Tampa Red - The Guitar Wizard

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine collection

This is a very good compilation of recordings by a very fine bluesman.  Tampa Red isn't as well know as some blues singers, but he was an excellent guitarist and recorded a fine variety of blues, from solid slide blues to a more jug-band sound.  His singing is also very good and I find the whole collection very enjoyable indeed.

The sound quality is generally pretty good considering the age of some of these recordings.  One or two, like If You Want Me To Love You and That Stuff Is Here do have an awful lot of hiss and crackle, but they're so good that it's well worth it.  I can recommend this to anyone with any interest in original blues.

Barbara Keith - Barbara Keith (1971, second album)

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A surprisingly good album

I missed Barbara Keith completely firat time around and  only came across her relatively recently.  She made a couple of albums, both very helpfully entitled "Barbara Keith", in 1969 and 1971 respectively.  This is the second from 1971.

I tried this on spec, half expecting it to be pretty terrible, to be honest, but it isn't – it's good.  It's a bit like Carole King in places, a bit like Laura Nyro in others but with its own personality.   Barbara Keith isn't in the same league as those two giants, but she could write a good song, she performs well and the arrangements and band are very good.  Overall, this is a very decent effort, I think, with some enjoyable songs and a good variety, and it's one which I will be going back to. 

I'm going to try to look out Barbara Keith's first album as well – although that looks harder to find.  In the meantime, I can recommend this; it's a surprisingly good example of early 70s singer-songwriting, and well worth a listen.

Leon Redbone - Champagne Charlie

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Terrific stuff

This is just terrific.  I hadn't come across Leon Redbone before; this is another suggestion by Mark Barry, and another one I'm very grateful for.

Leon Redbone sings a variety of largely 20s and 30s songs.  He has a lovely, laid-back delivery with quite brilliant timing and phrasing, and some superb, varied arrangements.  He doesn't take himself too seriously but he has real affection and respect for the music, so that songs like the title track juts make me smile with sheer pleasure but things like Yearning or T.B. Blues have genuine pathos.  It's exemplary stuff,  think.

I cannot recommend this too highly.  I'm wondering where Leon Redbone has been all my life and will definitely be looking into more of his work.  My advice is to listen to some samples ad if you like what you here, don't hesitate.  This is a hugely enjoyable bit of genuine class

Lost Train Blues (Lomax recordings)

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fabulous collection

This is a fabulous collection of original recordings, largely by John and Alan Lomax.  Much of it is little known and, according to the blurb, 13 of the 22 tracks here have never been issued before.

The standard of musicianship is just terrific; every time I hear new original recordings of this kind I'm blown away anew by the sheer skill and power of these home-grown performers.  There's a wide variety of styles here, but the musical quality is very high throughout. 

The recording quality is variable and pretty ropy in places – as you'd expect given the equipment available at the time and the circumstances of the recordings.  Nonetheless, the sheer quality of the performances comes loud and clear through the hiss and lo-fi and it's a strong reminder of how great a debt we owe not only to the musicians who created the foundations of so much of modern music, but to the collectors who preserved these gems for us.

If you have any interest whatever in original US folk music, I can recommend this collection very warmly.  It's a gem.

John Fahey - Fare Forward Voyagers

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not one of John Fahey's best

I know that it's near-blasphemy to say this, but I don't think this is a very good John Fahey album.  The playing is superb – it's John Fahey, so of course it is – but musically it's a bit dull.

Fare Forward Voyagers consists of three long, freely-structured tracks which, according to some commentators, are influenced by Indian ragas.  This is plausible considering Fahey's personal involvements at the time, but to me it doesn't have anything like the appeal of a good raga.  The music here doesn't make for consistently interesting listening; it has its moments, for sure, but there is also an awful lot of what sounds to me like aimless, meandering and, frankly, pretty tedious noodling.  Fahey's  genius as a guitarist and intelligence as a musician, which are so obvious in earlier albums with more structured and thoughtfully developed pieces, both get rather lost in the indeterminate haze here.

I can imagine hearing this back in 1973 when it came out in late-night student rooms while smoking non-proprietary cigarettes, but as an enduring work it's not a patch on albums like The Dance Of Death, Days Have Gone By and others.  Only a lukewarm recommendation from me, I'm afraid.

Mellow Candle - Swaddling Songs

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A very good album

Although I can't quite agree with the rave 5-star reviews from most people, I do think this is a very good album.  Mark Barry steered me toward it in his excellent Overlooked Albums book, and I'm grateful to him – as I am for a lot of other really good tips.

Mellow Candle's sound seems to me to lie somewhere between Pentangle and Trees. One of the singers – I don't know whether it's Clodagh Simonds or Alison Williams, I'm afraid – sounds uncannily like Jacqui McShee at times, while at others their harmonising is very reminiscent of the double-tracked Celia Humphris, and the material is often quite Trees-like or Pentaglish.  That's just fine with me, and while I don't think Mellow Candle were as good as either, they're well above the average slighlty-rocky-folky-harmony group of the time.

A very decent album, then, and well worth the attention of anyone interested in this genre.  Recommended.

John Smith - Headlong

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A bit of real lass

This is a very fine album.  I liked Great Lakes very much, and I think Headlong is even better.

Headlong was made partly in response to the death of the great John Renbourn, Smith's friend and mentor, and you can detect his influence here.  The acoustic guitar work is as brilliant as always with much of Renbourn's unflashy excellence, and the lead guitar is very reminiscent of Renbourn's lovely, fluid style.  Smith's vocals, to me, carry an echo of the moving, slightly strangled voice of John Martyn, and while I wouldn't (yet) put Smith in the same bracket as those two towering giants, it gives you an idea of the quality of his music that there's a valid comparison.

The songs are lovely: generally rather mournful, lyrically intelligent and touching, beautifully constructed, and musically very appealing.  Something about their themes, chord sequences and lyrical content reminds me rather of Jason Isbell (although they don’t sound much like him), which is another mark of real quality, I think.

In short, Headlong is a bit of real class.  It is musically excellent and a real pleasure to listen to.  Very warmly recommended.

Paul Simon - The Concert In Hyde Park

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent live album

This is a fine live recording.  It is in two halves; the first half is very good and the second half is absolutely stunning.

Disc 1, the first half of the concert, is a very good performance of some of Paul Simon's greatest hits – which is all you need to know, really.  The man has written and performed some of the very greatest songs of the last 50 years and these are fine performances, including some nice duetting with Jimmy Cliff.  However, it's the second half that makes this really special, I think.

The great bulk of Part 2 is a performance of the Graceland album with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Joseph Shabalala, Hugh Masekela and the original Graceland band.  It is quite brilliant; great material, of course, but superb performances, too, full of brilliant musicianship, great singing and genuine, moving power and emotion.  It is rare for me to find a live performance as good as or better than a studio original, but this is at least as good as the original Graceland album for me.  It is followed by some more magnificent Simon classics, of which my highlight is a breathtaking version of The Sound Of Silence, beautifully sung solo by Paul accompanied by just a wonderfully played single guitar.  It's quite spellbinding and gives me goosebumps every time I hear it – even more than half a century on from first hearing the song.

The sound quality throughout is excellent and the engineers do a fine job of balancing the crowd noise to convey the excitement of the live concert but never interfering with the music itself; it's never an easy balance to strike but it's perfect here, I think.

I'm not always a great fan of live albums but this is a real beauty.  It's up there with Paul Simon's best recordings, I think – which is really saying something.  Very, very warmly recommended.