Various Artists: Classic Mountain Songs : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

If the sudden reflux of old-timey music has left you craving more, Smithsonian Folkways, which brought roots music out of the backwoods with Harry Smith's Folk Anthology, offers twenty-four chilling ballads on Classic Mountain Songs. There's lots of murder and depression, and many of these performers are of coal mining stock, so the music's roots lie in that underworld. In "Coal Miner Blues," Hazel Dickens partners that darkness with her playful choo-choo croon and witty wordplay: "Some blues are just blues/Mine are the miner's blues." Standouts include banjo master Dock Boggs' "Sugar Baby" and blues-guitarist Lesley Riddley's "John Henry." There are upbeat fiddle and guitar numbers, and lesser-known Central Appalachian voices channel classics like "Cuckoo Bird" and "Mole in the Ground." If you thought Ralph Stanley's "Oh, Death" was creepy, try Berzilla Wallin's version. These "locals" are the real stars of this collection -- they bring the echoing strangeness and anonymity of the Appalachian hills to the intimacy of our Walkman headphones.