Tuesday, December 14, 2010

The Hammons Family



This lp, subtitled "A study of a West Virginia's family tradition", is an attempt to describe with sounds, words and photographs, the life and folklore of a rural appalachian family, whose ancestors came from Britain and were early pioneers and settlers in Kentucky and the Allegheny mountains. Music was an important part of the family life and the album includes many banjo and fiddle tunes along with ballads and stories. The recordings and research were done by Alan Jabbour, Carl Fleischhauer and Dwight Diller in the beggining of the 1970's for the Library of Congress in Washington.
-I uploaded the cd version of the lp (thanks to Tobias Enevoldsen for providing me this) which has combined the original tracks with another lp from The Hammons Family called "Shaking down the Acorns", released on Rounder.
-This recordings came with a huge booklet of more than 30 pages, that tells the history and background of The Hammons family along with notes on the recordings and photographs.

Part 1: The Hammons Family
  1. Old Sledge
  2. Camp Chase
  3. Three Forks of Cheat
  4. The Yankee and Marcum
  5. Sugar Grove Blues
  6. Turkey in the Straw
  7. The Route
  8. Fine Times at Our House
  9. Jimmy Johnson
  10. Parsons Rock
  11. In Scotland Town
  12. Little Omie
  13. Young Henerly
  14. Muddy Roads
  15. Bringing Back the Sheep
  16. The Sandy Boys
  17. Wilson's Clog
  18. Sugar Babe (version 1)
  19. We're Marching Around the Levees
  20. Riddles
  21. Mercian Tittery-ary-a
  22. Jay Legg
  23. When This World Comes to an End


Part 2: Shaking down the Acorns
  1. Shaking Down the Acorns / Hink Cogar's Deer Ride
  2. Cranberry Rock
  3. The Panther in the Sky
  4. Sugar Babe (version 2)
  5. The Lonesome Pines
  6. Johnny Booger
  7. Walking in the Parlor
  8. Singing Birds
  9. Old Man, Can I Have Your Daughter
  10. The Haunted Wagon
  11. Rocky Mountain Goat
  12. Who's Been Here Since I've Been Gone
  13. Lost Indian
  14. Hard Times in the Charleston Jail
  15. Ireland's Green Shore
  16. The Big Scioty
  17. Greasy Coat

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

absolutely fantastic post of some underappreciated music. many thanks.

Dave Linder said...

Wow! Amazing - thank you for all you do - I know this takes a great deal of effort on your part. This important stuff!

Unknown said...

Thanks to my friends Gael & Tobias !
Nice work !

Claude

B. Kramer said...

Excellent post! Thank you very much for this holiday gift. Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Sweet. Thank you for all you do. I was jazzed by finding the Ed Haley, and now the Hammons Family!

LostintheHoller said...

Thank you thank you thank you!!!

themusicgatherer said...

Great post -thank you for some brilliant music.

gypsykat said...

This is amazing stuff if you have the ears for it. And if you need to strip the old paint off the barn next spring, just put this on a boom box in the corral and let it play. (Roscoe Holcombe strips paint pretty well, too.)

Happy Holy Days!

The Irate Pirate said...

looks fantastic! thanks for another treasure

D. Christie said...

Thank ye kindly!
Ive been reading about them in my issues of Old Time Herald and was wanting to hear em.
thanks again Gadaya!
Drew

Scott said...

Thanks for putting this up so much. I've wanted this album for a long time but couldn't bring myself to pay what they want for an out-of-print copy. One problem though, and I hate to nitpick, but the booklet (not Shaking down the acorns, but the other one) won't open. Thanks again man!