Jim Kweskin - Jug Band Music (1965)

At the peak of the American folk revival, Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band reintroduced an essential component into folk music: fun. While thousands attended the March on Washington in 1963 and others traveled to the South to participate in voting drives, Kweskin and his partners in crime played kazoos and washboards in Boston coffeehouses. For every time Joan Baez sang "We Shall Overcome," the Jug Band sang "Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me." While conservative commentators of the time may have seen such irreverence as the beginning of the folk revival's end, others clapped their hands and stomped their feet as the band sang "My Gal" and "Rag Mama" with happy abandon.

This artifact of the '60s folk revival (and the band's second album for Vanguard) is no less entertaining for its historical significance. In fact, it's aged better than most folk and rock albums of the era. Kazoos are funny that way. So are songs by the band's inspirational elders: Memphis Jug Band, Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, and Blind Boy Fuller. The song by the band's contemporary, Spider John Koerner of the folk-blues trio Koerner, Ray & Glover, is pretty humorous, too. Whatever hipster coffeehouse audiences thought of Geoff Muldaur singing Chuck Berry, here's betting they eventually wrote it off as just another joke.


Tracklist:

Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me
Jug Band Music
I'm A Woman
Morning Blues
Vamp Of New Orleans (Sadie Green)
Don't You Leave Me Here
Somebody Stole My Gal
K.C. Moan
Good Time Charlie
Jug Band Waltz
Whoa Mule Get Up In The Alley
Memphis
Ukelele Lady
Rag Mama

Jim Kweskin - Jug Band Music (1965)

(320 kbps, cover art included)