Blues, Songs and Ballads

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ALBUM INFORMATION
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Total Tracks: 23   Total Length: 76:50

eMusic Review

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Bruce Pollock

eMusic Contributor

04.22.11
Two parts honest scholarship, four parts home-brewed frat-boy hijinks.
2000 | Label: Fantasy

Occasionally invading the hallowed Greenwich Village turf from Cambridge, where Joan Baez got her start, ex-Harvard man Tom Rush brought with him a sensibility that would define a generation: two parts honest scholarship, four parts home-brewed frat-boy hijinks. Saving his most inspired performance on this 23-song outing for "Big Fat Woman," Rush is best when he can play against his reserved collegiate demeanor to nearly rock out on songs like "Sister Kate," "Drop Down Mama," the immortal "Cocaine" and the legendary "San Francisco Bay," enabling an uptight un-liberated generation of future college dropouts to follow his trail from jug band music through folk to rock & roll. When Rush recorded his magnum opus, The Circle Game, in 1966, he defined folk-rock for all time, joining Judy Collins as the ultimate interpreter by introducing the works of Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Jackson Browne to a wider audience.

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Blues, Songs and Ballads

zaw333

Ballads can't be sung better

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Big Fat Woman

RickyRicardo

wow, this is a classic. Tom Rush knows how to sing. This is like Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez from the good 'ole days. Music song with a hard-edged message.

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Classic Voice Brings Back Memories

swingman

I love Tom Rush's voice. It just works so well for so many folk, western, and pop ballads. His version of Cocaine took me back to my first introduction to him in college in the late 60s. I later became more familiar with him doing a tremendous cover of Sweet Baby James and a great cowboy classic, Black Magic Gun. Wonderful listening and reminiscing.

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First Time Folk

theoldprudesmusicreview

A respectable job of singing folk standards. Give a listen for basic education.

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They Say All Media Guide

A 23-song collection combining two albums that Tom Rush recorded in 1963 (Got a Mind to Ramble and Blues, Songs and Ballads) onto a single CD. Rush plays acoustic guitar, accompanied only by Fritz Richmond on washtub bass, for a selection of almost exclusively traditional material; the only track penned by Rush himself is the opener, “Duncan and Brady.” This anthology is definitive early-’60s Cambridge coffeehouse music, which means that it’s a bit quaintly dated, and also that it’s Sunday-morning listening in the good sense of the term. Rush plays accomplished acoustic guitar and sings with calm authority, though he’s no one’s ideal bluesman (or even ideal white bluesman). The traditional blues covers, which dominated the original Blues, Songs and Ballads LP (now the second part of this CD), can sound pretty callow; the folkier ones work better, one highlight being the instrumental “Mole’s Moan,” penned by a young Maria Muldaur. – Richie Unterberger

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