Kath, the SODOM LAUREL ALBUM is very good, both the book and the CD. The CD is all previously unreleased stuff as near as I can tell, and I've been trying to keep up with everything available from these folks. And Becky, the FAR IN THE MOUNTAIN volumes are great. CAMSCO carries these. The recordings are of good quality, and once again, they don't overlap with what is already out there. There is a lot of good Dan Tate material on the FAR IN THE MOUNTAIN recordings also, along with other good stuff from up in Virginia. The Musical Traditions website given above has all of the liner notes for FAR IN THE MOUNTAIN, which includes the lyrics! It's quite a find.

The wonderful thing about all of this material is that you can actually trace songs and ballads across generational lines and see how they got handed on, from Doug and Cas Wallin, and Evelyn Ramsey and Dellie Norton and others to Sheila, and what she has done with them. She learned these songs from her family and friends as she was growing up. And you can go the other direction and compare these recordings with those collected by Cecil Sharp when he was in Madison County in the early 1900s. On one of her albums, Sheila sings "My Dearest Dear", which she learned from the Wallins, but she decided to go back to her great-great(?)Aunt's unique version of the tune in Sharp's collection, who was Mary Sands. When you compare Doug Wallin's version and Sheila's you can see how the tune changed between the time of Mary Sands and that of Doug Wallin. It is fascinating.

I highly recommend all of these albums for anyone who wants to hear some of the best of the North Carolina mountain music. T.O.M.