Includes songs by Ferlin Husky, Ned Miller, Lefty Frizzell, Henson Cargill, Leroy Van Dyke, Marvin Rainwater, Bonnie Guitar, The Amazing Rhythm Aces, Tom Jones, and Billie Jo Spears – 21 tracks total. (Rock, Folk/Country) CD

Harry Smith's much revered efforts to compile the deepest early-to-mid 20th Century American folk music resulted in the monumental Anthology Of American Folk Music box set – plus this later volume that didn't make it into the original set or the celebrated reissue – and sadly went unissued at all until 2000! Despite the lack of a commercial release for the set, Volume Four includes a number of tracks that ended up to be just as ingrained in the American folk, blues, and country conciousness as the cuts from its more famous big brother collection – with a bit more of a dip into the blues, gospel and cajun music of the time. 28 tracks on 2CDs – plus a thick, and truly excellent book featuring notes on the artists, photos, illustrations, text and essays by Greil Marcus, John Fahey, Ed Sanders, John Cohen and Dick Spottswood – nearly 100 pages worth! Tracks include "Memphis Shakedown" by the Memphis Jug Band, "Dog And Gun" by Bradley Kinkaid, "Nine Pound Hammer" by the Carter Family, "Packin' Trunk Blues" by Leadbelly, "Wreck Of The Tennessee Gravy Train" by Uncle Dave Macon, "Milk Cow Blues" by John Estes, "The Cockeyed World" by Minnie Wallace, "Ace's Breakdown" by the Four Aces and many more! CD

An amazing legacy in music from Mike Cooper – a British musician who started out in the world of folk blues, but never ended up moving towards some of the rockish modes of his contemporaries – instead finding his very own sort of special space in the freedom allowed by the Dawn Records label! The set begins with the very spare Oh Really – a set that has Mike Cooper mostly on guitar and vocals, in a style that's part Piedmont, part Delta blues – but also given a more folksy spin, and graced with Cooper's unusual vocals – almost making the whole thing feel like a spare acoustic version of Canned Heat territory – with titles that include "Maggie Campbell", "Saturday Blues", "Electric Chair", "Crow Jane", and "You're Gonna Be Sorry". Do I Know you is a record that follows up with a sound that's maybe a bit fuller than Mike Cooper's debut, but still relatively spare – with Mike on acoustic guitar and slide guitar, Harry Miller on bass (really great bass, by the way!), and Poor Little Anne on a bit of vocals. Miller brings these deep tones to the record that really transform things – and titles include "Do I Know You", "Start Of A Journey", "First Song", "Theme In C", and "The Link". Trout Steel is a beautiful set from the British scene at the start of the 70s – a record that's got a fairly folksy tone, but lots of jazzy currents as well! The set was issued on the seminal Dawn Records label – and really shows that imprint's commitment to the left side of the spectrum – as Mike Cooper's vocals and acoustic guitar come into play with more guitar from Stefan Grossman – plus alto sax from Mike Osborne, tenor and soprano from Alan Skidmore, piano from John Taylor, and bass from the late Harry Miller – all key players on the UK avant jazz scene of the time! The mix of these players with Cooper's core inspiration is not unlike some of the most progressive material coming from Island Records – or, even better, the special jazzy moments on records by Tim Buckley or Tim Hardin – company that Cooper could very easily keep, given the strength of his songwriting. Titles include "Don't Talk Too Fast", "On My Way", "Hope You See", "Weeping Rose", "Trout Steel", "I've Got Mine", "That's How", and "Pharoah's March". Places I Know blends Cooper's acoustic guitar and rootsy vocals with some very compelling arrangements from Mike Gibbs – the British jazz talent who was already known for his larger ensemble creations at the time, but who works here in these really subtle ways – to inflect Cooper's core inspirations with just some slight instrumental colors, tones, and phrases on most numbers – while Cooper brings in the core Machine Gun Co group on a few more. The result is a record that's way more than familiar folk – and arguably a lot hipper than most of the British acid folk of the time, too – on titles that include "Night Journey", "Paper & Smoke", "Country Water", "Time To Time", "Goodbye Blues Goodbye", and "Places I Know". The Machine Gun Co album is a partner record to Places I Know – recorded in the same sessions, but with tracks that are longer, and even more openly expressive – all with backings from the sweet Machine Gun Co quartet, a group with some especially nice electric piano from Alan Cook! Heavy use of that instrument really works against some of the folksier elements in Cooper's music – with these blocks of warm sound and color that really illuminate the tunes, and almost unlock a new level in the vocals. Cooper plays a bit of electric guitar at times – and titles include "So Glad That I Found You", "Lady Anne", "Midnight Words", and "Song For Abigail". CD also features songs from singles – "Your Lovely Ways (parts 1 & 2)", "Time In Hand", and "Schaabisch Hall". (Rock, Folk/Country) CD

