Doc and Merle Watson - Black Mountain Rag

Artist : Doc and Merle Watson
Album : Black Mountain Rag
Source : NG
Year : 2006
Genre : Country
Encoder : exact audio copy 0.96b
Codec : lame 3.91 --alt-preset standard
Quality : VBR, average 208kbps, joint stereo
ID3-Tag : Yes, Version 1 & 2.3
Review by Steve Leggett
Black Mountain Rag is drawn from Doc and Merle Watson's three early-'80s albums for Flying Fish Records (1981's Red Rocking Chair, 1983's Doc & Merle Watson's Guitar Album, and Watson Country, which in turn was a sort of a best-of the Flying Fish years), and what is immediately striking about this compilation is how varied it is, even as it settles nicely into familiar "Watson country." Doc Watson is incapable of ever making a bad album, given his warm, easy singing style (Watson's vocals sound eerily like Jack Teagarden's, if Teagarden had been born in North Carolina instead of Texas and had played guitar instead of trombone and had devoted his career to traditional music instead of jazz) and his simply stunning acoustic guitar playing, but here he shows how at home he and Merle are with not only traditional folk fare ("Red Rocking Chair," "Mole in the Ground") but also Western swing ("Smoke, Smoke, Smoke"), organic bluegrass ("Blackberry Blossom"), fiddle tunes reconfigured for guitar ("Fisher's Hornpipe/Devil's Dream"), straight jazz (the Gershwins' "Liza/Lady Be Good") and even a hybrid that might be termed Appalachian jazz (the striking "Below Freezing," which features clarinet lines from Tom Scott). A young Mark O'Connor plays fiddle on several tracks here, and Byron Berline takes a turn at the fiddle for "Down Yonder." There's also a 1990 trio recording ("Blackberry Blossom") featuring Doc with Norman Blake and Tony Rice, which is here as a sort of bonus track. Again, there's no such thing as a bad Doc Watson album, and this one, like all the others, shows why he's a true national treasure.
Tracklisting
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01 (2:42) Black Mountain Rag
02 (2:47) Smoke Smoke Smoke
03 (2:34) Black Pine Waltz
04 (2:06) Red Rocking Chair
05 (3:04) Twinkle Twinkle
06 (2:20) Below Freezing
07 (2:30) Mole In the Ground
08 (2:56) Lizalady Be Good
09 (2:24) Down Yonder
10 (2:47) Cotton Row
11 (2:30) Sadie
12 (2:32) Leaving London
13 (2:22) Guitar Polka
14 (1:44) Fishers Hornpipedevils Dream
15 (2:52) Along the Road
16 (2:13) Bye Bye Bluebellesmiles
17 (2:53) Sheeps In the Meadowstony Folk
18 (2:17) Take Me Out To the Ballgame
19 (3:15) Blackberry Blossom
20 (2:31) Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar

Playing Time : 51:19
Total Size : 76.7 MB
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