Nina Simone - Forbidden Fruit (1961)

The remarkable Nina Simone ranks alongside Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald as one of the great voices of black music. Not only that, but she ranks alongside James Brown in the music world as a proponent of civil rights, a cause she espoused from early in her career after being rejected by Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute on, she felt, racial grounds.

Born Eunice Waymon in North Carolina in 1933, she showed an early aptitude for both organ and piano which led to her attending New York’s Juilliard School of Music. She started moonlighting from her classical studies to make a living as a singer. Her stage name combined Nina (‘little one’, a nickname from an Hispanic boyfriend) with Simone (borrowed from French actress Simone Signoret). A night-club date in Atlantic City saw her signed by the Bethlehem label, and the first session yielded the Billie Holiday-inspired US Top 20 hit ‘I Loves You Porgy’.
Forbidden Fruit is an album by Jazz singer/pianist/songwriter Nina Simone. It was her second studio album for Colpix and was released in 1961.

Recorded in New York with producer Cal Lampley in 1961 and released that same year, ‘Forbidden Fruit’ was an eclectic mix. The ten tracks of the original release include three compositions from the outrageously talented Oscar Brown Jr, including the title track and the opening ‘Rags And Old Iron’. ‘Gin House Blues’ would become a chart item in the hands of Amen Corner in 1967, while Nina herself would revisit the song on 1968’s ‘Nuff Said’ album. She also re-recorded Oscar Brown’s ‘Work Song’ on several occasions and in different musical settings, its tale of an oppressive chain gang clearly resonating.

The instrumental trio of Chris White (bass), Al Schackman (guitar) and Bob Hamilton (drums) provide sympathetic backing to Simone’s voice and piano. Schackman in particular shines on ‘Just Say I Love Him’ and the previously mentioned ‘Rags And Old Iron’.

The original sleeve note of ‘Forbidden Fruit’, when released on vinyl, read as follows: ‘In “Forbidden Fruit”, Nina Simone sings of people in love and the circumstances that sometimes keep them from it. While some of the songs are conventional in the sense that their melodies are haunting and in the love song tradition, others are concerned more with the realities of troubled love… This album, more than ever, proves Nina’s amazing versatility and stamps her again as one of the great talents of our time.’

Music trade journal Billboard was enthusiastic about its sales potential, stating in its 5 June edition: ‘While this excellent album features mostly vocal stylings, there are spots which showcase the gal’s powerful piano technique. The act should go well with her many fans and could make a distinctive pop-jazz item.’

Tracklist:

1. “Rags and Old Iron” (Norman Curtis, Oscar Brown, Jr)
2. “No Good Man” (Dan Fisher, Irene Higginbotham, Sammy Gallop)
3. “Gin House Blues” (Fletcher Henderson, Henry Troy)
4. “I’ll Look Around” (Cross, Cory)
5. “I Love to Love” (Baker, Hayton)
6. “Work Song”
7. “Where Can I Go Without You” (Peggy Lee, Victor Young)
8. “Just Say I Love Him” (Val, Dale, Kalmanoff, Ward, Enzo Fusco, Rodolfo Falvo)
9. “Memphis in June” (Paul Francis Webster, Hoagy Carmichael)
10. “Forbidden Fruit” (Oscar Brown, Jr)

Nina Simone - Forbidden Fruit (1961)
(256 kbps, cover art included)

The Staple Singers - Freedom Highway (1965)

Originally released on Epic in 1965 as a live in-church session, "Freedom Highway" is an album by The Staple Singers (Epic LN24163/ BN26163). The title song referred to the murder of Emmett Till at Tallahatchie River. The lyrics begin “March up freedom's highway / March, each and every day.” and continue “Made up my mind / And I won't turn around."

It’s impossible to discuss the Staple Singers’ 1965 live album Freedom Highway without considering what was going down in America that year. On March 7, more than 600 marchers set out to make the 50-mile walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and were attacked by Alabama state troopers and armed posses. Two days later, they tried again, but turned back when Governor George Wallace denied them state protection. Two long weeks later, they tried a third time, with federal protection from the US Army and the National Guard. It took them three days, but they finally reached the state capitol.

Just a few weeks later and several hundred miles north, one of the hottest groups on the gospel circuit debuted a new song during a service at the New Nazareth Church on Chicago’s South Side. Pops Staples, patriarch and bandleader of the formidable Staple Singers, explained the inspiration in his introduction. "From that march, word was revealed and a song was composed," he explains, sounding less like a preacher addressing his congregation and more like a close friend shaking your hand. "And we wrote a song about the freedom marchers and we call it the ‘Freedom Highway’, and we dedicate this number to all the freedom marchers." As he is addressing the congregation, Pops strikes a clutch of chords on his guitar, and those chords coalesce into a spry blues riff that he sends rolling down the aisles of New Nazareth.

I am far from a religious man, but good music is good music. And this is damn good music! The blend of church gospel with Pops Staples' intricate yet bluesy guitar skills and Mavis Staples' gritty, soulful singing means the record is warmly satisfying from start to finish.

The Staple Singers - Freedom Highway (1965)
(320 kbps, cover art included)

Tracklist:

Freedom Highway
What You Gonna Do?
Take My Hand Precious Lord
When I'm Gone
Help Me Jesus
We Shall Overcome
When The Saints Go Marching In
The Funeral
Build On That Shore
Tell Heaven
He's All Right

Nina Simone - Sings Ellington! (1962)

The album, as the title suggests, showcased 11 songs written by and associated with the great jazz bandleader. The Malcolm Dodds Singers supplied backing vocals to augment Nina and her piano, an unidentified orchestra also present on the 1961 sessions. Her approach was typically unorthodox, ‘Satin Doll’ being tackled as an instrumental and ‘I Got It Bad’ possessing a gospel feel.

