Search - Harry Belafonte :: Sings 24 Calypso & Folk Songs

Mark Twain and Other Folk Favorites...Plus

Bradley Olson | Bemidji, MN United States | 10/15/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As the title of my review mentions, this import from the Netherlands, issued because of the recordings being 50 years old in Europe are public domain, contains among its 24 tracks, the entire "Mark Twain and Other Folk Favorites" album which is his first full length album for RCA Victor from 1954, which contains a dozen songs from the American Folk tradition that he learned during his studies of folk music at the Library of Congress, and became a million selling album at the time. The rest of the CD contains a sampling of his earliest recordings that would pave the way for his breakthrough with his "Calypso" themed albums. A lot of the songs on this album do come from the catalog of the Weavers including "The Fox," "The Drummer and The Cook," "Lord Randall," "Soldier, Soldier," among others. The A side and the B side of the minor charted single "Hold 'Em Joe" and "I'm Just a Country Boy," the B side which would later become a huge country hit for Don Williams, open and close the CD. If you can't afford the Bear Family boxed set of his early recordings, yet you have a Greatest Hits album and/or many of his original albums in his catalog, particularly the classic "Belafonte At Carnegie Hall" from 1959, this is worth purchasing as a companion volume, and if you prefer his folk oriented material over his more popular material such as the "Calypso" albums and the "Belafonte At Carnegie Hall" album series, this CD is highly recommended as an inexpensive one-stop compilation of his lighter, and more folk-oriented, recordings. Another thing of note about this CD is that it was sourced from the Bear Family boxed set of his early recordings."