Thursday, January 16, 2014

Charlie Poole And The Highlanders (Arbor LP)


Charlie Poole And The Highlanders
LP Arbor 201

7319 N. Bell Ave., Chicago, 60645
Rite account # 5108
December 1970
 
Side 1:   [26335]
Richmond Square   
Tennessee Blues   
Don't Let Your Deal Go Down Medley   
Flop-Eared Mule   
Kitty Waltz Yodel   
May I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight Mister   
Lynchburg Town   

Side 2:    [26336]
A Trip To New York:
On The Train   
The Audition   
In New York   
In The Studio
   
Sunset March   
Railroad Blues   
Under The Double Eagle


Re-issue of Paramount and Brunswick recordings (1929)

Paramount session
8,9 or 10 May 1929 New York City - Charlie Poole and North Carolina Ramblers aka Highlanders (Roy Harvey [-+ vcl/gt], Charlie Poole [vcl/banjo], Lonnie Austin [fiddle], Lucy Terry [piano])

Brunswick session (Trip To New York in four parts)
11 May 1929 New York City - Allegheny Highlanders (Roy Harvey [vcl/gt], Charlie Poole [vcl/banjo], Lonnie Austin [fiddle], Odell Smith [fiddle], Lucy Terry [piano])



Charlie Poole was the Hank Williams of 1920s string band music, and while he wasn't a particularly brilliant banjo player (although his later three-finger-style picking would set the table for the advent of bluegrass banjo a couple of decades after his death), and he wasn't the world's greatest vocalist either, he had a certain devil-may-care charisma that made him a star in the early days of the recording industry. Poole's greatest talent -- aside from an ability to go on long drinking sprees and to manage to be at the center of things even in his absence -- was in his song adaptations, which drew from sources outside the standard Appalachian fiddle tunes and reels, including pop, ragtime, and blues. Poole, with his band the North Carolina Ramblers, recorded mostly for Columbia Records, but disguising his band as the Highlanders, he also recorded under the table for Paramount and Brunswick in 1929, working piano into the standard string band lineup of fiddle, banjo, and guitar.  Steve Leggett, AllMusic

Re-issue produced by David Samuelson.

Chicago native,  David Samuelson took up folk music in high school and later started his own record label, Puritan Records, to preserve some of the more unique ascpects of the American folk music heritage.  Since 1975 David has been presenting the Battle Ground Old Time Fiddlers Gathering in Battle Ground, Indiana.


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