Sugar Mountain

Neil Young is someone who has grown slowly on me. I now wonder how I missed him all this time. sugar Mountain is a deceptively simply song, but it kinda gets under your skin. I didn't realize how much a liked it until it popped up on Pandora and I got quite happy about it. This the version from Live Rust.

Willy O'Winsbury

Sandy Denny, June Tabor, Maddy Prior. When I think of the women of the British folk scene, these are the names that come to mind. I always seem to forget Jacquie McShee of Pentangle. Pentangle often went off in weird directions with their music, but as this song shows, they could do traditional quite well.

I first heard this song from Ed Miller, of Austin. It is one of my favorites and this is a great rendition

House of the Rising Sun

At the risk of getting called a baby-boomer by my wife, I am putting this song up. This is one of those songs that will get me to test the capacity of my stereo speakers every time. If my stereo went to 11, I would go there. Best rock adaptation of a folk song ever. (Note that this is different from a folk-rock song). The fact that the original is essentially a blues tune helps. This song also demonstrates that sometimes less is more. This is a really simple guitar line, but any thing more would wrong. It's shocking to see how young these guys were. That bass growl coming out of that baby face.

My only complaint with this version is that they changed the pronouns. This is a woman's song, the House is a whorehouse, and the song doesn't make sense when sung from a male perspective. Following The Animals in a Bob Dylan singing with female lyrics and Joan Baez singing as a female, of course.

On YouTube there is much discussion about the "real" version. For the record, the Baez version was recoded in 1960, the Dylan version in 1961, and The Animals in 1964. The song is older than all of them, of course. It was one of the many songs collected by Alan Lomax. The oldest known recording was made by Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster in 1933. Prior to the 1960's versions were recorded by Roy Acuff, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Glenn Yarbrough.

The Animals



Bob Dylan



Joan Baez



Woody Guthrie



Leadbelly

Rocky Mountain High

When I was in junior high, I became a fan of John Denver, in part because I heard some of the older boys in my Boy Scout troop speaking well of him. I came to really like his music on its own merit though. It has kind of been one of my secret vices every since. He was never exactly cool, so I never talked much about it. Rocky Mountain High was one his songs that spoke to me in a very direct way. In the same era that I was beginning to listen to Denver, I was going on my first backpacking trips, and one weekend a month camping with the Boy Scouts. Hearing it now, even though I haven't had a backpack on for over a decade makes me want to get out a map and find a lake somewhere high in the Rockies to climb to.