Solid Overview of Blake's Work on the Rounder Label
Steve Vrana | Aurora, NE | 11/22/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Norman Blake should be regarded as one of our great national treasures. For more than three decades he has been compiling an impressive body of work. His music incorporates old timey, bluegrass, and blues into a hybird that is on the one hand unique but at the same time as comforting and familiar as an old pair of shoes. This 70-minute anthology is part of Rounder's Heritage series and features music from his 1972 debut BACK HOME IN SULPHUR SPRINGS through 1990's duet with fellow flatpicker Tony Rice on NORMAN BLAKE AND TONY RICE 2 (his final album for the label).Blake plays guitar on most of these tracks, but also plays slide guitar and fiddle to wonderful effect. About half the tracks--nine in all--are instrumentals, including one previously unreleased tune from 1974, "O'Malley's Tune." On many of these he is accompanied by his wife Nancy. And "Lost Indian" is a flatpickers' delight with Tony Rice and Doc Watson joining in.If you're looking for a solid introduction to the music of Norman Blake, this is a great place to start. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED"
Summertime blues, November fields
Jerome Clark | Canby, Minnesota | 08/12/2002
(4 out of 5 stars)
"What is a "best of" anyway? That's what this is, a retrospective look at Norman Blake's work on Rounder and now-subsidiary Flying Fish labels in the 1970s and '80s. It's the sort of thing you can't listen to without thinking of what, had you been asked, you would have put on it. Certainly not the Delmore Brothers' "Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar" -- not a bad song, just one that's been done one or two too many times. Why not, instead, the traditional "Hand Me Down My Walking Cane"? "Ginseng Sullivan," while decent enough, is not among Blake's more memorable originals; why not, say, "Greenlight on the Southern," "Last Train from Poor Valley," or "Slow Train Through Georgia"? Well, what are you gonna do?You can be grateful, I suppose, that the irrestistible "Down Home Summertime Blues" -- surely the most purely joyous song the often dour Blake has ever written -- is here, along with the gorgeous take on the venerable guitar piece "Spanish Fandago" and the chilling faux Western ballad "Billy Gray." There's the elegaic, evocative "The Fields of November," not to mention "Uncle," Blake's attestation to the fact that Bill Monroe was not the only musician who learned from a fiddling uncle. A talented musician who knows what he wants to do and has stuck to it over three decades of solo and duo recording, Blake by now has compiled a massive oeuvre. Just about all of it is good, and some of it is better. Old Ties, which documents both, has something for the Blake novice and the grizzled fan, and everybody between."
Track Listings (19) - Disc #1