Folk Music at Newport, Vol. 1

Performer: Various Artists
Distributor: Welk

Notes: Compilation producer: Mary Katherine Aldin. Recorded live at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Newport, Rhode Island with the exception of track 22, which is from the 1959 festival. Includes liner notes by Mary Katherine Aldin. This is an album that grows on you gradually -- but only because it covers such a diverse collection of styles in the course of seventy minutes. The majority of the cuts on this album are being released for the first time, while all but one (the Kingston Trio's "M.T.A.," from 1959) are drawn from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The recordings are of quite variable quality -- a few sound positively raw. However, the lineup is quite interesting -- Joan Baez appears, of course, but in a duet with Donovan; other than Baez, you have Ian and Sylvia, Richard and Mimi Farina, the New Lost City Ramblers (with Eck Robertson and Cousin Emmy appearing on one cut apiece), Maybelle Carter, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Bill Monroe, Mississippi John Hurt and many others. Compilation producer Mary Katherine Aldin has done a good job of balancing out the various styles, so the album does have a nice progression to it, as well as a nice dynamic (leading to the Kingston Trio providing the album's peak point). Aldin's notes on the performers are fairly brief, but provide snippets of interesting background. An excellent addition to Vanguard's Newport Folk Festival Classics series. ~ Steven McDonald

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