Legend of Charlie Poole, Vol. 3

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This North Carolina banjo picker and singer was a bona fide recording star in the late 1920s, selling hundreds of thousands of old-time records in his day. Charlie Poole was able to create buoyant, polished string-band music while still preserving the organic nature of the style. The man himself became known for his appetite for life and for drink--he bought his first banjo with moonshiner's profits and died at age 39 in the wake of a two-week bender that celebrated an opportunity to record the music for a Western movie in California. The 16 songs here are as likely to come from Tin Pan Alley as from the mountains and mines of the South, and they all boast a compact banjo-fiddle-guitar instrumentation. Many of the cuts have a swinging, jazzlike quality, and Poole's three-finger banjo style was a precursor to the Scruggs style that revolutionized bluegrass 20 years later. Simply put, Poole gave old-timey a modern style and a primitive grace. --Marc Greilsamer

Tracks:

Look Before You Leap
Goodbye Liza Jane
Leaving Dear Old Ireland
Hungry Hash House
Milwaukee Blues
Goodbye Booze
Too Young To Marry
The Highwayman
Write A Letter To My Mother
The Girl I Left In Sunny Tennessee
My Wife Went Away And Left Me
Old And Only In The Way
I Once Loved A Sailor
Forks Of Sandy
I'm The Man Who Rode The Mule Around The World
Goodbye Mary Dear

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This North Carolina banjo picker and singer was a bona fide recording star in the late 1920s, selling hundreds of thousands of old-time records in his day. Charlie Poole was able to create buoyant, polished string-band music while still preserving the organic nature of the style. The man himself became known for his appetite for life and for drink--he bought his first banjo with moonshiner's profits and died at age 39 in the wake of a two-week bender that celebrated an opportunity to record the music for a Western movie in California. The 16 songs here are as likely to come from Tin Pan Alley as from the mountains and mines of the South, and they all boast a compact banjo-fiddle-guitar instrumentation. Many of the cuts have a swinging, jazzlike quality, and Poole's three-finger banjo style was a precursor to the Scruggs style that revolutionized bluegrass 20 years later. Simply put, Poole gave old-timey a modern style and a primitive grace. --Marc Greilsamer

Customer Reviews:

Old Time Music done Right Remember Charlie!!!!!.......2004-02-12

Charlie Poole's North Carolina Ramblers were one of the greatest old time music bands ever. They were unique and because they tend to go against some of the current stereotypes about old time music spawned by people more interested in cashing in on the contra dance industry than on enjoying the traditions. With his guitar player Roy Harvey, and his fiddler Rorrer, Poole was the master of a tight knit sound that involved a high degree of musicianship. Some have called it the old time music equivalent of the string quartet. Some of the reproductions even those by the New Lost City Ramblers back in the 60s sound stiff compared with the real deal.
Poole played a very precise banjo roll style of finger picking that kept the rhythm, beneath him Mr. Harvey played guitar runs and finger rolls not that different from what Charlie played, while Rorrer played the melody rocking back and forth above them all. The approach was not like some of the string bands and their modern misinterpreters. It was pecise and tight and well practiced. It was hard to do right, but the NC Ramblers did it right.

We have a very open and strong infusion of Rag Time and traces of Jazz here.
And they had fun. There has been an attempt to cast Charlie as an old time hayseed who drank himself to death, but the facts are that Poole died after a celebration of an offer from Hollywood for him and the Ramblers go to California and appear in the new sound films. What a loss it is that such films were never made.

Music Album:

Music Album