The album was released in 1962, and its original sleevenote read in part: ‘It was inevitable that Nina would one day sing Duke Ellington, and that day, much-waited and much-wanted, is happily here… Ellington’s individualistic and timeless music is complemented perfectly by one of the great stylists of our time. Her range, through the Ellington standards and the lesser-known but nonetheless unique creations is nothing short of masterful.’
Tracklist:

1. Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
2. I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
3. Hey, Buddy Bolden
4. Merry Mending
5. Something To Live For
6. You Better Know It
7. I Like The Sunrise
8. Solitude
9. The Gal From Joe's
10. Satin Doll
11. It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)


Nina Simone - Sings Ellington! (1962)
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Mercedes Sosa - Al Despertar (1998)

The driving force behind the nueva canción movement, singer Mercedes Sosa was born and raised in Tucumán, Argentina, beginning her performing career at age 15 after taking top honors in a radio station amateur competition. A rich, expressive vocalist and a gifted interpreter, Sosa was dubbed "the voice of the silent majority" for her choice of overtly political material, and alongside artists including Violeta Parra and Atahualpa Yupanqui, she spearheaded the rise of the so-called "nueva canción" movement, which heralded the emergence of protest music across Argentina and Chile during the '60s. The movement was crippled in 1973 by the CIA-sponsored coup which ousted democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende; with her repertoire of songs championing human rights and democracy, Sosa was viewed as a serious threat by the military regime which assumed power, and in 1975 she was arrested during a live performance which also resulted in the incarceration of many audience members. Death threats forced her to leave Argentina in 1979, and she remained in exile for three years, finally returning with a triumphant comeback performance in February 1982

"Al Despertar" is a 1998 album by Mercedes Sosa. The album won the 1999 Premios Gardel in the folklore category. 

After experimenting and succeeding with other music styles, with this album La Negra goes back to her roots: Argentine folk music. I'm always amazed by her ability to choose songs. In her songbook there are no meaningless tunes. She chooses each one to express herself, and in WHAT classy way!!


Tracklist: 

Vientos Del Alma
Pueblero De Alla Ite
Como Urpilita Perdida
Desandando
Déjame Que Me Vaya
La Villerita
Agitando Pañuelos
Viejo Corazón
Del Tiempo De Mi Niñez
Bajo El Sauce Solo
Sueñero
Zamba Por Vos
Al Despertar 
Luna De Cabotaje
Almas En El Viento
Indulto
La Belleza

Mercedes Sosa - Al Despertar (1998)

(320 kbps, cover art included)

Jack Elliott - Jack Elliott (EP, 1960)

Ramblin' Jack Elliott is one of folk music's most enduring characters. Since he first came on the scene in the late '50s, Elliott influenced everyone from Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger to the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. The son of a New York doctor and a onetime traveling companion of Woody Guthrie, Elliott used his self-made cowboy image to bring his love of folk music to one generation after another. Despite the countless miles that Elliott traveled, his nickname is derived from his unique verbiage: an innocent question often led to a mosaic of stories before he got to the answer. According to folk songstress Odetta, it was her mother who gave Elliott the name when she remarked, "Oh, that Jack Elliott, he sure can ramble."

"Jack Elliot Sings" was an album released in Great Britain in 1957. The album was recorded in February and March 1956 by John R.T. Davis at his home in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, England. It is an obscure release in Elliott's catalog that even collectors aren't aware of.

 In 1960, four of the songs were released on an EP titled "Jack Elliott".


Tracklist:


A1 Muleskinners
A2 San Francisco Bay
B1 Alabama Bound
B2 Talking Blues

Jack Elliott - Jack Elliott (EP, 1960)

(320 kbps, cover art included)

The Solsonics - Jazz In The Present Tense (1993)

In 1991, bassist Jez Colin and percussionist Willie McNeil formed the Solsonics from Los Angeles's underground club scene. Although the band plays soul-jazz with updated hip-hop rhythms, elements of Afro-Cuban and reggae music also appear. The Solsonics first gained a national release when Chrysalis released "Jazz in the Present Tense" in 1993.

The jazz/hip-hop and acid-jazz schools continue to generate interesting, if erratic projects. The Solsonics' instrumentals and reworkings and incorporation of such jazz classics as Freddie Hubbard's "Red Clay" and Ahmad Jamal's "Superstition" are intriguing, featuring fine solos from saxophonist Jim Akimoto, trumpeter Elliot Caine, keyboardist Mike Boito and special guests like guitarist Norman Brown. When lyrics and vocalists are included, the quality dips, mainly because they didn't find a lyricist whose contributions matched their playing skills. But their spirit, intensity and interaction are so good that it's easy to overlook the trite lines and lightweight vocals.

