Old Time Country Music (Folkways FA 2325) is a 1962 album on which Mike Seeger sings and plays everything, on fiddle, banjo, dulcimer, guitar, mouth-harp, mandolin and autoharp. It was recorded in August and September 1962 in the living room of Seeger’s home in Roosevelt, New Jersey, in the gaps between playing engagements and a house move. Tracy Schwarz ran the tape machines and helped solve problems such as fretting only the middle string of the dulcimer. Seeger recorded on an Ampex 600, with a second machine, a Tandberg, for overdubbing.
The record came out of an effort to make an LP of old-time music that Seeger had begun in 1957. A 1957 recording of “East Virginia” and several of the songs were used on the first New Lost City Ramblers record in late 1958, and of the songs he had tried then, only “John Hardy” and “Handsome Molly” remained here as they had been. The eighteen songs and tunes include “Richmond Cotillon,” “Lord Thomas,” “Frankie,” “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” “I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow” and “Sourwood Mountain.” The jacket gives, under some song titles, the old record the song came from, such as Fiddling John Carson’s Okeh record for “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down,” and thanks the collectors who lent their discs, including Ralph Rinzler, Pete Kuykendall, Bob Pinson, Archie Green, John Cohen and Harry Smith, whose Anthology of American Folk Music is also credited. Seeger took the song texts, except for the composite “John Hardy,” from the original records rather than transcribing them from his own performances.
Tracklist
- 1 Richmond Cotillion 1:55
- 2 The Baldheaded End of a Broom 2:50
- 3 Sad and Lonesome Day 3:32
- 4 Lord Thomas 3:50
- 5 Oh My Little Darling 2:13
- 6 Bonaparte’s Retreat alt version 3:32
- 7 Frankie 3:05
- 8 Will the Weaver 3:24
- 9 Rollin' On 1:43
- 10 Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down alt version 3:22
- 11 Worried Blues 3:30
- 12 The Story of the Mighty Mississippi 3:03
- 13 I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow alt version 2:55
- 14 Handsome Molly alt version 2:03
- 15 John Hardy alt version 2:44
- 16 Johnson City Blues 2:48
- 17 Fisherman's Luck 2:40
- 18 Sourwood Mountain alt version 2:26
