eMusic

Start Your Trial

An Untamed Sense of Control

by

Roscoe Holcomb

 
  • Pick
An Untamed Sense of Control

Rate it!

Avg: 4.0 (30 ratings)

One of the great finds of the folk revival.

  • We Say...

    Review by John Morthland

    One of the great finds of the folk revival, Holcomb recorded for the first time in 1959; Bob Dylan’s apt description of his style provides this set’s title. The east Kentucky banjo man performed traditional country songs in a tradition-plus manner that played his tense, bristly high tenor off against an irregularly percussive, two-finger banjo style. (He also adapted blues and poppish material, and played slide guitar, harmonica and fiddle.) Burry, reedy performances like “Little Maggie,” “I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow” and “Milk Cow Blues” are both piercing and ghostly, with a bigger sound than you’ve likely ever heard coming from one voice and/or instrument.

  • They Say...

    Review by Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

    As documented by the Smithsonian Folkways reissue The High Lonesome Sound, Roscoe Holcomb, like contemporaries Dock Boggs and Bascom Lamar Lunsford, was the real thing, a raw, solitary musician who expressed the inexpressible, a yearning out of time and place, a sense of the wild, the unseen, the unknowable, perhaps even the unspeakable. The title of this second volume of Holcomb's recordings comes from Bob Dylan, who was describing what he heard in Holcomb's music. And he's right, he knew how to get that sound, how to seek and find the mercurial ghost inside whatever instrument he was playing, the banjo, a guitar with a jackknife, or from that graveyard, sorrowful voice of his. His was able to channel the wisdom and tragedy of the ages and allow for both possibility and despair, even in his a cappella numbers. His is the sound of Appalachian midnight, somewhere past bluegrass, folk, and country. These recordings were made not in 1959 like the material on the other volume, but later, between 1961-1973, when Holcomb was touring, though in declining health and spirits. And, while some the material is duplicated on this set, the versions are very different, and, if anything, this material is somehow spookier, deeper in the trenches of both sorrow and resignation. Some of these tunes were recorded in New York City and in concert in Cambridge, MA, and others on Holcomb's front porch in Daisy, KY. The settings hardly matter; this includes his versions of "Little Maggie," "Frankie and Johnny," the knife-guitar take of "Foggy Mountain Top" that is only rivaled by Maybelle Carter's, his 1961 version of Carter Stanley's "Man of Constant Sorrow" (which is the definitive version of the song done a cappella), and his read of "I Ain't Got No Sugar Baby Now" (which rivals Dock Boggs' earlier version). The truth in all of these songs is the way the blues, bluegrass, ancient folk traditions, and Holcomb's uncompromising and truly unusual sense of rhythm and phrasing collide and, rather than cancel each other out, bring one another to life. His blues songs, such as "Milk Cow Blues" and "Sitting on Top of This World," are fraught with edges and trail-offs that unsettle the listener, seeking a kind of completion that could only come from a singer who didn't hold the song as a living, breathing presence that haunts him. The bravado in the latter is offset by the irony that Holcomb's life had been an image in direct opposition to what the braggadocio in its lyrics offers. There is no grain in Holcomb's voice and banjo style; his voice is the grain, the American Grain in all its rough-hewn glory and grace and desolation. It is majestic in its reediness and singular in its power. This is an essential collection for anyone interested in American traditional music -- be it folk, blues, country, or bluegrass -- and is a primer for those who seek to discover what it was that all of those musics sought to express.

  • You Say...

    Write a Review

    I would like to say...

    Artist: Roscoe Holcomb

    Album: An Untamed Sense of Control

    Review Title: (maximum 50 characters)

    Your Review: (maximum 1,000 characters)

    Cancel

    Please keep your comments to the recordings themselves, and be courteous and respectful. Thanks! For further info, read our Community Guidelines.

“ The indie iTunes — Hardcore music fans are migrating to eMusic, the iTunes Music Store's cheaper, cooler cousin.”


Rolling Stone
Start Your Trial

Recently Viewed

Back
Forward

© 1998-2009 eMusic.com Inc. eMusic and the eMusic logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks in the USA or other countries. All rights reserved.

All Music Guide © 1992 - 2009 All Media Guide, LLC
Portions of content provided by All Music Guide, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC

Facebook®, YouTube, Flickr™ and Wikipedia® are registered trademarks of their respective owners, Facebook Inc., Google, Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Neither Facebook Inc., Google, Inc., Yahoo! Inc. nor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. are partners or sponsors of eMusic. eMusic uses the Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia API but is not endorsed or certified by Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia. eMusic does not pre-screen, monitor, endorse nor assume any liability for websites, contents, products, services or claims made by Facebook, YouTube, Flickr™ and Wikipedia®.

Legal or copyright question regarding Facebook, YouTube, Flickr or Wikipedia content on eMusic? Please email us.