I still love this wonderful cool lazy summers day jazz all the way back to 1993


Tracklist:

1 Jazz In The Present Tense 4:16

2 Keep The Rhythm Strong 4:23

3 Montuno Funk 4:07

4 Blood Brother 4:05

5 Daddy Love 3:55

6 Ascension 5:40

7 Red Clay 4:35

8 So Much More Together 4:01

9 Now This Is How We Do It 2:48

10 Inside Is A Stride 4:03

11 Morning After Paradise 3:59

12 Mountain Man 5:08

The Solsonics - Jazz In The Present Tense (1993)

(320 kbps, cover art included)

Annie Anxiety - Soul Posession (1984)

Many influential characters graced the stage of Max’s Kansas City within the creative zeitgeist of New York City during the late 1970’s, but one local native named Annie Bandez thrust herself into the downtown scene with her punk ensemble Annie and the Asexuals, establishing her nom de plume Annie Anxiety (later known as “Little Annie”) and colliding head-on with the social norms of contemporary punk culture entangling the city at that time.

After a couple years of disintegrated pursuits in New York, Annie relocated to England, finding herself at the doorstep of the famed anarchro-commune Dial House headed by activist Penny Rimbaud. It was here that Annie Anxiety established herself as a singular artist and voice with her debut 1981 single “Barbed Wire Halo” on seminal Crass Records and forging a creative alliance with Crass members Penny Rimbaud and Eve Libertine. As the landscape of punk in the United Kingdom was shifting towards a more diverse, multicultural focal point, artists such as Annie Anxiety found themselves exploring musical signatures in styles such as dub reggae and rocksteady.

In the summer of 1983, Annie began work at Southern Studios on what would be her first full length endeavor which encompassed all of her creative assets at that time. Employing the expertise of legendary dub producer Adrian Sherwood to realize this vision, Annie pulled together members of Crass, Flux of Pink Indians, Family Fodder, African Head Charge, London Underground and Art Interface to record her groundbreaking dub industrial masterpiece. Upon its initial release by the unofficial Crass off-shoot label Corpus Christi in 1984, "Soul Possession" started the avalanche of activity that would include dozens of releases and collaborations with Nurse With Wound, Coil, Current 93, Swans and Marc Almond.

According to Anxiety, the album sessions were conducted in sleepless bursts of two or three days at a time, "living on Guinness and cheese sandwiches." She continues, "There'd be different people coming in, they'd leave, and we'd take one multi-track off and then we'd work on a Prince Far I multi-track...." The musicians on the album itself were drawn from the ranks of Crass, but the overall mood of the record is not too far removed from that conjured by Sherwood alongside Ari Up and Judy Nylon, ensuring that it has remained a firm favorite: one of the most abrasively delicious albums of the age, the stinking Southern blues-fired jungle-dub of "Soul Possession". 

Tracklist:

A1 Closet Love
A2 Third Gear
A3 Turkey Girl
A4 Burnt Offerings
B1 To Know Evil
B2 Sad Shadows
B3 Viet Not Mine, El Salvador Yours
B4 Waiting For The Fun

Annie Anxiety - Soul Posession (1984)

(192 kbps, cover art included)

Laura Nyro - More Than A New Discovery (1967) aka First Songs (1969)

These 12 sides represent singer/songwriter Laura Nyro's earliest professional recordings. "More Than a New Discovery" was originally issued on the Folkways label in conjunction with Verve Records in early 1967. The contents were subsequently reissued as "The First Songs" in 1969 after she began to garner national exposure with her first two LPs for Columbia -- "Eli and the Thirteenth Confession" (1968) and "New York Tendaberry" (1969), respectively. 

Many of these titles became international hits for some of the early '70s most prominent pop music vocalists and bands. Among them, "Wedding Bell Blues" and "Blowing Away" were covered by the Fifth Dimension. "And When I Die" became one of Blood, Sweat & Tears signature pieces. Likewise, "Stoney End," as well as "I Never Meant to Hurt You," are both arguably best known via Barbra Streisand's renditions. Accompanied by a small pop combo, Nyro's prowess as both composer and performer are evidence that she was a disciple of both Tin Pan Alley as well as the Brill Building writers. Additionally, Nyro was able to blend the introspection of a classic torch ballad with an undeniable intimacy inherent in her lyrics. 

"Buy and Sell," as well as "Billy's Blues," exemplify her marriage of jazz motifs within a uniquely pop music structure. Also immediately discernible is that these were far from simplistic, dealing with the organic elements that tether all of humanity, such as love, death, loss, and even redemption. While artists such as Tim Buckley and Joni Mitchell were attempting to do the same, much of their early catalog is considerably less focused in comparison. For example, "Lazy Susan" incorporates the same acoustic noir that would become the centerpiece of her future epics "Gibsom Street" and the title track to "New York Tendaberry". 

There are a few differences worth noting when comparing "More Than a New Discovery" and "First Songs". After Columbia Records bought Nyro out of her contract with Verve/Forecast, they also issued this collection in 1973 as "First Songs", boasting a revised running order, as well as a title change from "Hands Off the Man" -- as listed here -- to "Flim Flam Man." Beginning in 2002, Sony/Legacy began an exhaustive overhaul of Nyro's classic '70s albums. In addition to remastered sound and newly incorporated artwork and liner notes, the series also boasts "bonus tracks" where applicable. Both casual listeners, as well as seasoned connoisseurs, can find much to discover and rediscover on these seminal sides from Laura Nyro.


