Friends of Old Time Music: The Folk Arrival 1961 - 1965
In the early '60s, during the great Folk Scare, an organization called the Friends of Old Time Music (Ralph Rinzler, Izzy Young, Mike Seeger, Jean Ritchie, and John Cohen) brought some of the era's best folk, blues, and bluegrass performers to New York City.  A number of them made their debut concerts there between 1961 and 1965, the period covered by this 3-CD set. Some of them are legends (Fred McDowell, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Doc Watson) while others are lesser lights (Annie Bird, Joseph Spence, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith). Throughout this compilation, the sound quality varies, and not all is optimum. But even then, there's no denying such thrills as hearing Maybelle Carter announce she's about to perform the first song the original Carter Family recorded in 1927 ("Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow"). Often it's the little-known material or artists who deliver the biggest punch: Ed Young and Emma Ramsay running a shiver up your spine on the mostly a cappella blues dialogue "Chevrolet" or Jesse Fuller, the one-man band, proving a big, commanding presence on "Stranger Blues." Of the 55 tracks, only two have been previously released. All of them carry an air of excitement, as if everybody involved knew the winds of change were about to blow. Indeed, these concerts and others in the series made an enormous impression on rising stars of the genre, including a young transplanted Minnesotan born Robert Zimmerman. "You heard records where you could," Bob Dylan said in 2001, "but mostly you heard other performers... Clarence Ashley... Dock Boggs... You could see those people live and in person." Now you can hear whatheheard, too.--Alanna Nash