Folk/Country — Recently Added

Genius work from Larry Jon Wilson – one of those 70s artists who were always a bit hard to peg, and who never got full appreciation until many years later! Larry wasn't one of those guys working off in the "private press" underground – as this set was done for Monument ... LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic addition to the all-too-small catalog of recordings by Jay Bolotin – a Kentucky songwriter whose compositions were recorded by bigger names down in Nashville, even if Jay never fully got his due! Bolotin is hardly country, though – much more a songpoet, in the manner of ... LP, Vinyl record album

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 ... LP, Vinyl record album

A seminal album from Elizabeth Cotten – not just a backwoods lady with a guitar, but a self-taught player with a completely unique style that went on to shape generations of musicians in the 60s! This 1958 Folkways album was the first to bring Cotten's talents to a wider audience – and ... LP, Vinyl record album

A stellar collective from Chicago's folk and roots community comes together as On Big Shoulders – leaning on the city's underacknowledged roots music legacy on one shoulder and nudging the door open to the scene's future with the other – and distill a near century of diverse musical ... LP, Vinyl record album

A great overview of overlooked banjo work from the postwar years – the king of lightning-fast performance that was made famous by Earl Scruggs, but which is served up here by a host of lesser-known talents from the time! Think of the set as a more underground take on the Flatt & Scruggs ... LP, Vinyl record album

Pete Seeger's billed as "Peter Seeger" on the cover – maybe out of some fake sense of seriousness, given that the record features a few songs by Beethoven, Bach, and other composers! But don't worry at all, as Pete's very much as down home as usual – playing here mostly solo ... LP, Vinyl record album

Folk legend Woody Guthrie was no stranger to struggle – which is the subject highlighted in most of these tunes – pulled together in the shape of this album, which offered a great counterpoint to the Bicentennial madness in America when it was released in 1976! The titles of the songs ... LP, Vinyl record album

One of the undisputed 70s classics from John Prine – a set mostly recorded down in Nashville, but at a level that still keeps Prine's wit and Chicago sensibilities firmly intact! The instrumentation here is a bit augmented from before – with help from the great Reggie Young on guitar, ... LP, Vinyl record album

A great look at a really lost legacy in music from Charlie Rich – obscure sides recorded for RCA Records in the early 60s – done after his initial rush of genius on Sun Records, and before his later commercial success on Epic! Charlie's got one of the all-time great voices in pop music ... CD

Tremendous work from Bert Jansch – an album that shows how much he'd evolved in just a few short years – both as a singer and as a musician, and as a completely unique talent on his own! The record has an instantly timeless feel – that mix of ancient inspiration and new freedoms ... LP, Vinyl record album

Late 60s live version of classic story song – this telling running more than 30 minutes long – vinyl for the first time ever! LP, Vinyl record album

A record that's as evocative as its title – a perfect showcase for the very unique talents of guitarist Glenn Jones – a player one might link to a tradition that includes John Fahey and Robbie Basho, save for the very individual style that Jones brings to his music! There's almost as ... LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic little set that looks at themes of hard work and labor in postwar country music – territory that certainly opened up with the success of the Merle Travis tune "Sixteen Tons" – and which took very different forms in country music than the same topic in folk and ... CD

This great series just keeps on getting better and better – as the hillbillies rise from hell, and take their message into the musical mainstream! Previous volumes have dealt with themes of sin and redemption in country music – and this time around, the scope seems pushed even farther ... CD

Smoking steel guitar from Tom Brumley – the musician who gave the Buckaroos group such a great song when they were working behind country legend Buck Owens! This may be one of the few albums to ever have Tom's name as the lead artist – and it hand-picks some of the best cuts from the ... CD

A really wonderful collection of work from the great Jerry Reed – some more obscure albums than his bigger hits, which makes for a really fresh selection of music throughout! Explores Guitar Country is maybe one of the rootsier efforts during the early RCA years of Jerry Reed – a set ... CD

Charlie McCoy famously played harmonica on some of Bob Dylan's Nashville sessions, and about a few hundred other recordings too – and here, he's in a country music mode all the way through – blowing these wonderful solos over music city backings in the best Monument Records mode! Like ... CD

A long lost live recording of the great English folk guitarist and singer – recorded at a coffee house in Kyoto, Japan on May 30, 1978 – and such a lovely, soul-stirring set it is! John is in impeccable form on acoustic guitar, voice and even the good-natured banter between songs ... CD

Fantastic work from the young George Jones – working here at the height of his powers, and in a raw live setting that's a nice change from some of the polish of his studio recordings of the 60s! George's voice is great – already hitting that wider range that marked his Musicor material ... CD

A straight-up incredible batch of recordings by the Austin singer-songwriter ghost of a legend that is Blaze Foley – a self-destructive character better known to the stars he influenced than he is to the masses (he is the "Drunken Angel" who Lucinda Williams wrote and sang about) ... LP, Vinyl record album

Beautiful work from Hedy West – a folk singer with a voice that cuts through to the quick – none of the sweetness of some of the poppier acts of the 60s, and none of the softness that you might get from commercial efforts – and instead a sound that's straight from the hills, and a ... CD

A fantastic late 70s album from guitar genius John Fahey – his first after a number of years away from the recording studio – and a real back to basics effort overall! There's none of the "orchestra" trappings of other 70s records – nor some of Fahey's more longer-form ... CD

A well-chosen collection of work handled by country producer Don Law – a late 50s force who kept the honky tonk vibe alive and well on record! The names here are some of the biggest of the time – including a fair bit of Columbia Records artists – and the work together is a great ... CD

Johnny Paycheck has worn many hats over his decades in country music – but maybe one of the coolest was his early career as singer Donny Young – featured here in a host of excellent recordings done before his classic sides on the Little Darlin label! The work here is totally great ... CD

Ed Bruce is a singer with a long run in country music – partly as a songwriter who gave some big names big hits – and he also started out as a young rockabilly talent at Sun Records too! Yet this collection captures Bruce at the start of his country career – and features mid 60s ... CD

A great double-header – two of Tom T Hall's classic early albums for Mercury Records, back to back on a single CD! I Witness Life is a record with a title that really sums up all the genius that Tom T Hall had to offer the world of country music at the start of the 70s – as his ... CD

The first-ever release of some incredible funky folk tunes from vocalist Susan Christie – originally recorded as demos in the years before her work at Columbia Records, and arguably even better than those classic singles! Backings here are by John Hill, who inflects Susan's folksy style with ... LP, Vinyl record album

You've heard plenty about Billy Joe Shaver over the years, and this is the place to start – a set that brings together two of his albums for Capricorn Records, plus a single for MGM too! First up is When I Get Wings – a fantastic early album from Billy Joe Shaver – the kind of ... CD

Two of the first albums ever recorded by the mighty Tom T Hall – both of them completely sublime! Ballad Of Forty Dollars is a record named after Tom T Hall's big hit single of the late 60s, and is a set that's the summation of all the great work he'd been doing as a songwriter on the ... CD