Tracklist:

A1 Wedding Bell Blues 2:40
A2 Billy's Blues 3:16
A3 California Shoeshine Boys 2:43
A4 Blowing Away 2:20
A5 Lazy Susan 3:50
A6 Good By Joe 2:36
B1 Flim Flam Man 2:25
B2 Stoney End 2:41
B3 I Never Meant To Hurt You 2:49
B4 He's A Runner 3:37
B5 Buy And Sell 3:34
B6 And When I Die 2:37


Laura Nyro - More Than A New Discovery (1966)
(320 kbps, cover art included)

Oktober-Klub - Der Oktober-Klub singt (AMIGA, 1968)

"Singe-Bewegung" and "Oktoberklub" in East Germany, part 2.

The Singing Movement

However, in December 1965 the 11th plenary assembly of the Central Committee of the SED (“Socialist Unity Party of Germany”) launched a frontal attack on dissident art and the new youth culture, blacklisting a number of films and vilifying Wolf Biermann as “petit bourgeois/anarchistic” and Beat music as “decadent”. That was followed in early 1967 by an ideological clampdown on the whole hootenanny movement, henceforth renamed Singebewegung (i.e. “Singing Movement”, officially supplanting the foreign expression hootenanny) and by and large co-opted by the FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend, i.e. “Free German Youth”). Time and again, however, songwriters and clubs managed to avoid being co-opted, and eventually fused into a cultural melting pot that was to produce many talents. The “Singing Movement” engineered essentially to impose an artificial socialist culture on the country’s youth, ultimately fell wide of the mark.

"Der Oktober-Klub singt" is a recording of an public event at the AMIGA studio Berlin, June 25, 1967.


Tracklist:

01 Sag mir wo Du stehst
02 Wer bin ich und wer bist Du
03 Phyllis und die Mutter
04 Pas de deux im Zwiebelmond
05 Abendlied
06 Min Jehann
07 Vorahnung
08 In Spanien die Blüten
09 Übergang über den Ebro
10 Wie starb Benno Ohnesorg
11 We Shall Not Be Moved
12 Knüpflied auf eine Unruhestifterin
13 Zwischen Roggenfeld und Hecken
14 Als ich kam durchs Oderluch
15 Von einem Alptraum
16 Friedenslied
17 Partisanen vom Amur
18 Oktober-Song
19 Ech Jablotschko
20 Lied vom Feuertod einer lieben guten Tante
21 Ungarisches Stundenlied
22 Schau her

Oktober-Klub - Der Oktober-Klub singt (AMIGA, 1968)
(192 kbps, cover art included)

To be continued...

Loudon Wainwright III ‎– Attempted Mustache (1973)

Following on the heels of the fluke success of Loudon Wainwright III's only hit single, "Dead Skunk," "Attempted Mustache" is an excellent encapsulation of all things Loudon. Even so, sales were disappointing, and Wainwright's audience did not expand beyond that of a small, loyal cult. 

The LP kicks off with "The Swimming Song," a tongue-in-cheek celebration full of clever lines, banjo pickin' and a touch of Doug Kershaw's Cajun fiddle. "A.M. World" reflects on life with a hit single, obviously written while "Dead Skunk" was climbing the charts. "Liza" is an a cappella folk song about childhood friend and classmate Liza Minnelli, who had recently won an Oscar for Cabaret. "I Am the Way" recasts Woody Guthrie's talking blues "New York Town," with Jesus Christ hanging out in Jerusalem proclaiming, "Every Son of God gets a little hard luck some time," and confessing, "Don't tell nobody but I kissed Magdalene." "Dilated to Meet You" is a welcome-to-the-world greeting card for a soon-to-be-born child, but on "Lullaby," the singer pleads with his son Rufus to "shut up and go to bed," complaining "you're a late night faucet that's got a drip." 

This album also includes the Wainwright classic "The Man Who Couldn't Cry," a lengthy short story set to music about a character who suffers all manner of tragedy and abuse, but is still incapable of showing emotion. Throughout "Attempted Mustache", Loudon Wainwright III's droll, dry sense of humor is conveyed by his world-weary Everyman's voice, capturing small vignettes of life through a skewed, slightly left-of-center lens.

Tracklist:

"The Swimming Song" – 2:26
"A.M. World" – 2:31
"Bell Bottom Pants" – 2:27
"Liza" – 2:47
"I Am the Way (New York Town)" (based on "New York Town", music by Woody Guthrie; new title and lyrics by Loudon Wainwright III) – 3:12
"Clockwork Chartreuse" – 3:37
"Down Drinking at the Bar" – 3:55
"The Man Who Couldn't Cry" – 6:16
"Come a Long Way" (Kate McGarrigle) – 2:45
"Nocturnal Stumblebutt" – 3:45
"Dilated to Meet You" – 2:02
"Lullaby" – 2:55

Loudon Wainwright III ‎– Attempted Mustache (1973)

(320 kbps, cover art included)

Ed Sanders - Beer Cans On The Moon (1973)

"They say rock & roll and politics don't mix," sings Ed Sanders at the very beginning of his second and final solo LP. That's not necessarily true, but if you were going to make an argument against that declaration, this album is one of the last exhibits you'd want to use as evidence.

The crucial flaws were not those of intent: Sanders wasted no time in advocating "Nonviolent Direction Action," satirizing the war-mongering of Henry Kissinger, hailing the unwinding of the Watergate scandal, and grinding out a "Universal Rent Strike Rag." Perhaps these weren't as immediately attention-grabbing issues as Vietnam and free love, but they were still important, especially in 1973. But Sanders was let down by the pedestrian, typically laissez-faire early-'70s rock arrangements, the severe limitations of his nasal twanging vocals, and most crucially by his own bluntly unwitty songwriting.

