Cold Mountain - Traditional Music

Subject: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: Burke
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 09:26 AM

Here comes another movie featuring Traditional Appalachian Music. Here's the latest on the 'soundtrack' of Cold Mountain. I've heard there will also be a separate release of the singing from the Sacred Harp session where the music for the movie was recorded.

The followinf is from CMT Hot Talk
Jack White, Alison Krauss, Norah Jones, James Taylor Top Cold Mountain CD
Columbia/DMZ records have revealed a tentative list of the artists and songs that will be on its soundtrack album to Cold Mountain. Curiosity has been running high about the project because T Bone Burnett, the mastermind behind the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, is producing it. Cold Mountain, the album, is due out Dec. 16, while Cold Mountain, the movie, is set to open on Christmas Day. Barring last-minute changes, this is the track listing: "Wayfaring Stranger," Jack White; "Songbird," the Reeltime Travelers; "I Wish My Baby Was Born," Tim Eriksen, Riley Baugus, Tim O'Brien; "The Scarlet Tide," Alison Krauss; "The Cuckoo," Tim Ericksen, Riley Baugus; "I'm Sitting on Top of the World," Jack White; "Ah, May the Red Rose Live Always," Norah Jones; "Ruby With the Eyes That Sparkle," Dirk Powell, Stuart Duncan; "Then You Will Be My Ain True Love," Alison Krauss; "Christmas Time Will Soon Be Over," Jack White, Riley Baugus, Brendan Gleason.

Also, "Am I Born to Die," Tim Eriksen; "Catastrophe," Dirk Powell, Norman Blake, Nancy Blake, Tim O'Brien, Stuart Duncan; "Lady Margaret," Cassie Franklin; "Spike Driver Blues," Tim Eriksen, Riley Baugus; "Never Far Away," Jack White; "All the Pretty Little Horses," Hazel Dickens; "Great High Mountain," Jack White, Cassie Franklin, Tim Eriksen; "Idumea," Sacred Harp Singers; "Anthem," "Ada and Inman," "Ada Plays," "Love Theme," Gabriel Yared; "Anywhere the Wind Blows," James Taylor; and "I'm Going Home," Sacred Harp Singers.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: nickp
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 10:34 AM

Looking forward to it. Lets hope it gets a better reception on Mudcat than the ill fated Songcatcher....... no, please don't revive that thread!

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 10:36 AM

let's rather hope that it's a better movie than 'Songcatcher', & it will get the reception it deserves, though the casting already makes me suspicious, not the characters as written, that's for sure.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: nickp
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 10:59 AM

I stand amended! Yes lets hope...

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: Peter T.
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 11:17 AM

I hope they fix some of the things in the novel. The first couple of chapters were some of the best writing I have ever read, and then it sort of deteriorated. The meeting of the lovers at the end was terribly contrived.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: Burke
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 06:07 PM

Since Songcatcher was a lot about the music, the way the movie worked overall could affect reactions to the music as well.

I understand the music is really important to Cold Mountain, but the movie will stand or fall more on the story, acting, etc. It might give a O Brother! type boost to interest in the music. If the movie is popular, that many more people will hear the music & possibly get interested.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: CET
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 06:11 PM

So, why was Songcatcher so unpopular? I enjoyed it - mostly because of the music, but the story wasn't that bad and the acting was fine. I'm definitely looking forward to Cold Mountain.

Edmund

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: Burke
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 06:17 PM

Put 'Songcatcher' in the filter box & refresh for 3 years on the Forum Home page. You'll find lots of the old threads on the movie.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 09:08 PM

People often worry a lot about whether a film based on a real story sticks close to the actual facts. I think that's generally not particularly important (except where it involves libelling some real person).

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: GUEST,TNDARLN
Date: 22 Nov 03 - 08:33 AM

Burke,

Were you as delighted as I to see our own Cassie Franklin listed among the singers on the soundtrack?

For those who don't know, we've watched Cassie grow up at Sacred Harp singings. She has the same kind of vocal power that one thinks of when Hazel Dickens' or Ginny Hawker's name comes up. And since she's only in her early twenties, well, I expect this to be a huge break for her...

I'm also looking forward to seeing how they use Idumea [47b]- again, the potential is huge...theater goers will hear it in essentially the hollow [more or less] square.   T

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: belfast
Date: 22 Nov 03 - 10:44 AM

This novel impressed me so much that I just know that the film will be at best a disappointment and at worst an extreme irritant. The soundtrack however should be good. I think that as I was reading the book I probably had an internal soundtrack from the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music. There is a fiddle and banjo duet described in the book that sounds like it came straight from that anthology. And in one part of the book the hero seems to have wandered into the ballad of "Omie Wise". Now that I think of it probably the best person to do the soundtrack would have been Ry Cooder - doing the kind of stuff he did for "The Long Riders".

