'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums

Subject: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: Midchuck
Date: 14 Apr 11 - 04:40 PM

There are a lot of "top ten albums" and "top fifty CDs" threads on Mudcat. I was looking over my collection of vinyl, cassettes, and CDs from high school in the fifties to last week, and decided 100 was too many to choose, and ten wasn't enough. So I worked up my purely personal all-time 50. I allowed just original albums - no "best of" or "the essential" collections.

Who agrees with how many?

Peter.

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The Top Ten:

Baez, Joan - "Joan Baez" (original Vanguard album)
Bok, Gordon - "A Rogue's Gallery of Songs for 12-String"
Ian and Sylvia - "Four Strong Winds"
Ian and Sylvia - "Northern Journey"
Jennings, Waylon, & Nelson, Willie - "Waylon and Willie"
Nelson, Willie - "Red Headed Stranger"
Rogers, Stan - "Between the Breaks...Live"
Russell, Tom, et. al. - "The Man From God Knows Where"
Tyson, Ian - "Cowboyography"
Watson, Arthel ("Doc") - "Doc Watson" (original Vanguard album)

The Next Forty:

Baez, Joan (w/Greenbriar Boys) - "Joan Baez vol. 2"
Bikel, Theo, & Gooding, Cynthia - "Young Man and a Maid"
Blake, Norman & Rice, Tony (w/Watson, Doc) - "Blake & Rice II"
Blake, Norman & Rice, Tony - "Blake & Rice"
Blake, Norman & Nancy - "Blind Dog"
Bok/Muir/Trickett - "And So Will We Yet"
Dylan, Bob - "The Times They Are a-Changin'"
Dylan, Bob - "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"
Dylan, Bob - "Bob Dylan"
Dylan, Bob - "Blood on the Tracks"
Dylan, Bob - "Another Side of Bob Dylan"
Dylan, Bob - "Nashville Skyline"
Earle, Steve - "Train a'Comin'"
FinestKind - "Lost in a Song"
Flatt & Scruggs w/Watson, Doc - "Strictly Instrumental"
Harris, Emmylou - "Roses in the Snow"
Hills, Anne & Mangsen, Cindy - "Never Grow Old"
Ian and Sylvia - "Ian and Sylvia" (original Vanguard album)
Keeler, Greg - "Songs of Fishing, Sheep, & Guns in Montana"
Kingston Trio, The - "The Kingston Trio"
Kingston Trio, The - "...From The 'Hungry I' "
McCaslin, Mary, & Ringer, Jim - "The Bramble and the Rose"
Morse, Kendall - "Beginner's Luck"
Parsons, Gram - "Grievous Angel"
Phillips, Bruce ("Utah") & Ross, Mark - "Loafer's Glory"
Phillips, Bruce ("Utah") - "Good, Though"
Roberts, John & Barrand, Tony - "Naulakha Redux"
Rogers, Stan - "Northwest Passage"
Rogers, Stan - "From Fresh Water"
Rush, Tom - "Got a Mind to Ramble"
Rush, Tom - "Blues, Songs and Ballads"
Rush, Tom - "Trolling for Owls"
Russell, Tom - "Indians Cowboys Horses Dogs"
Russell, Tom - "Cowboy Real"
Seldom Scene, The - "Like We Used To Be"
Skaggs, Ricky, and Rice, Tony - "Skaggs and Rice"
Sky, Patrick - "Songs That Made America Famous"
Stecher, Jody & Brislin, Kate - "Heart Songs"
Tyson, Ian - "And Stood There Amazed"
Watson, Arthel ("Doc"), (w/Watson, Merle) - "Doc Watson & Son"

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 14 Apr 11 - 09:23 PM

You've listed some of my favorite artists and albums. Must admit I've never heard of Greg Keeler, but if he's made your list I'll have to keep an eye out for him.

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: pdq
Date: 14 Apr 11 - 09:45 PM

For Ian Tyson, I would substitute "Old Corrals and Sagebrush".

Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin, substitute "A Song Will Rise".

