Chieftains
In the world of traditional Irish music, the Chieftains have done more than any other group to widen the genre's popularity. This, their debut, released a mere two years after their 1963 inception, reflects only a taste of what was to come. It's straightahead folk music; the selections consist of stalwartly traditional reels, jigs, and airs, all of which illuminate the debt that American folk traditions owed to old-school Irish and Celtic folk forms. Fairly restrained in its energy, these songs float by without the confidence of the Chieftains' later work, revealing the music's position in the tentative vanguard of the Celtic folk revivals of the later 1960s. Along with the group's three subsequent releases, this debut is also available as part of the slim but stellarFrom the Beginningbox set.--Genevieve Williams