The Music of Roscoe Holcomb and Wade Ward cover

The Music of Roscoe Holcomb and Wade Ward

Roscoe Holcomb

Album · 1962 · Folkways FA 2363

The Music of Roscoe Holcomb and Wade Ward (Folkways FA 2363, 1962) was edited, with its liner notes, by John Cohen and Eric Davidson. It has 26 performances: ten by Roscoe Holcomb of Daisy, Kentucky, on the first side, and sixteen by Wade Ward of Independence, Virginia, on the second. Holcomb’s selections include “Little Birdie,” “Hills of Mexico,” “Man of Constant Sorrow” and “The Rising Sun”; Ward’s include “Sourwood Mountain,” “Cumberland Gap,” “Arkansas Traveller” and “Sally Ann.” The recordings were made in New York City.

Holcomb, a coal miner, construction worker and farmer, was first recorded by Cohen in 1959, and it was in describing his singing that Cohen coined the phrase “high, lonesome sound.” He sang in a nasal style shaped by the Old Regular Baptist tradition, often without accompaniment, and played banjo and guitar. Ward, a farmer born in 1892, played clawhammer banjo and fiddle in the Galax style, won the Galax Fiddlers’ Convention eight times between 1936 and 1968, and had been recorded for the Library of Congress by John Lomax in 1937 and by Alan Lomax in 1939, 1941 and 1959. Folkways later issued a solo Holcomb record, Close to Home (1975), and a Ward memorial album, Uncle Wade (1972).

Tracklist

  1. 1 Moonshiner alt version 3:03
  2. 2 On Top of Old Smoky 3:45
  3. 3 Little Grey Mule 1:13
  4. 4 Little Birdie alt version 2:28
  5. 5 Graveyard Blues 3:00
  6. 6 I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow alt version 2:55
  7. 7 The Rising Sun 3:50
  8. 8 Trouble in Mind alt version 4:17
  9. 9 Hills of Mexico alt version 2:32
  10. 10 True Love 4:46
  11. 11 Peachbottom Creek 1:28
  12. 12 Uncle Eef Got a Coon 1:16
  13. 13 Mississippi Sawyer - 1 1:22
  14. 14 Sourwood Mountain alt version 2:26
  15. 15 Cumberland Gap alt version 3:06
  16. 16 Old Jimmy Sutton 1:27
  17. 17 New River Train alt version 3:26
  18. 18 Lone Prairie 1:33
  19. 19 Little Sadie alt version 2:46
  20. 20 Mississippi Sawyer - 2 3:03
  21. 21 Arkansas Traveler alt version 3:04
  22. 22 Half Shaved 1:07
  23. 23 Reuben’s Train alt version 3:34
  24. 24 Sally Ann alt version 3:01
  25. 25 Cluck Old Hen alt version 2:34
  26. 26 Waterbound alt version 3:57

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