written for the Boston Symphony and premiered in 1932, and he's right in his appreciation that this work represented a breakthrough for him. True, there is a lot of empty passagework here, a lot of places where the orchestra just skitters up and down the scale, but there is also that same wide-open-spaces sound that would establish itself as typically American in the wake of pieces like "Billy the Kid" and "Rodeo." Here, too, is what Copland himself identified as a certain "spirit." This spirit would later translate into the little-man-as-hero populism of works such as the Third Symphony, "John Henry," and "A Lincoln Portrait." And the ending of the piece is pretty exciting in the frenzied manner of "El Salon Mexico." The Symphonic Ode is not great Copland, but it's pretty good Copland.

Then of course there is "Appalachian Spring," maybe the greatest of great Copland. Schwarz and his orchestra give a fine performance with good basic tempos and careful regard for Copland's lovely, subtle sense of orchestral color. No use comparing this performance to classics from the likes of Bernstein, Thomas, or Copland himself; if it isn't quite a classic, it's a very, very decent job nonetheless. Throw in a highly effective performance of the Ode, and you have a recording that should satisfy Copland fans who want to hear their composer at his best, as well as explore a bit. Big, bright, impactive sound seals the deal for me.

As a freind of Mr. Hollender I just want to say that this is a great CD and he is amazing live.

This album covers the second of the Carters' three sessions for Decca; being recorded in New York on June 17 and 18, 1937. It is a nice mix of material, typical of the Family's previous output. There are traditional songs, such as 'My Home's Across the Blue Ridge Mountains', along with 'Never Let the Devil Get the Upper Hand of You'; a fragmentary reworking of an old British ballad known variously as 'The Knoxville Girl' and 'The Oxford Girl'. This track is a recording of astonishing clarity; a real credit to the Decca engineers of the time. As usual, the Family's religious beliefs are to the fore, notably with 'Lord, I'm in Your Care'. And then there are the expected tales of death and destruction on the railroad, here represented by 'The Broken Down Tramp' and 'Jim Blake's Message'. This latter ditty is a particularly tragic tale of an unfortunate boy who, in the space of one evening, loses his mother to an unidentified illness and his train driver father to a derailment caused by his haste to get home to his dying wife. Not many laughs here. But, thankfully, there are lighter moments, such as 'He Never Came Back' and 'Funny When You Feel that Way'.
Most Carter sessions produced at least one number that became a Country standard. From this set we get 'Hello Stranger', still popular today with Bluegrass musicians.
All in all, this is a fine album packed with good material which will appeal to the vast majority of serious Country fans. The original quality of the Decca recordings is excellent throughout, and Catfish has done a fine job of remastering. I look forward to the third, and, sadly, final volume of Decca reissues.

Excuze my English. I am big Moody Brothers fan. I watch them play muzik when they come to Praha 1986 and 1991 with Czech group Country Beat. They are best for me. This is good CD. I like best Eighten Wheeler and Gentle on my mind.

What a misleading disk. It is not "super hits", but 2-5 minute sections of of these works. Do NOT buy this disk if you love the pieces that are on it. It will only make you wonder "where'd the rest of the cut go?" MAYBE there are 25 minutes of music total on this whole disk, chopped up into soundbytes. Copeland is rolling over in his grave.

There is something special about this recording of the Lincoln Portrait. The special ingredient is Henry Fonda's baritone Nebraska accent that sends chills down my spine when I hear his narration, even to this day.