Dave Van Ronk - Mayor Of MacDougal Street '2021

Tracks list

Dave Van Ronks death in 2002 took away one of the key architects of the Great
Folk Revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and while Van Ronk never made
the kind of broad cultural impact that younger musicians like Bob Dylan or Joan
Baez made at the time, his steady mentoring is everywhere apparent in the urban
folk movement of the day. Known as a gruff-voiced singer of blues and folk
songs, and as a skilled acoustic guitar player, Van Ronk was actually a jazz
player at heart, and his fondness of the genre — particularly ragtime
— informs his music in surprising and subtle ways. This retrospective of
previously unreleased material (Salty Dog appeared on an LP credited to Van
Ronks one-off jug band, the Orange Blossom Jug Five, in the 1950s, but has been
out of print ever since) is arranged chronologically, beginning with some casual
apartment recordings made in 1957, and ending with a live track by Van Ronks
wacky psychedelic rock band, the Hudson Dusters, from 1969, and is intended to
be an aural complement to Van Ronks memoir of the period, The Mayor of MacDougal
Street, which was released by Da Capo Press in 2005. Van Ronk had a wider
musical palette than many people realized, and the selections here include
unaccompanied English ballads (The Cruel Ships Captain), jazz-blues hybrids
(Willie the Weeper), unhinged folk rock (Romping Through the Swamp), Bahaman
lullabies (All My Trials), jug band material (Salty Dog), Brecht-Weill
compositions (As You Make Your Bed), and even a short impression of W.C. Fields
holding forth on the benefits of always carrying a snake. Van Ronk was never a
part of the tradition-at-all-costs wing of the folk movement, and he readily
embraced the young songwriters of the day, frequently covering their songs, as
evidenced by the hushed, nuanced version of Leonard Cohens Bird on the Wire that
is included here. A skilled raconteur, Van Ronk had the timing of a jazz
hornman, and that timing and his wide-ranging musical interests are everywhere
apparent on this lovingly assembled look behind the curtains. ~ Steve Leggett

Tracklist:
 01. Dave Van Ronk - Hootchie Kootchie Man (Remastered) (03:15)
 02. Dave Van Ronk - Reckless Blues (Remastered) (02:31)
 03. Dave Van Ronk - Trouble in Mind (Remastered) (02:26)
 04. Dave Van Ronk - Oh Lord, Search My Heart (Remastered) (03:57)
 05. Dave Van Ronk - God Bless The Child (Remastered) (03:18)
 06. Dave Van Ronk - Losers (Remastered) (03:18)
 07. Dave Van Ronk - Another Time and Place (Remastered) (04:30)
 08. Dave Van Ronk - Garden State Stomp (Remastered) (02:52)
 09. Dave Van Ronk - Motherless Children (Remastered) (03:13)
 10. Dave Van Ronk - Dont You Leave Me Here (Im Alabama Bound) (Remastered)
(04:43)
 11. Dave Van Ronk - Spike Driver Blues (Remastered) (06:50)
 12. Dave Van Ronk - Down South Blues (Remastered) (05:12)
 13. Dave Van Ronk - St. James Infirmary (Gamblers Blues) (Remastered) (04:26)
 14. Dave Van Ronk - Ace In The Hole (Remastered) (04:23)
 15. Dave Van Ronk - Going Down Slow (Remastered) (03:30)
 16. Dave Van Ronk - Buckets Of Rain (Remastered) (03:55)
 17. Dave Van Ronk - Jelly Jelly (Remastered) (03:03)
 18. Dave Van Ronk - Sometime (Whatcha Gonna Do?) (Remastered) (02:37)
 19. Dave Van Ronk - Hesitation Blues (Remastered) (02:35)
 20. Dave Van Ronk - In The Pines (Remastered) (03:09)
 21. Dave Van Ronk - Oh, What A Beautiful City (Remastered) (03:16)
 22. Dave Van Ronk - Mean Old Frisco (Remastered) (02:57)
 23. Dave Van Ronk - Stackalee (Remastered) (02:46)
 24. Dave Van Ronk - How Long? (Remastered) (03:52)
 25. Dave Van Ronk - Aint No Grave Can Hold My Body Down (Remastered) (04:53)
 26. Dave Van Ronk - House Of The Rising Sun (Remastered) (06:10)
 27. Dave Van Ronk - Please See That My Grave is Kept Clean (Remastered) (02:58)
 28. Dave Van Ronk - Had More Money (Remastered) (03:09)
 29. Dave Van Ronk - If You Leave Me, Pretty Mama (Remastered) (03:09)

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