Sanders had proved he was skilled at crude wit with the Fugs, yet even though his efforts here are similar thematically, they sound forced and overly didactic, and are more tiresome than funny, even for many who wholeheartedly agree with his sociopolitical outlook. Sad to say, even many left-wingers and Fugs fans will demand the record be removed from the turntable long before its conclusion, or at any rate before the daft, echo-laden novelty tune about a "Yodeling Robot" that falls in love with Dolly Parton.

- Richie Unterberger

Ed Sanders - Beer Cans On The Moon (1973)
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Arlo Guthrie - Arlo Guthrie (1974)

Arlo Guthrie's seventh record follows a formula that he'd been developing over the past several years - a handful of interesting originals mixed with a song or two by a legend, something traditional, a couple of jokes, and one of Dad's tunes.

Guthrie's fondness for nostalgia mixed with his '60s idealism could turn such predictability into folky mush, but things are kept fresh by his strong sense of tradition, commitment, and taste, along with his growth as an artist in general. As far back as "Alice's Restaurant", Guthrie proved himself to be an affable performer, but the 1970s showed an added depth and maturity with each new release.

The Nixon diatribe "Presidential Rag" and the Mideast peace plea "Children of Abraham" bookend Woody Guthrie's "Deportees" nicely, while Jimmie Rodgers' "When the Cactus Is in Bloom" is a good fit with Arlo's bucolic tales "Me and My Goose" and "Bling Blang." Elsewhere, "Nostalgia Rag" hints at Randy Newman, "Go Down Moses" has the backing of a full gospel choir, "Won't Be Long" sports a country feel, and "Hard Times" is mountain music.

Along with producers John Pilla and Lenny Waronker, Arlo chooses from a cream-of-the-crop collection of musicians to pull off this eclectic mix. And it's to his credit that he's successful more often than not. Though there's nothing drastically different here for Guthrie, the album continued a steady growth through the '70s, which placed him firmly at the doorstep of what would be the pinnacle of his career.


Tracklist:

1 Won't Be Long 2:38
2 Presidential Rag 4:27
3 Deportees (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos) 3:48
4 Children Of Abraham 2:24
5 Nostalgia Rag 2:51
6 When The Cactus Is In Bloom 2:19
7 Me And My Goose 2:00
8 Bling Blang 2:45
9 Go Down Moses 2:41
10 Hard Times 2:43
11 Last To Leave 2:34

Arlo Guthrie - Arlo Guthrie (1974)

(192 kbps, cover art included)

Pete Seeger - Studio Recording At The National Czech Radio (1964)

This is the second part of the Pete Seeger recordings from Czechoslowaki in 1964. Gene Deitch recorded these tracks on March 28, 1964, in an empty studio at Radio Karlin, Prague.

Many thanks to Ruth Ellen Gruber for sharing this information on http://blog.ebma.org:

"I just spent the weekend in Czech Republic, participating in the launch of the new bluegrass fusion CD by the Malina Brothers band. It can be said that the great Pete Seeger, who died Monday, launched the entire Czech bluegrass scene with his performances in the then communist Czechoslovakia in 1964. For the first time, people saw a five-string banjo being played, after hearing it on American Forces radio broadcasts. The first Czech five-strings were made from photos of Pete's. The concert was arranged in Prague by Pete's longtime friend Gene Deitch, who recorded the concert and issued it as an album, which has now been posted online."

Tracklist:

Coal Creek march
Darlin' Cory
Oh had I a golden thread
I can see a new day
What did you learn in school today?
Little boxes
Living in the country
We shall overcome
Little Molly
I want to go to Andorra!
Ida Red ; Old Joe Clark (played on home-made banjo)
Pretty Saro (wooden flute-recorder)
Woody's rag (mandolin)
900 miles (mandolin)
Oleana (with variations)
Clementine
Careless love

Pete Seeger - Studio Recording At The National Czech Radio
(320 kbps)

Pete Seeger - At The ABC Theatre, Prague, 1964

Here´s the first part of Pete Seeger live recordings from Czechoslovakia. The songs were recorded by Gene Deitch on March 27, 1964, at a theatre performance at the ABC Divadlo, Prague.

The ABC Theatre is located near Wenceslas Square in Prague. Together with Rokoko Theatre and Ábíčko it belongs to the groupe of Municipal Theatres of Prague.

Gene Deitch remembers on http://genedeitchcredits.com/roll-the-credits/22-pete-seeger/:

"By 1964, Pete, with Toshi and three kids, hade embarked on a world tour, which included communist Czechoslovakia, where I’d already been working four years. As he’d been sidelined as a political pariah in mainstream America, he expected he’d get a bigtime welcome here, right? Wrong! Here’s the irony: even though Pete may have felt himself to be a “communist,” the “Marxist-Leninist” Czechoslovak government was more suspicious of free-thinking “communists” who were not strict followers of the ever-shifting Soviet line, than they were of “capitalists,” who were their more clearly defined antagonists. “Diversionist” left-wingers were considered the greatest actual danger to their rule.

A local Seeger fan, Zbyněk Macha, who worked for the Czechoslovak Ministry of Culture had managed to get permission from the authorities to allow Pete a series of concerts in the country, but cautiously limited him to low-key venues, and there was no radio or TV coverage of his visit. The officials were afraid he’d be a loose-cannon, with his songs about freedom! So I was the only person with professional stereo equipment, able to privately record him. I sneaked my gear into Pete’s Prague theater concert, and Zbyněk Macha even got me into an unused radio studio with decent acoustics! Years later, my historic recordings were issued on a British FlyRight CD, “Pete Seeger in Prague 1964”, now a collectors’ item."

