American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 1 [2002]

by Pete Seeger

Overview

In 1956, Folkways released Pete Seeger's LP American Industrial Ballads, on which he sang songs that grew out of the union movement. Earlier in 1957, there was American Ballads, his collection of vintage story songs. Undaunted by the similarity in album titles, Folkways here presents Seeger's American Favorite Ballads, which turns out to be his solo versions of a batch of popular folk songs, some of which he sang previously with the Weavers ("On Top of Old Smoky," Woody Guthrie's "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You," this time with the original lyrics). There is some conceptual overlap with the earlier discs, as "The Wreck of the Old 97," for instance, could have fit the themes of either American Industrial Ballads or American Ballads, and "Frankie and Johnny," a classic story song, would have been perfect for American Ballads. For the most part, however, this is a distinct collection containing much-loved folk songs like "The Blue Tailed Fly (Jimmie Crack Corn)" and "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," as if Seeger wished to make for his own the repertoire of Burl Ives. And there's plenty of country & western material, including the likes of "The Wabash Cannonball" and "Home on the Range." Sometimes the lyrics seem interchangeable from one song to another, and, in fact, that old warning about a false-hearted lover being worse than a thief turns up in both "The Wagoner's Lad" and "On Top of Old Smoky." Accompanying himself on banjo, six-string acoustic guitar, and 12-string acoustic guitar, by turns, Seeger presents the songs in his vibrant, clear-voiced manner, as if trying to preserve them as well as he performs them. ~ William Ruhlmann

Product Details

Release Date:	06/25/2002
Label:	Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
UPC:	0093074015025
Rank:	109989

Tracks

1. John Henry
2. Shenandoah
3. Blue Tail Fly
4. Black Girl
5. Skip to My Lou
6. The Big Rock Candy Mountain
7. Clementine
8. Yankee Doodle
9. Home on the Range
10. John Brown's Body
11. Goodnight Irene
12. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
13. Oh, Susannah
14. Wayfaring Stranger
15. Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep
16. Down in the Valley
17. The Wabash Cannonball
18. On Top of Old Smoky
19. Frankie and Johnny
20. I Ride an Old Paint
21. The Wreck of the Old 97
22. Wagoner's Lad
23. Old Dan Tucker
24. I've Been Working on the Railroad
25. Cielito Lindo
26. So Long (It's Been Good to Know Yuh)
27. America the Beautiful
28. This Land Is Your Land

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Pete Seeger   Primary Artist,Banjo,Guitar,Vocals,Guitar (12 String)

Technical Credits

Herb Ledbetter   Arranger
Lead Belly   Composer
Stephen Foster   Composer
John A. Lomax   Composer
Samuel A. Ward   Composer
Pete Reiniger   Mastering
Huddie Ledbetter   Composer
Moses Asch   Engineer
Guy Logsdon   Annotation
Woody Guthrie   Composer
Dan Sheehy   Production Supervisor
Daniel Decatur Emmett   Composer
D.A. Sonneborn   Production Supervisor
Jeff Place   Annotation
Quirino Mendoza   Composer
Public Domain   Composer
Harry McClintock   Composer
Dan Kelly   Composer
Katharine Lee Bates   Composer
Brewster M. Higley   Composer
Jacob Love   Editing
Mary Monseur   Production Coordination
David Gahr   Cover Photo
F.J. Lewey   Composer
Fernandez Cortez   Composer
Traditional   Composer
Joan Baez   Composer