Add the Greenbriar Boys "Ragged But Right". Parts made it to CD but much did not.

For Seldom Scene fans, substitute 15th Aniversary.

The Mary McCaslin choice is mine also.

Add something by Kate Wolf, perhaps the live "Give Yourself to Love".

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: Midchuck
Date: 14 Apr 11 - 09:51 PM

Must admit I've never heard of Greg Keeler, but if he's made your list I'll have to keep an eye out for him.

You probably won't find him except in one or two record stores in Bozeman, MT. I guess he is or was a perfessor at the college there, who wrote funny songs on the side. Imagine a cowboy Tom Lehrer...

P.

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: GUEST,Roger Knowles
Date: 15 Apr 11 - 03:57 AM

Good grief!! You must be as old as me (and like the same music)!!

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: GUEST,DWR
Date: 15 Apr 11 - 04:27 AM

OK, we've established that 10 is too few, 100 is too many, how about 33 . . . and a third? I'll get back to this. :)

You're right about the no best of, and it goes without saying, no box sets either.

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Apr 11 - 05:53 AM

You should have said Favourite Fifty ' American ' albums, nothing from anywhere else on your list.

Dave H

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: Midchuck
Date: 15 Apr 11 - 08:38 AM

You should have said Favourite Fifty ' American ' albums, nothing from anywhere else on your list.

No, because those ARE my fifty favorites. I am myself, from the US, white, and definitely middle-class. I think that, for most of us, our lifetime preferences are shaped by what we listened to in our early years...college and just after. And I was in college through the height of the "great folk scare" of the end of the fifties and the early sixties, and was in Cambridge, MA, in the mid-sixties, spending time in the old Club 47 when I should have been reading law cases. And this is the kind of music we listened to. World Music was a later phenomenon.

When you say "American," I assume you mean "from English-speaking North America," not "from the US." Lots o' Canadians on my list. And, incidentally, the Roberts and Barrand is two Brits now resident over here, singing lyrics by a Brit, put to music by another Brit...

Peter

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: maple_leaf_boy
Date: 15 Apr 11 - 10:31 AM

I agree with the no best of albums. I'll tell you why I don't care for them. A friend of mine and I were talking about them, and we agreed that record companies make several "best of" albums of a particular artist and many of them have basically the same songs, just in a different order and maybe there are a couple of songs that are different. (Their staple songs, and a couple of minor hits.) They put a different cover on the record. They (the record companies) do this, because they're after the money.

I like some of the albums on your list. I couldn't make a list myself,
because I like all the albums I have equally. I don't really have a
"favorite" all time album. My favorite is the one that I'm listening to. I like "concept albums." Cash recorded several of them "Bitter Tears" being one of them with the Native American ballad theme.

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: Chris in Portland
Date: 15 Apr 11 - 10:50 AM

Add: Hills, etc., "Never Grow Up"
    Post, Jim - Friends
    Best of Friends - their one and only cd, sadly
    Nitties, all the Circles
    Gillette, Steve - most all
    Kweskin, Jim - most all
and Jim Rooney's book on the early days in Boston.
This omits the trove of great Chicago folk music (e.g. Art Thieme, Tom Dundee, John Prine, Steve Goodman, Michael Smith, Bonnie Koloc, Kendall Kardt, Redhead), but that would require an even longer list.
I think these have withstood the test of time.

Chris

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: pdq
Date: 15 Apr 11 - 11:22 AM

Perhaps there should be a Steve Goodman record in there somewhere. "Affordable Art" is a good choice, but some of his mid-1970s Asylum stuff was inconsistent at best, making the dreaded "greatest hits" concept a good idea. Also a lot of "live" material has been released in the last few years, which shows what a great performer he was, not just a great songwriter.

Subject: RE: 'Favorite Fifty' folk/country albums
From: Mark Ross
Date: 15 Apr 11 - 03:50 PM

Thanks for listing me & Utah's LOAFERS GLORY. It's nice to find myself in such distinguished company.

Mark Ross