The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #78519   Message #1412455
Posted By: Joe Offer
16-Feb-05 - 06:46 PM
Thread Name: Hedy West Japanese CD note
Subject: RE: Hedy West Folk-Legacy CD note
I bought a couple of those Larkspur CD's. they were disappointingly short, disappointing in quality, and disappointingly expensive. I've been hoping for some Hedy West recordings to come out, and I received one a while back in a C.A.R.E. package from Sandy and Caroline Paton of Folk-Legacy Records. The CD is called Old Times and Hard Times (click), and it's a good one.
Here are the tracks and the album blurb:

Barbara Allen
Brother Ephus
Coal Miner's Child, The
Davison-Wilder Blues, The
Fair Rosamund
Gambling Man
Lament for Barney Graham
Old Joe Clark
Polly
Rich Irish Lady, The
Shut Up in the Mines At Coal Cree
Wife of Usher's Well, The
Wife Wrapted in Wethers Skin, The

It's hard to know where to include Hedy's recording; she is the daughter of poet Don West of Pipestem, West Virginia, formerly a radical labor organizer in the south. Her family came from the mountains of northern Georgia and much of her music came to her from that source, but she is also a sophisticated, college-educated musician and a very knowledgeable folklorist. Hedy plays 5-string banjo and sings the songs and ballads of her family tradition in a clear and very pleasant voice, strongly tradition-oriented.