Brilliant work from Tim Hardin – two albums recorded for Columbia after his years on Verve, showing him still growing tremendously as an artist, moving past the short folksy style of early hits, into a broadly-expressed singer/songwriter mode, one that shows traces of Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, and other folk rock luminaries of the time. Suite For Susan Moore is especially great – a full suite of tracks dedicated to wife Susan (aka The Lady Came From Baltimore) and Hardin's new son Damion. The piece has a shaky brilliance – as Hardin unsurely expresses his joy and insecurity at the thought of having a family. There's a pain in the work that runs deeper than that in most of Hardin's earlier work – possibly because of his own personal trouble at the time, possibly because the depth of his emotions runs greater than in earlier love songs. Whatever the case, the album's a tremendous one – and it's well-matched here with Bird On A Wire, a record that features shorter tracks, a few covers, and others that show Hardin still capable of proudly expressed tunes in a more conventional mode. Titles include "First Love Song", "Everything Good Become More True", "Loneliness She Knows", "Magician", "Susan", "Love Hymn", "Andre Johray", "If I Knew", and "Soft Summer Breeze". (Rock, Folk/Country) CD

Brilliant work from Tim Hardin – two albums recorded for Columbia after his years on Verve, showing him still growing tremendously as an artist, moving past the short folksy style of early hits, into a broadly-expressed singer/songwriter mode, one that shows traces of Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, and other folk rock luminaries of the time. Suite For Susan Moore is especially great – a full suite of tracks dedicated to wife Susan (aka The Lady Came From Baltimore) and Hardin's new son Damion. The piece has a shaky brilliance – as Hardin unsurely expresses his joy and insecurity at the thought of having a family. There's a pain in the work that runs deeper than that in most of Hardin's earlier work – possibly because of his own personal trouble at the time, possibly because the depth of his emotions runs greater than in earlier love songs. Whatever the case, the album's a tremendous one – and it's well-matched here with Bird On A Wire, a record that features shorter tracks, a few covers, and others that show Hardin still capable of proudly expressed tunes in a more conventional mode. Titles include "First Love Song", "Everything Good Become More True", "Loneliness She Knows", "Magician", "Susan", "Love Hymn", "Andre Johray", "If I Knew", and "Soft Summer Breeze". (Rock, Folk/Country) CD

Duets with Emmylou Harris, Charlie Daniels, Buck Owens, Rick Skaggs, and more. CD

A repackaged version of the first Capitol album by Fred Neil – issued here under the title of the one tune on the album that became a hit, but not under Fred's version! (The hit was sung in the film Midnight Cowboy by Nilsson.) The album is really one of the best places to start with Fred's work – as it's got a rough folksy quality that's really wonderful, and very much in the spirit of Tim Hardin, with whom we'd draw the closest comparison to Neil at the time. The album kicks off with Neil's sublime "The Dolphins" – one of those tracks that's lived far longer than his own music, and which has had the benefit of a number of more famous recordings, but which sounds no better than in Neil's own hands. Other tracks include the original version of "Everybody's Talking" – again far superior to the later one – plus the cuts "Sweet Cocaine", "Green Rocky Road", "Everything Happens", and "Badi-Da". (Rock, Folk/Country) LP, Vinyl record album

Richard Thompson is relatively fresh out of Fairport Convention here, and while there are traces of that group in his solo music, it's also very clear that the set is the key to his long legacy to come! Thompson's guitar is much more upfront than before – really finding itself in both an acoustic and electric mode – sometimes blended with folksy instrumentation from the past, but also much more focused with that sonic quality that really befits Thompson's very unusual vocal approach! Titles include "Roll Over Vaughn Williams", "The New St George", "Cold Feet", "Painted Ladies", "Twisted", "Wheely Down", and "The Poor Ditching Boy". (Rock, Folk/Country) CD

Lucinda Williams second album for Folkways – and the first to feature her own material – introducing one of the best Americana singer songwriters of the past few decades! Happy Woman Blues has an apt title, and although there's plenty of heartache in her radiating from her vocal chords and in her words, it's done with passionate, unflinching confidence and charisma the brings a smile to our faces as wide as the one she's wearing in the cover photo. More of a honky tonk record than a blues record, and a great one! Essential! Titles include "Lafayette", "Lost It", "Maria", "Happy Woman Blues", "Rolling Along", "Howlin At Midnight", "Hard Road", "Louisiana Man" and more. CD