OK, felt inclined to stick in my two cents. Thought I'd send off a few entries.
1. The Balfa Brothers-On vinyl, on Folkways. One side of the album is the
brothers, one on fiddle, the other on guitar, doing traditional Cajun stuff
from their home in rural Louisiana. The other side is a live radio show
recorded at Shorty's Lounge in Basile,La. on some Saturday night, complete
with music, and bilingual ads in French("blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah blah,
Henry's IGA in downtown Basile". etc.)
It gave me my jones for traditional forms of music, and was an inspiration
for years to travel to south La. to hear the music in person. And over twenty
years later I did! And on that hot and steamy July night, in the standing
room only crowd in the Eunice, La. municipal multipurpose building, the mc
announced the band in Cajun French, the crowd gave a holler, the band kicked
off a blazing two step, and I swore I'd been hit by a bolt of lightning! I
grinned for hours until I thought my face would fall off!
2. Foy Willing and the Riders of the Purple Sage-"No One to Cry To"-on
78-Found this in an antique store 20 years ago. It's a sad, lilting waltz
with that 30's cowboy string band vibe, complete with the accordion etc., and
the clear mountain stream tenor of the lead vocalist. Learned the song and
played it for years at open mikes at folk clubs etc. Years later, through a
fluke, I got to meet a friends Grandpa, who was 96, retired of course, and
lived out in Palm Desert California, near Palm Springs. His name was Rondell
Perkins, and fronted a band in the 30's called Perkie's Rough Shod Texas
Drifters. He played a standup bass and looked like Clark Gable in Western
wear! The band was busy in the old days and he was so busy with live dates he
once turned down a movie offer and suggested they call his old pal, Gene
Autry and see if he'd be willing to do it! And at the same time he was so
busy he turned down an offer from Benny Goodman to play bass for his band!
And in the early days, while working at a station out of Des Moines they had
a kid that worked as their driver, some guy from Illinois named Ronald
Reagan! But one of the neatest things to learn about him, as time passed and
I got to know him better, was that of the many songs the old guy had written,
one of his favorites was a thing called, you guessed it, "No One to Cry To!"
And what fun it was to sing it for that old man that day in the den of his
old house in the desert!
3. Slim Critchlow-Arhoolie-Real cowboy songs from a real cowboy. What really
started my romance with the West all those years ago while listening to it on
that old Zenith hi-fi in the living room of my parent’s apartment on the South
side of Chicago.
No hint of a Nudie suit, rehab, movie deal, face lift, or the awful Pop/Swamp
Rock crap that passes off as Country Music these days here. It's all cactus,
and horse sweat and creaking leather and campfire smoke, and the golden hues
of a sun dipping down behind the far ridge. You know, I ask myself. "What the
hell happened to music these days anyway"? Hmm…Whatever. But this is a small
part of where Country originally came from.
Rich F.