Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s cover

Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s

Doc Watson

Album · 1961 · Folkways FA 2355

Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s was issued by Folkways Records in March 1961 as FA 2355. It presents the string band around the banjo player and singer Clarence “Tom” Ashley, with several of its members billed alongside him. The sessions were recorded in September 1960 at Shouns, Tennessee; Saltville, Virginia; and Deep Gap, North Carolina, by Ralph Rinzler and Eugene W. Earle.

Rinzler had met Ashley at the Union Grove fiddlers’ convention in 1960, and the band he recorded included the guitarist Clint Howard and the fiddler Fred Price along with Doc Watson, then unknown. Watson had played electric guitar in a Johnson City, Tennessee, country and western swing band in the 1950s; in 1960 he took Rinzler’s advice and began playing acoustic guitar and banjo exclusively, and this was his first recorded work.

The LP has seventeen tracks, and the combinations of players change from one to the next. On “Pretty Little Pink” Howard sings lead, Watson plays lead guitar, and the band includes Howard on guitar, Jack Johnson on banjo, Price on fiddle and Tommy Moore on washboard. On “Handsome Molly” Watson sings lead and plays banjo, with Gaither Carlton on fiddle and Rinzler on guitar. On “Old Ruben” Watson sings and plays guitar to Carlton’s banjo. Ashley himself sings on tracks such as “Claude Allen” and “God’s Gonna Ease My Troublin’ Mind,” and Eva Ashley Moore sings “The Haunted Woods.”

The Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry in 2013.

Tracklist

  1. 1 Crawdad Song alt version 2:31
  2. 2 Sitting on Top of the World alt version 1:59
  3. 3 Lee Highway Blues 1:45
  4. 4 Free Little Bird 2:09
  5. 5 The Cuckoo alt version 2:49
  6. 6 Rising Sun Blues 2:58
  7. 7 Looking T'ward Heaven 2:31
  8. 8 Rambling Hobo - 1 1:30
  9. 9 Rambling Hobo - 2 1:39
  10. 10 Shady Grove alt version 2:59
  11. 11 Cumberland Gap alt version 3:06
  12. 12 Tough Luck 2:29
  13. 13 Humpbacked Mule 1:30
  14. 14 My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains alt version 2:42
  15. 15 Way Down Town 2:32
  16. 16 Banks of the Ohio alt version 4:12
  17. 17 Little Sadie alt version 2:46
  18. 18 Carroll County Blues 1:43
  19. 19 Cluck Old Hen alt version 2:34
  20. 20 Chilly Winds (Lonesome Road Blues) 2:40
  21. 21 Sweet Heaven When I Die alt version 2:09
  22. 22 Fire on the Mountain alt version 2:03
  23. 23 Will the Circle be Unbroken alt version 5:38
  24. 24 Old Daniel Prayed alt version 2:25
  25. 25 Amazing Grace alt version 2:57
  26. 26 Sally Ann alt version 3:01
  27. 27 Richmond Blues 1:36
  28. 28 Old Ruben alt version 2:04
  29. 29 Willie Moore 3:35
  30. 30 Walkin’ Boss alt version 5:17
  31. 31 Shout Lulu 1:27
  32. 32 Skillet Good and Greasy 2:08
  33. 33 Pretty Little Pink alt version 2:29
  34. 34 Run, Jimmie Run 3:09
  35. 35 Hicks' Farewell 5:26
  36. 36 Old Man at the Mill alt version 1:55
  37. 37 A Short Life of Trouble 3:22
  38. 38 Brown's Dream 1:44
  39. 39 Footprints in the Snow alt version 2:39
  40. 40 I'm Going Back to Jericho 1:55
  41. 41 Peg and Awl 2:15
  42. 42 Maggie Walker Blues 2:56
  43. 43 God's Gonna Ease My Troublin' Mind 3:07
  44. 44 I Saw a Man at the Close of Day 2:41
  45. 45 Handsome Molly alt version 2:16
  46. 46 John Henry alt version 3:12
  47. 47 Honey Babe Blues 3:47
  48. 48 Wayfaring Pilgrim 5:05

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