The new CD will not be everyone's cup of tea, certainly. The goals of the recording project, which has been spearheaded by an organization called Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, were to have "folk" artists with Northern New York connections (the general area where the songs were originally collected) each choose a song from the collection and work up a new rendition. The performers are solos and duos with two exceptions - the seventeen piece Fraser Family and Friends (should they be kept from singing traditional songs because there are seventeen of them?), and the three-piece Akwesasne Men's Singing Group who recorded two Mohawk pieces Porter collected in 1946. Other highlights include a rare iron mining song done by Porter protege Lee Knight, a fantastic version of Johnny Barber (Willie of Winsbury, or Child #100) by Mudcat's own Anglo (John Roberts), an unaccompanied piece by fifth-generation ballad singer Colleen Cleveland, George Ward's eight-minute version of The Flying Cloud which will become a web feature, La Famille Ouimet singing Le Cotillon Blanc, and many more.

And yes, another of their goals was to produce a product that would appeal to general music fans, Adirondack lovers, and enthusiasts of American folk music. PBS, in their quest to achieve national distribution for the documentary, is certainly playing up the elements and themes that they feel will appeal to their audience. Still, for me this project does several things - - it brings awareness to the work of this largely unsung collector, it puts the northeastern US "on the map" in terms of the general public's awareness of musical traditions in America (the "southern bias" has been well explored in other forums), it will introduce worthy artists, songs, sources, and the concept of traditional music to new audiences, and it allows people like Lee Knight and myself, as music producer for the CD, to go on camera and talk about the source singers, the context of the songs, etc.

Perhaps more to the liking of some here will be Lee's forthcoming book of roughly 280 songs from the collection with musical transcriptions and detailed notes about the singers, the songs, and the collector.