American Folk and Gambling Songs

by John Jacob Niles

American Folk and Gambling Songs cover art
  • Type: Album
  • Released: 1956
  • Label: Camden
  • Country: United States
  • Length: 12:07
  • Community rating: 3.49/5 from 3 ratings

Album Notes & Community Reviews

Accompanying himself on a custom-built, highly resonant lute, the eccentric folklorist delivers an incredibly dramatic, almost operatic interpretation of traditional Appalachian murder ballads and rural gambling narratives. His remarkably high, piercing countertenor and intense, highly theatrical vocal phrasing inject immense, eerie theatricality into the centuries-old oral histories. The fiercely unique, highly stylized recordings significantly shaped the dramatic vocal delivery of the impending 1960s acoustic revival.

Genres

Tracklist

  1. The Two Sisters (5:39)
  2. The Old Woman and the Pig (2:30)
  3. The Frog Went Courting (1:03)
  4. The Carrion Crow (1:34)
  5. Edward (4:31)
  6. The Hangman (3:27)
  7. I'm in the Notion Now (2:06)
  8. The Farmer's Cursed Wife (2:54)
  9. Three Little Hunters (2:50)
  10. Who Killed Cock Robin (3:15)
  11. Jack O'Diamonds (1:44)
  12. The Roving Gambler (2:31)
  13. Gambler, Don't Lose Your Place at God's Right Hand (1:55)
  14. The Gambler's Lullaby (1:32)
  15. The Gambling Song of the Big Sandy River (1:10)
  16. Little Black Star (1:56)
  17. American Street, Field and Jail House Cries (5:45)

Credits

  • Malin Quick - lyrics by
  • Christer Rydell - music by

More from John Jacob Niles: full discography