The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #17220   Message #4076459
Posted By: Lost Chicken in High Weeds
22-Oct-20 - 02:10 PM
Thread Name: New Hedy West CDs
Subject: RE: New Hedy West CDs
Neat sharing, John! I would especially have enjoyed being able to watch how she played banjo up close.

This was the first song I heard by her on that mix tape the fellow made. Imagine you've just heard Dead Kennedys, Ice T, etc, and suddenly this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlvWmN1JfxM

Like the way the Anthology of American Folk was described by some of the revivalists, when I heard it it sounded to me like something that had to be from the far distant past, just the style of that song, and there's nothing else like it anywhere else by anyone else, not even herself, that one. It was the ultimate hook, for me, into wanting more, and wanting to *know* more.

Little did I know but she was still living at the time, though you couldn't find any information on her beyond the 70s at all from the Internet then, it was if she'd just evaporated at a certain point and that was it. I think it was pretty much at the point of her obituary that you could once again start finding post "then" info. Of course, here she was even dropping by at Mudcat before then.

On further thinking of where it was I met the little group that sent me all of her discography up to then, it might have actually been a USENET group. All that I recall for sure was that it was an old school place like this or that, and the one who did the mailing to me was in Germany.