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I first heard Clarence "Tom" Ashley's music, like most people, after I'd been introduced to Doc Watson and was seeking out his recordings. These included, I learned, a couple of Folkways albums called Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley's, eventually reissued in a two-CD, expanded edition in the 1990s on Smithsonian/Folkways. I thought of Ashley as, of course, a fine musician, but more as an older mentor to the younger Watson. In later years, hearing the occasional Ashley cut on anthologies of 1920s/30s old-time music, I began to realize that he was more than that. So this long-overdue Ashley-only reissue of his early recordings is both welcome and revelatory. You might almost say close to overwhelming: here are 20 songs in the deep-Appalachian tradition, performed by one of the masters, solo or in the company of other gifted musicians. There are the songs from the Anglo/Celtic tradition -- "Coo Coo Bird," "House Carpenter," "Rude and Rambling Man" -- and the not-so-familiar versions of native American ballads, lyric songs, and blues. The blues are a particular delight. I did not fully appreciate just what an accomplished blues singer Ashley was, putting the lie (yet again) to the canard that a white man can't sing the blues. Among them are the gleefully raunchy "Farm Girl Blues" and the forlorn "Drunk Man Blues", both performed with harmonica player/guitarist Gwen Foster. Ashley's readings of the murder ballads "Naomi Wise" and "Old John Hardy" are more intense, more explicitly violent than most versions, and intensely affecting. This is a CD awash in stirring and unforgettable performances, and not a boring or mediocre moment is to be had. Ashley was a giant, and this lovingly fashioned reissue does him all the justice he deserves. - Jerry Clark |