Tracklist:

T-for Texas
Kai-yo-wa-ji-neh (Native American)
Amazing grace
The Devil and the farmer
Banjo breakdown: Ida Red ; Old Joe Clark
Mr. Tom Hughes' town
Irene, goodnight
Bourgeois blues
So long
Talking Columbia
Lord God, Pittsburgh!
Why, Oh why?
Oleana
Michael row the boat ashore
Bayeza
Cumberland Mountain bear chase (Holka modrou oka)
Tzena tzena
Down by the riverside
Where have all the flowers gone?
Living in the country
Pete Seeger's comments, February 2001
(the songs "Rock Island Line" and "Dark As A Dungeon" are missing, sorry!)

Pete Seeger - At The ABC Theatre, Prague, 1964
(320 kbps, front cover included)

The Fugs - It Crawled into My Hand, Honest (1968, vinyl rip)

Having attained a professional rock-band sound on "Tenderness Junction", the Fugs seemed determined to further expand their arrangements (aided, perhaps, by a major-label budget) on "It Crawled into My Hand, Honest".

Indeed, the album is ridiculously eclectic. There's stoned psychedelic folk-rock ("Crystal Liaison"); cry-in-your-beer country music with vehemently satirical or surrealistic lyrics ("Ramses II Is Dead My Love," "Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel"); grand, sweeping classical orchestration ("Burial Waltz"); a Gregorian chant about "Marijuana"; down-home gospel with lyrics that no preacher would dare enunciate ("Wide Wide River," with the line: "I've been swimming in this river of shit/More than 20 years and I'm getting tired of it"); and, almost buried along the way, the kind of tuneful, countercultural folk-rock Tuli Kupferberg contributed to earlier albums ("Life Is Strange"). Choral backup vocals abound, and the mere presence of a half-dozen outside arrangers testifies to how much the group's attitude toward exploiting the studio had developed since the bare-bones ESP albums.

Generally, the songs (most written by the core trio of Sanders, Kupferberg, and Weaver) are more concerned with deft poetry and humor than political statements, although the customary social satire and calls for sexual freedom and drug use are present in diminishing degrees.

Although side one is five discrete tracks, side two is a side-long cut-and-paste of tracks varying in length from three seconds to four minutes, the stylistic jump-cuts similar to those employed by the Mothers of Invention in the same era. It's an impressive and, usually, fun record, but it's also less-lyrically cogent and powerful than their early albums. One senses that the Fugs' personality and individuality were ultimately somewhat muted by the more ambitious production values and frequent use of external musicians and arrangers.

The Fugs - It Crawled into My Hand, Honest (1968, vinyl rip)
192 kbps, cover art included

Nina Simone - At Carnegie Hall (1963)

Nina Simone was one of the most gifted vocalists of her generation, and also one of the most eclectic. Simone was a singer, pianist, and songwriter who bent genres to her will rather than allowing herself to be confined by their boundaries; her work swung back and forth between jazz, blues, soul, classical, R&B, pop, gospel, and world music, with passion, emotional honesty, and a strong grasp of technique as the constants of her musical career.                

"At Carnegie Hall" is a live album recorded at Simone's first solo appearance at Carnegie Hall in New York, on April 12, 1963, and was released on Colpix Records. Miss Simone works her particular brand of magic in a mysterious and awe-inspiring way. The album has a broad choice of material all delivered in dramatic fashion. "Black Swan," "Twelfth of Never" are two highly playable tracks.

This was Nina Simone's third Carnegie Hall appearance. Her debut appearance was on May 21, 1961, when she shared the stage with her great friend and fellow civil rights activist Miriam Makeba.
Having performed here twice previously, April 12, 1963, marked Nina Simone's headlining debut. It was not to be an easy transition from sharing to topping the bill. Writing in Nina Simone "Black Is The Color ..." Andrew Stroud - Simone's one-time husband and manager - recalls, "In 1963, Nina was adamant about making a solo appearance at Carnegie Hall in fulfillment of her childhood dream as the first black female classical pianist. None of the concert promoters would undertake such a presentation because they did not believe she could carry off a solo concert. Therefore, when I resigned from the NYPD, I took my pension rebate and, on the advice of experts in the music industry, hired Felix Gerstman, New York City's premier concertmaster, to manage the presentation."
Joining Nina Simone that evening were guitarists Alvin Schackman and Phil Orlando, Lisle Atkinson on bass, and drummer Montego Joe. Simone demonstrated the unclassifiable nature of her artistry that evening with performances of jazz, soul, spiritual-tinged tunes, and - displaying her background in classical music - a theme on Saint-Saëns's Samson and Delilah.
While her final headlining concert here took place in June 2001, Nina Simone's final Carnegie Hall appearance was on April 13, 2002, as part of Sting's Rainforest Foundation benefit. She died almost exactly a year later.

Tracklist:

A1	Black Swan	6:13
A2	Theme From Samson And Delilah	5:50
A3	If You Knew	3:35
A4	Theme From Sayonara	2:35
B1	The Twelfth Of Never	3:20
B2	Will I Find My Love Today	6:55
B3	The Other Women / Cotton Eyed Joe	7:25

Nina Simone - At Carnegie Hall (1963)
(320 kbps, cover art included)

Mercedes Sosa - La voz de la zafra (1959)

Mercedes Sosa was the most renowned Latin-American singer of her generation; she was known as "La Negra" for her long, jet-black hair, and as "the voice of the voiceless ones", for her performances of songs which championed the rights of the poor.

