Album Review
Niles, John Jacob – “I Wonder As I Wander ” – [Tradition]
ArtCrimes 12/19/2007 CD, Country
John Jacob Niles ???I Wonder as I Wander: Carols and Love Songs???
Niles had a long career, some 30 years or more, devoted to the discovery and transformation of traditional song, mostly from the Appalachians, but also drawing on British and French sources. Using his eerie, wailing voice and his homemade mountain dulcimer, he ends up sounding very little like the plain folk that he learned some of these songs from, and more like something he???d invented all on his own ??? something a bit like what Tim Buckley would be doing much later, with his expressive, jazzlike phrasing. The highly stylized vocals make it difficult to tell a traditional song from one of his own compositions, and in some cases they are hybrids, with new verses written to expand a fragment of traditional verse. This would prove to be influential for folk artists to come, including Bob Dylan, who often used traditional song as raw material for his own inventions.
you heard it 22 times on kfjc! most recently:
- 106 days ago, Sally Goodin played I Had A Cat
- 372 days ago, Sally Goodin played Go 'Way From My Window
- 974 days ago, Sally Goodin played I Had A Cat
- 1226 days ago, Sally Goodin played The Sea Witch
- 1723 days ago, Sally Goodin played The Frog Went Courting
12345 S. El Monte Road Los Altos Hills, California 94022
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