I was lucky enough to run into Jim Nelson while listening to Jim and Kim Lansford at Sqwires a couple of Sundays ago and found out about the recently released Bear Family CD focusing on Cousin Emmy that he was instrumental (along with Mike Seeger) in getting put together and released.
Some of you know Jim as a teacher and board member of the Folk School of St. Louis. Others know him as one of the best old-time guitarists in the country and a member of the Ill-Mo Boys string band or for his contributions to the Old-Time Herald magazine. And, of course, Jim's just a heckuva nice guy.
But he’s also a well respected folklorist and music historian. In this case, Jim contributed to the excellent and extensive liner notes in this package as well as having unearthed some of the radio recordings that make up a good portion of this CD.
There’s some information on Cousin Emmy here that I’d known before. My granddad was a country fiddler and guitarist in the St. Louis and Southern Illinois areas and had introduced me to Emmy’s music many years ago. There’s also a St. Louis connection since Emmy was based in the St. Louis area for a number of years and had a daily radio program on KMOX before it went to an all talk format. Even so, much of the biographical information on her contained in Jim’s fine essay was brand new to me.
The music here is great stuff. Thirty-eight tracks in all with Emmy on banjo (she taught Grandpa Jones to play claw-hammer), guitar, fiddle, and harmonica with vocals. Tracks include “Bowling Green”, “Johnny Booker”, “Chilly Scenes of Winter”, “Ruby”, “Milk Cow Blues”, “Free Little Bird”, “Groundhog” and many others. The sound has been remastered from the older recordings and radio acetates and is clear and remarkably free of extraneous noise.
Altogether, this is an impressive package and I can’t recommend it highly enough for fans of old-time music, early country, or Cousin Emmy.
I understand that Jim has a few copies for sale. Ask him about it next time you see him.
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1 comment:
Jim was kind enough to let me browse through the notes on an copy that had been unsealed while I worked the admission/t-shirt/cd table at the Folk School showcase a few weeks back, and I was sold pdq. I had been wavering over the price of $20 for a single disc, but it's worth it for me; I'd say it's worth half that for the notes alone. The music is for real, and not much available up until now, so it's actually a darn good deal. And while I don't usually wax rhapsodic about such matters, the outstanding quality of the package design is really a plus.
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