Burl Ives - Songs From The Big Rock Candy Mountain

Go tell Aunt Rhody that Ole Uncle Burl is back

For those of us of a certain age, Burl Ives is a reminder of Uncle Mac and Saturday morning’s Children’s Favourites, but those predictable 50s days are probably where he belonged. The majority of these 33 tracks are old traditional folk songs, or adaptations thereof, from an era before Dylan changed the scene forever. Blue Tailed Fly, Lavender Blue, The Fox, On Top Of Old Smoky, the repetitive I Know An Old Lady and the title track don’t really stand the test of time. That several of the tracks here appear to have been dubbed from VG- vinyl doesn’t exactly help the case. Ives was a figure of his time; a supposed Communist sympathiser who nevertheless named Pete Seeger and others to help lift his own blacklisting. His material and vocal delivery rarely varied from its particular furrow, and it’s difficult to see just who is going to need this apart from 50s folk completists.

Rev-Ola | CR REV 216

Reviewed by Kingsley Abbott
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