Troubadours Part 4 / Various

(3-CD foldout digipac + 140 page booklet; 80 tracks totalling 257:28) In the one hundred years that folk music has been recorded in the United States, the tradition has embraced ballads - mostly new, but some transed from Europe, political statements, personal introspection, and much more. Now the story is here from the 1920s to the 1970s and beyond in four exclusive 3-CD sets. Through this music, we feel it all from the isolation of early twentieth century Appalachia through the economic and political upheavals of the Depression, War, and Civil Rights eras to contemporary west coast singer-songwriters looking within for inspiration. The story is here: original artists and original versions in stunning sound with detailed notes from folk scholar Dave Samuelson. The first 3-CD set (available separately) covers the period from the 1920s through to 1957. All the names you'd expect are here: the Carter Family, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Lead Belly, Cisco Houston, and many, many more. Here are the original versions of songs that have become classics and rallying cries: Wildwood Flower, Midnight Special, Rock Island Line, Wayfaring Stranger, So Long It's Been Good To Know You, This Land Is Your Land, 16 Tons, 900 Miles, Delia, and many, many more. The second 3-CD set (available separately) begins with the folk revival that started in the wake of the Kingston Trio's Tom Dooley and continues through the dawn of the singer-songwriter era. It includes early folk revival classics like Walk Right In, Michael, and Green, Green. The second set also includes Bob Dylan's game-changing classics, Blowing In The Wind, Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, Masters Of War, Mr. Tambourine Man, and The Times They Are A-Changin'. It was the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam era, so the music took on contemporary issues. In Dylan's wake came Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, Dave Van Ronk, and many others, all of them represented by their finest work. The third 3-CD set (available separately) features those who married new, political folk songs with ancient ballads: Pete Seeger (Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Turn Turn Turn, and more), Joan Baez (including the greatest-ever version of We Shall Overcome), Buffy St. Marie (The Universal Soldier, Til It's Time For You To Go), and others from the turbulent 1960s. Dylan's contemporaries and his followers are here, all of them staking out a unique slant on the issues of the day. The set also includes pioneering folk rock artists, like Arlo Guthrie, the Lovin' Spoonful, Tim Rose, Jim Croce, Melanie, and Harry Chapin. All the classics you'd expect from late 1960s to early 1970s are side-by-side with side-trips into the jug band revival and hippie era classics, like Alice's Restaurant, Hey Joe, and Lay Down (Candles In The Rain). This fourth and final of the 3-CD volumes is even more eclectic, featuring America's best-selling poet, Rod McKuen, as well as old school folkies like Malvina Reynolds (Little Boxes), country rock pioneers like the Byrds (Hickory Wind), John Stewart, Nilsson, John Denver (Take Me Home Country Roads, Back Home Again), as well as John Hartford's original Gentle On My Mind - the song that changed country music, Townes Van Zandt's original Pancho And Lefty, and Kris Kristofferson's game-changing compositions, Me And Bobby McGee and Help Me Make It Through The Night. This set also includes John Prine, Steve Goodman, Gordon Lightfoot, and Joni Mitchell, artists who have helped to bring the folk tradition into the twenty-first century.

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