In early 1979, Sosa was performing in the Argentinian university city of La Plata when the military stopped the concert. Humiliating Sosa by searching her on stage, they then arrested her and 350 members of the audience. Sosa was detained for 18 hours until international pressure forced her release (she had to pay a large fine) but this event – alongside increasing numbers of death threats – forced her to flee to Europe, where she lived in Madrid and Paris.

If you hear this young Mercedes Sosa, you will notice that her voice is not as strong than later. But from the moment she began to recording, she was always true to herself. This is the very beginnig and a great collector's item.



Tracklist:

1. Los Hombres Del Rio [Canción Litoraleña]

2. Recuerdos Del Paraguay [Guarania]

3. Jangadero [Galopa]

4. La Zafrera [Zamba]

5. El Rio Y Tu [Canción Guarania]

6. Tropero Padre [Zamba]

7. Nocturna [Guarania]

8. El Indio Muerto [Zamba Salteña]

9. La De Los Humildes [Zamba]

10. Zamba De La Distancia

11. Selva Sola [Galopa]

12. Sin Saber Por Que [Guarania] Mercedes Sosa - La Voz De La Zafra (1959) (192 kbps, cover art included)

Nina Simone - Let It All Out (1965)

"Let It All Out" is one of Nina Simone's more adult pop-oriented mid-'60s albums, with renditions of tunes by Duke Ellington ("Mood Indigo"), Billie Holiday ("Don't Explain"), Irving Berlin ("This Year's Kisses"), and Rodgers & Hart ("Little Girl Blue").

As ever, Simone ranges wide in her selection: Bob Dylan's "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," a swaggering adaptation of "Chauffeur Blues" (credited to her husband of the time, Andy Stroud), the gospel hymn "Nearer Blessed Lord," and Van McCoy's "For Myself." "Images" is an a cappella adaptation of a poem about the beauty of blackness by Waring Cuney. All of Simone's Philips albums are solid, and this is no exception, while it isn't the best of them.

"Love Me or Leave Me" and "Mood Indigo" were also featured on Simone's debut album "Little Girl Blue" (1958); these are new performances and different arrangements.

Tracklist:

Mood Indigo	2:25
The Other Woman	3:02
Love Me Or Leave Me	4:05
Don't Explain	4:18
Little Girl Blue	2:32
Chauffeur	2:48
For Myself	2:05
The Ballad Of Hollis Brown	4:55
This Year's Kisses	2:58
Images	2:50
Nearer Blessed Lord	4:30

Nina Simone - Let It All Out (1965)
(320 kbps, cover art included)

Mercedes Sosa - Homenaje a Violeta Parra (1971)

Mercedes Sosa was born in poverty, her father a day laborer, her mother a washer woman, in Tucumán, a province in northwest Argentina, on July 9, 1935.
At 15, she won an amateur-hour contest sponsored by a local radio with a two month contract for appearances as its grand prize. It turned out to be the start of her career.

By the late 50s she had moved on from traditional folk and embraced the Movimiento del Nuevo Cancionero, a fledging movement with a new approach to folk music that updated the standard folk lyrics to sing about the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. This, naturally, led her in time to champion the Nueva Canción (New Song), a movement in Latin America in the 60s that blended traditional rhythms and lyrics addressing social and political concerns. This became a deadly serious business in Latin America in the 70s, as ruthless military dictatorships took power. Sosa was detained and body searched on stage at a concert in 1979. Many in the audience were detained. In the following weeks, her concerts were cancelled after anonymous bomb threats were called in. And while there was no cause open against Sosa, her songs were banned on the radio and she was prohibited from performing.

Understandably feeling persecuted and unable to make a living, Sosa left in self imposed exile to France and Spain.
She returned to Argentina in 1982, just as the military dictatorship was beginning to disintegrate. (In fact, in retrospect, Sosa´s epochal 13-night comeback stand at the Opera Theatre in Buenos Aires, captured on the disc Mercedes Sosa en Argentina, was in itself a measure of the increasing weakness of the regime.)

Sosa had been an international artist, performing in the United States and Europe, since the 1960s, but in her condition as an exile she transcended her role as a folk singer and became a symbol of resistance and the struggle for human rights. It was a heavy mantle that she carried effectively – while also making clear to whoever wanted to listen that she was an artist first.

“Sometimes, one is made to be a big mouth or some sort of Robin Hood and it’s not like that,” she once told me, in the 90s, with an edge of frustration in her voice. “I am a woman who sings, who tries to sing as well as possible with the best songs available. I was bestowed this role as big protester and it’s not like that at all. I’m just a thinking artist.”
And being a “thinking artist” for Sosa not only meant singing questioning lyrics, but also opening up her musical world.