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: BanjoRay
Date: 22 Nov 03 - 01:31 PM

Sorry, Belfast, Ry Cooder would have been a dreadful mistake, much as I like him. They've picked a few totally appropriate musicians like Riley Baugus (awesome Round Peak clawhammer banjo player and fine fiddler) Tim O'Brien and Dirk Powell (superb Old Time musicians as well as great in other genres - bluegrass and Cajun respectively. They featured in the original excellent Cold Mountain CD from a few years ago), as well as some fairly inapproprate ones like Stuart Duncan - a superb bluegrass fiddler who'd be incapable of sounding like an old time fiddler if you ran over his hands with a road roller, and Alison Krauss - well I'll wait and see before condemning her outright, she is pretty able.
The success of Oh Brother was partly due to the fact that relatively unknown extremely able musicians were used - they should have done it again with a new set, of whom there are stacks. They only had to spend a week at Clifftop and the job of finding them would have been done.
Cheers
Ray

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: Burke
Date: 12 Dec 03 - 12:02 PM

Boston Herald Review of the CD.

Stars tell it on the `Mountain'
By Larry Katz
Friday, December 12, 2003

Can ``Cold Mountain'' do for Sacred Harp singing what ``O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' did for bluegrass?
    That's the question posed by Tuesday's release of the soundtrack to the forthcoming Civil War movie starring Nicole Kidman, Jude Law and Renee Zellweger.
    Just like ``O Brother,'' ``Cold Mountain'' is set in an earlier time in the rural American South and tells a saga that harks back to Homer's ``Odyssey.''
    Also like ``O Brother,'' ``Cold Mountain'' arrives with a soundtrack produced by T-Bone Burnett and stocked with old-fashioned American roots music performed by a mix of stars and traditional performers.
      Alison Krauss is the only performer who's on both soundtracks, but this time she's singing a ballad written for the movie by Sting (``You Will Be My Ain True Love'') and another co-written by Elvis Costello and Burnett (``The Scarlet Tide''). Both are deliberately old-fashioned and sparsely rendered, designed to sound as if they could have been hits 150 years ago.
    But the musical star of ``Cold Mountain'' is Detroit garage rocker Jack White of the White Stripes, who also appears as a musician in the movie.
    White, who often has spoken of his affection for blues and other kinds of authentic music, gets to demonstrate it with five folklike solo performances. He opens the album with ``Wayfaring Stranger'' before moving to stark covers of ``Sittin' on Top of the World,'' ``Christmas Time Will Soon Be Over'' and ``Great High Mountain,'' a track arranged by Ralph Stanley, a bluegrass legend who achieved new renown thanks to ``O Brother.''
    White's best song is an original, the slightly modern-sounding ``Never Far Away.'' It respects the movie's authenticity - or at least pseudo-authenticity - while adding a few more chord changes and a little richness to the prevailing austerity of the ``Cold Mountain'' soundtrack.
    It's not just unlikely that ``Cold Mountain'' will win a Grammy for Album of the Year like ``O Brother'' did. It's inconceivable. But a ``Cold Mountain'' concert tour wouldn't be out of the question. And stirring up new interest in Sacred Harp singing is a certainty.
    Two ``Cold Mountain'' tracks were recorded at an Alabama church by Sacred Harp singers, named after an 1844 songbook of shape note music, a system used to teach harmony singing to amateurs unable to read conventional musical notation. The stirring Sacred Harp song ``Idumea'' closes ``Cold Mountain'' with these haunting lyrics:
    ``And am I born to die, to lay this body down,
    And must my trembling spirit fly into a world unknown?''
    ``Idumea'' is the sort of strangely riveting number that landed Ralph Stanley a Grammy for his ``O Brother'' performance of ``O Death'' and made the ``O Brother'' soundtrack an unexpected multimillion-selling hit. If local Sacred Harp singing clubs start sprouting next year - and if you join one yourself - don't be surprised.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: PoppaGator
Date: 12 Dec 03 - 05:23 PM

Isn't there a more current thread on Cold Mountain? Any chance of combining them?

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: Burke
Date: 12 Dec 03 - 05:57 PM

Yes, but it was more about the movie than the music, went off topic, then fell off the bottom of the page so I refreshed this one.

Here's your link to the other thread.

I've found out about another review I'll try to locate as well.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 16 Feb 04 - 08:13 PM

Just bought a copy of the soundtrack for Cold Mountain. Normally I do not buy music from the movie cd's, but I had heard from various people that this was good.

It is in fact splendid. If I have a gripe it is that there is not enough info about the performers on the album.

Not normally a listener to bluegrass etc this has changed my mind a lot.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: Burke
Date: 16 Feb 04 - 08:43 PM

Maybe that's because it's not bluegrass. BG.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 17 Feb 04 - 04:11 AM

Hey bluegrass, schmu grass, what the hell.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: Burke
Date: 17 Feb 04 - 06:50 PM

What you or I call it might not matter. If you decide you like bluegrass from this CD, you could set yourself up for disappointment, since this is not bluegrass. If you look for traditional Appalacian, you're more likely to find similar music.

Subject: RE: Cold Mountain - Traditional Music
From: GUEST,Dale
Date: 06 Jul 04 - 03:44 PM

Cassie Franklin will be at the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View, AR on Friday and Saturday of this week. Shape Note Singing is on the program for Saturday night as well. Details Here