Clear Waters Remembered cover

Clear Waters Remembered

Jean Ritchie

Album · 1969 · Sire SES 97014

Clear Waters Remembered is an album by Jean Ritchie, the singer and dulcimer player from Viper, Kentucky. It was first issued at the end of 1969 on Sire (SES 97014), distributed by London Records, with liner notes by Ritchie herself, and was reissued in 1974 on Geordie Music (GEORDIE 101). The fourteen songs include three of her own about the coal country: “Black Waters,” “Blue Diamond Mines” and “West Virginia Mine Disaster.” “Black Waters” and “Blue Diamond Mines” belong to the group of songs she wrote about the damage strip-mining did to eastern Kentucky, and this album is the first release of “Blue Diamond Mines.”

On those two songs Ritchie accompanies herself on guitar with her son Peter Pickow on a second guitar. Elsewhere she plays dulcimer, backed in varying combinations by Dick Weissman on banjo and guitar, Happy Traum on guitar and banjo, Eric Weissberg on fiddle and Russ Savakus on bass. All four play on “Pretty Nancy,” “Bird in the Cage” and “Last Old Train’s A-Leaving,” and Ritchie adds dulcimer on the last. Weissberg’s fiddle is the only accompaniment on “Jenny Put the Kettle On,” and it is paired with her dulcimer on “Over the River to Feed My Sheep.” Traum plays banjo against her dulcimer on “Johnny Collins.”

Tracklist

  1. 1 Pretty Nancy 3:42
  2. 2 Young Man Who Wouldn't Raise Corn 1:43
  3. 3 Johnny Collins 2:45
  4. 4 Shoemaker's Song 1:33
  5. 5 See The Waters A-Glidin' 4:16
  6. 6 Morning Come, Maria Gone 2:53
  7. 7 Black Waters 3:48
  8. 8 Over The River To Feed My Sheep 1:18
  9. 9 Jenny Put The Kettle On 0:48
  10. 10 God Bless The Moon 0:56
  11. 11 Bird In The Cage 2:43
  12. 12 Blue Diamond Mines alt version 4:21
  13. 13 West Virginia Mine Disaster 2:46
  14. 14 Last Old Train's A-Leavin' 3:39

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