Tracks: San Francisco Bay Blues//Ol' Riley//Bill Weevil//Bed Bug Blues//New York Town//Old Blue//Grey Goose//Mule Skinner Blues//East Texas Talking Blues//Cocaine//Dink's Song//Black Baby//Salty Dog
Another review, but hopefully a short one (it’s 12:45 AM on a school night, after all). This is a charming little album. It’s just Jack Elliott with his guitar, taking a swing at the American folk repertoire and managing nothing but hits. Elliot has a funny sort of voice – when he talks, he sounds like Ira Kaplin doing a cowboy impersonation, but when he sings he has a style which owes such a debt to the blues that at times it sounds like he’s stolen Skip James’ pipes by way of Hank Williams and hooked them up to an air-raid siren. At one point in “Mule Skinner Blues”, for example, Elliott actually holds a yodel for a full twenty seconds. It’s wonderfully expressive, and perfectly suited to his principle choice of subject matter – being funny little stories of the misfortunes of life. We are treated, for example, to just about the most resistant goose to ever be cooked, and to a farmer who strikes-up a friendship with a destructive bill weevil. You get little bits of regional history, and instruction on what the hell a Talking Blues is (basically, it’s folk-rap).
You might think, being just a guy and his guitar, that things could get pretty dull pretty quick. Thankfully, that’s not the case. “Ramblin’” Jack gets his name less from any roaming he might have done than due to a habit of letting loose with long and meandering stories. What this means is that most of the songs are introduced with a wry observation of some form, and in one case this even extends to a song in which Jack pretends to have Woody Guthrie in the studio with him, and the “pair” duet on a number.
It’s not all laughs, though. There’s a couple of prison blues (or rags, if you will), and “Old Blue” which tells the story of the narrator’s dead dog. It starts out quite jaunty, but by the end you can almost hear him crying as he sings “dear blue, I’m coming too”. Then “Black Baby” is the touching story of a guy going away, telling his gal not to worry and to take care. Bittersweet, more than anything. Utterly gorgeous vocal delivery. Of course, then you have "Salty Dog", which is, well, "salty".
Really, there’s not much to go on about here, but it’s all wonderfully done. Elliott’s guitar is very fine, and he busts-out the harmonica on a few numbers. You get some weepers and some up-beat party tunes and some stuff in between. Elliott himself is a curious character – a Jewish New Yorker and the son of a doctor, he ran away from home in his teens and remade himself as a cowboy in the mid-West. Well, he does alright by these tunes, and leaving questions of authenticity aside that is really all that matters. We don’t want to re-open the Mudrooroo debates, after all. It’s the music that matters, and Elliott is one hell of an interpreter of songs. This is one of my favourite albums so far. It’s at turns hilarious and touching. The links to early Dylan are pretty obvious (Dylan actually billed himself as “Son of Jack Elliott” for one of his first performances, and they hung-out a bit), but Elliott has a much better voice and, until we actually get to Dylan, will do just as nicely.
8.5/10 (maybe a 9? It's all arbitrary anyway... OK yes Jack Elliot you may have a 9)
Download: Ramblin' Jack Elliot - East Texas Talking Blues Mp3
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