Since her return to Argentina and for the past 20 years, rather than basking on the warm glow of her status and playing it safe musically, Sosa increasingly crossed over stylistic boundaries, taking a Pan-Ibero-American approach. She would still sing Argentine folk music and remain true to her Nuevo Cancionero roots, but also integrate music by Brazilian artists such as Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque; Spanish singer songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat and rocker Joaquin Sabina. And in Argentina, where the music communities long lived in parallel worlds that rarely acknowledged, much less addressed, each other, Sosa seemed to make a point of ignoring stylistic boundaries. She worked with neo-folk singers such as Leon Gieco (a Bob Dylan-like figure) but also recalcitrant rockers such as Charly Garcia, pop rockers such as Fito Páez and new tango stalwarts such as bandoneonist Rodolfo Mederos. And it wasn’t just big names but also up-and-coming songwriters, playing sort of fairy godmother by calling attention to their work, giving them, in a word, her blessing.

Here´s her hommage to Violeta Parra, the famous Chilean composer, songwriter, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and visual artist, who set the basis for "Chilean' New Song", the Nueva canción chilena, a renewal and a reinvention of Chilean folk music which would absorb and extend its influence far beyond Chile.

Tracklist:

Defensa De Violeta
Graicas A La Vida
Segun El Favor Del Viento
Arriba Quemando El Sol
Me Gustan Los Estudiantes
Volver A Los 17
La Carta
Que He Sacado Con Quererte
La Lavandera
Rin Del Angelito
Los Pueblos Americanos 

Mercedes Sosa - Homenaje a Violeta Parra (1971)
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Boulat Okoudjava - Le Soldat en Papier

If Vladimir Vissotski was the Léo Ferré of the Soviet Union, Boulat Okoudjava was, perhaps, its Georges Brassens.

Boulat Okoudjava (also transliterated as Boulat Okudjava, Okoudjava, Okoudzhava or Bulat Okudzhava) was born in Moscow on 9 May 1924 of Georgian parents (hence, no doubt, his nature of the "Meridional of the North"). His father, a high-ranking Communist Party member from Georgia, was arrested in 1937 during the Great Purge and executed as a German spy on the basis of a false accusation. His mother was also arrested and spent 18 years in the prison camps of the Gulag (1937–1955).

In 1942, he left high-school and enlisted as a volunteer for the Red Army infantry, and from 1942 he participated in the war with Nazi Germany.
In 1956, three years after the death of Joseph Stalin, Okudzhava returned to Moscow, where he worked first as an editor in the publishing house "Young Guard," and later as the head of the poetry division at the most prominent national literary weekly in the former USSR, Literaturnaya Gazeta ("Literary Newspaper"). It was then, in the middle of the 1950s, that he began to compose songs and to perform them, accompanying himself on a Russian guitar.

Soon he was giving concerts. He only employed a few chords and had no formal training in music, but he possessed an exceptional melodic gift, and the intelligent lyrics of his songs blended perfectly with his music and his voice. His songs were praised by his friends, and amateur recordings were made. These unofficial recordings were widely copied as magnitizdat, and spread across the USSR and Poland, where other young people picked up guitars and started singing the songs for themselves. In 1969, his lyrics appeared in the classic Soviet film "White Sun of the Desert".

Though Okoudjava's songs were not published by any official media organization until the late 1970s, they quickly achieved enormous popularity, especially among the intelligentsia - mainly in the USSR at first, but soon among Russian-speakers in other countries as well. Vladimir Nabokov, for example, cited his "Sentimental March" in the novel "Ada or Ardor".

Okoudjava, however, regarded himself primarily as a poet and claimed that his musical recordings were insignificant. During the 1980s, he also published a great deal of prose (his novel The Show is Over won him the Russian Booker Prize in 1994). By the 1980s, recordings of Okudzhava performing his songs finally began to be officially released in the Soviet Union, and many volumes of his poetry were also published. In 1991, he was awarded the USSR State Prize. He supported the reform movement in the USSR and in October 1993, signed the Letter of Forty-Two.
He was one of the founders of the Russian genre called "author song" (авторская песня, avtorskaya pesnya). Though his songs were never overtly political (in contrast to those of some of his fellow bards), the freshness and independence of his artistic voice presented a subtle challenge to Soviet cultural authorities, who were thus hesitant for many years to give official recognition to Okoudjava.

Boulat Okoudjava remains emblematic of the renewal of Soviet poetry under the Kruschev regime, where he was one of the most prestigious poets and one of those held in great esteem by the intelligentisa as well as an idol for young people, who recognised their own dreams and aspirations in the scarcely veiled and totally unambiguous word of his forbidden songs.

He died near Paris on June 12 1997, during a stay in France.

This album presents a summary of all his themes: the rank and file, the streets of Moscow, the pangs and heartbreak of love, the horror of war, the small joys and immense sadnesses of life.

Tracklist:

1		Chanson Des Pirates
2		Anton Tchekhov
A		Dans Mon Coeur Est Gravé
4		Sur Volodia Vissotski
5		La Petite Pluie Du Succès
6		Que Mon Amour Soit Vieux
7		François Villon
8		Le Soldat De Papier
9		Le Roi
10		Chanson De Ma Vie
11		Chanson Du Chat Noir
12		Chanson De La Piétaille
13		Chanson Du Ballon Bleu
14		Chanson Des Bottes De Soldat
15		Chanson Du Moucheron Moscovite
16		Vous Les Peintres
17		Le Dernier Trolley
18		Moscou La Nuit
19		Dommage Quand Même
20		Chanson De L'Arbat
21		Chanson Du Métro De Moscou
22		Nadia, Petite Nadia
23		La Route De Smolensk
24		Chanson Du Vieux Joueur D'Orgue
25		Les Trois Soeurs

Boulat Okoudjava - Le Soldat en Papier
(256 kbps, cover art included)