Greenback Dollar: 1929-1933

Amazon.com
Those harboring illusions that old-time music is a quaint, primitive entertainment will be shocked, if not disturbed, by Clarence Ashley. These 20 songs survey the original prewar recordings of the legendary banjo picker, black-faced minstrel, and stinging Appalachian vocalist, and make the case that his music is as mysterious and troubling as his more heralded contemporary Dock Boggs. Like a great character actor, Ashley sinks into the identities of rakes and rambling blades, delivering lines like "All I want's my 32-20, just to shoot out your dirty brains" with all-too-human malice. Some tunes, like the original "Coo Coo Bird" (featured on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music), capture just Ashley and his oddly tuned banjo; others, like his influential version of "Corrina, Corrina," find him backed by some fine early country musicians, especially the virtuoso harmonica player Gwen Foster. Collectors of ancient 78s know what it's like to rediscover such long-neglected American music; thanks to this collection, the rest of us can share the same thrill. --Roy Kasten

Tracks:

Little Sadie
Greenback Dollar
Frankie Silvers
Coo Coo Bird
Rude & Rambling Man
Baby All Night Long
Drunk Man
House Carpenter
My Sweet Farm Girl
Short Life Of Trouble
You Are A Little Too Small
Old John Henry
Corrina Corrina
Sadie Ray
3 Men Went A Huntin'
Naomi Wise
Haunted Road Blues
Train Done Left Me
Dark Holler
Times Ain't Like They Used To Be

Amazon.com

Those harboring illusions that old-time music is a quaint, primitive entertainment will be shocked, if not disturbed, by Clarence Ashley. These 20 songs survey the original prewar recordings of the legendary banjo picker, black-faced minstrel, and stinging Appalachian vocalist, and make the case that his music is as mysterious and troubling as his more heralded contemporary Dock Boggs. Like a great character actor, Ashley sinks into the identities of rakes and rambling blades, delivering lines like "All I want's my 32-20, just to shoot out your dirty brains" with all-too-human malice. Some tunes, like the original "Coo Coo Bird" (featured on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music), capture just Ashley and his oddly tuned banjo; others, like his influential version of "Corrina, Corrina," find him backed by some fine early country musicians, especially the virtuoso harmonica player Gwen Foster. Collectors of ancient 78s know what it's like to rediscover such long-neglected American music; thanks to this collection, the rest of us can share the same thrill. --Roy Kasten

Customer Reviews:

The Gwen Foster Duets Are My Favorites.......2005-08-11

I first read about Gwen Foster in an interview with Joe Filisko. I found this CD after doing a little research. Gwen Foster's harmonica playing is the perfect complement to Tom Ashley's voice. It is these songs that really make me float. The diatonic harmonica becomes a second voice on the record. Foster's tongue tremolo bird trills are more than simple ornaments. They are perfectly placed and controlled expressions of his heart and soul. I have always been a fan of high register harmonica playing. I also enjoy Bill "Jazz" Gillum's high register playing.

Tom Ashley.......2004-03-13

Clarence "Tom" Ashley is amazing. My favorite songs on this cd are the one he plays with Gwen Foster. Gwen's harmonica playing, filled with trills and bends at the highest notes sounds great behind Tom's high and bright singing.
Ashley played in many groups. A few tracks from each of of them are on this cd as well as some of his solo tracks. The groups he played with were called "The Blue Ridge Entertainers", "The Carolina Tar heels", "Byrd Moore And His Hot Shots" and "Ashley And Foster". The Blue Ridge Entertainers' version of "Corrina Corrina" and "Short Life Of Trouble" are the best versions I've ever heard. Buy this cd and buy the cd with Tom playing in the 60s with Doc Watson. that's a great cd too.

Minstrel Man.......2003-11-01

Ashley's version here of "Corinna Corinna," recorded shortly after the original record by the Mississippi Sheiks, features some of the finest Southern old-time two or three-part harmony ever recorded.

Not what you think it is, but what it is.......2003-10-24

Go to the Clarence Ashley official web site. Look at the picture of a young Tom Ashley (he was actually known as Tom)holding his TROMBONE in a marching band uniform.

Listen to his banjo playing. Incidentally his instrument is not ODDLY TUNED but played in one of the most popular of the scores of alternate banjo tunings necessitated by the nature of the instrument, tunings well known by banjo players across the country in Ashley's time and our own. He sings ballads hundreds of years old, and blues like Corrine Corrine that had been made popular by black bluses stars like the Mississippi Sheiks. He sings pop songs. He sings in groups whose name and appearance speak to the Jazz Age he was part of such as Byrd Moore and His Hot Shots (in whose publicity picture the cover picture of Tom in a boater comes from).

Ashley, like so many of the other exemplars of this socalled old time music played music that came out of a mix, not a purity, a mixture of then current pop music, the great growth of the blues and other black music--including the blacks who had brought the banjo to the region in the previous century--and the old time ballads.

Ashley isn't that unique. He is good and fun.

What I like here besides the fine banjo playing is his work as a guitar player. When Ashley began to be recorded again in the 1960s (he never went anywhere, it simply took Ralph Rinzler going to a Virginia fiddlers convention and asking for him, just as Dock Boggs was found by Mike Seeger simply looking Boggs up in the telephone book!) he initially believed his arthritis and other problems made it impossible for him to play guitar, though he had always thought of himself as a guitarist first and banjo player second. Most of the recordings he made in the 1960s featured him either singing only or singing and playing banjo. Only in the last year or so of his life did he realize his disability didnt prevent him playing guitar and there are one or two cuts of him playing guitar. It is nice to hear more of old Tom on the guitar here.

Wisdom & Sadness of The Ages.......2003-01-12

Simply put, this album contains the wisdom and sadness of the ages. This is easily one of the top 20 cd's ever made. I have not heard Clarence "Tom" Ashley's stuff that he did with Doc Watson, but I know it can't be nearly as powerful and sorrowful, and, at times, gleeful, as this wonderful music. Like Dock Boggs, a man whose cd I previously reviewed, Ashley is white, but is able to not only play the blues with the best of them, but also feel it. And his feelings come across loud and clear on this album. His feelings transcend space and time. This isn't hype; Clarence "Tom" Ashley is indeed a legend of American folk music.

Music Album:

Music Album