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Dock Boggs - His Folkways Years (1963-1968) (1998)
	Album details
	Label:     Ref#: ?-1312 Date: 1998   Category: folk Rating: 80     Genre: Folk
Notes/Reviews
Dock Boggs champions will look back at 1998 as a monumental year for the Virginia-born banjo-playing songster who, but for a few years in the late '20s and the early '60s, lived in obscurity. His first recordings have been beautifully reissued in Revenant's Country Blues: Complete Early Recordings package. His shadow looms over Greil Marcus's Invisible Republic--the critic's best book since Mystery Train. And Smithsonian Folkways has brought back 50 recordings made by Mike Seeger during the autumn of Boggs's life. Together with the Revenant material, this two-CD reissue--including a brilliant essay by Barry O'Connell--details one of the most mysterious voices in American music. When Boggs sings he tears each line to pieces and, in turn, the language of his death-obsessed blues rends his voice into a scratchy, painful tremolo. This is not folk music for the timid. "Oh, I've got no sugar baby now," he wails in one of his best-known songs. "It's all I can do for to see peace with you / And I can't get along this-a-way." Along with celebrated material from the '20s, Boggs also chose for these '60s sessions a few gospel tunes, which are sung with the revealing intensity. And on every track, even on the shaky, jagged instrumentals, Boggs captures the darkest and resiliency of a man's soul. --Roy Kasten
Songs/Tracks
CD1: 1.   Down South Blues (Dock Boggs)  2:11 2.   Country Blues (Dock Boggs)  3:52 3.   Pretty Polly (Dock Boggs)  2:55 4.   Coal Creek March (Dock Boggs)  1:56 5.   My Old Horse Died (Dock Boggs)  1:47 6.   Wild Bill Jones (Dock Boggs)  2:11 7.   Rowan County Crew (Dock Boggs)  6:10 8.   New Prisoner's Song (Dock Boggs)  2:55 9.   Oh Death (Dock Boggs)  3:20 10.   Prodigal Son (Dock Boggs)  3:54 11.   Mother's Advice (Dock Boggs)  3:42 12.   Drunkard's Lone Child (Traditional)  4:08 13.   Bright Sunny South (Dock Boggs)  3:39 14.   Mistreated Mama Blues (Dock Boggs)  1:53 15.   Harvey Logan (Dock Boggs)  3:28 16.   Mixed Blues  3:53 17.   Old Joe's Barroom  2:50 18.   Danville Girl (Dock Boggs)  2:37 19.   Cole Younger  1:52 20.   Schottische Time  1:15 21.   Papa, Build Me a Boat  2:44 22.   Little Black Train  2:55 23.   No Disappointments in Heaven  2:31 24.   Gloryland  4:01 CD2: 1.   Banjo Clog  1:50 2.   Wise County Jail (Dock Boggs)  1:52 3.   Sugar Baby (Traditional)  2:53 4.   The Death of Jerry Damron  4:17 5.   Railroad Tramp  3:14 6.   Poor Boy in Jail  2:58 7.   Brother Jim Got Shot  2:00 8.   John Henry (Traditional)  3:31 9.   Davenport  1:45 10.   Dying Ranger  3:29 11.   Little Omie Wise  3:27 12.   Sugar Blues  1:26 13.   Loving Nancy  2:30 14.   Cuba  1:30 15.   John Hardy (A.P. Carter)  2:06 16.   Peggy Walker  2:56 17.   I Hope I Live a Few More Days  4:11 18.   Turkey in the Straw (Traditional)  0:51 19.   Calvary  3:34 20.   Roses While I'm Living  3:25 21.   Leave It There  3:24 22.   Prayer of a Miner's Child  3:21 23.   Coke Oven March  1:04 24.   Reuben's Train  2:23 25.   Cumberland Gap  2:30 26.   Careless Love (Martha E. Koenig/Spencer Williams/W.C. Handy)  4:05
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