Dallas String Band Album Review:
Snap crackel pop at 2006-01-18
The songs are good, but every recording has static backgound noise that is quite loud like a scrathed up old record. It is very distracting. I would not buy this again. You would think they could tone down the noise.
Dallas String Band Album Review:
Incredible. Incredible, incredible, incredible. at 2006-01-01
Or, as we say in San Antone, en-cred-eee-blay! Great booklet too. Proof that, if were made in the image of the gods, the gods MUST be crazy too. Wild, wild fun. Warning: if taken with liquor, this will make you sprint down to the courthouse and change your name to some variation incorporating the monicker Stovepipe.
Dallas String Band Album Review:
Instant Joy at 2006-02-19
I must own 40 collections of old timey music and this is the most consistantly delightful and the best annotated of the lot. 48 numbers and each one brings a smile. Each one teaches you just a bit about what Greil Marcus has called The Old Weird America.Sure, theres a time for appreciating the hardships of the early 20th century, but how much fun is it to hear the light side that must have helped keep people sane and hopeful. Hooray for Old Hat!
Dallas String Band Album Review:
Dont let the cover put you off at 2006-06-27
Folks, dont let the cover (with a perfomer in blackface) put you off. This is good ole fashioned swing your partner do-se-do type music good for a hoedown and slapping your thighs with delight. Most of these tunes are funny story songs and yes, there is static, but as with silent movies, old fashioned recordings like there are an acquired taste for modern audiences. Jim Jackson, Emmett Miller, Old Uncle Dave Macon (my favorite banjoist), and my homeboy from Spartanburg, SC Pink Anderson (I know his son pretty well) bring much old-fashioned delight to the proceedings. There is an essay in the liner notes about W.K. Kerr another Spartanburg product who was the Ed Sullivan of medicine shows. Overall, this is a history lesson that makes you wanna clap your hands, stomp your feet and say YEE-HAW!
Dallas String Band Album Review:
Priceless anthology at 2006-07-04
This element of American history should never be forgotten, and this anthology ensures that it wont. The accompanying booklet is a textbook of fascinating anecdotes and photographs, and it even includes a small, helpful insert of spelling errata to guide the reader through the language of the time. The music itself transports the listener to a time that seems like ancient history, populated by snake oil salesmen who employed fast-picking, fast-talking one-man bands to make their product more appealing to the desperately poor. But this collection also reminds us that times havent changed all that much since those days of the Great Depression. After all, when was the last time you heard a trendy, catchy song in a commercial trying to sell you something as basic as toothpaste?


Dallas String Band Album Editorial:
Earning Their White Stripes. But what Im listening to most of the time at present is an album called Good For What Ails You which is an album of songs that people used to listen to at medicine shows all over the States. Its quite an interesting album and I think that people would be well advised to pick it up. Jack White - Sunday Mail (Australia) Dec 18 2005 PFive Stars. Groundbreaking. Fans of Nick Tosches Where Dead Voices Gather will lap up this extraordinary snapshot of an America that is still shrouded in shadow. Good For What Ails You supplants the Harry Smith collections by surveying the peoples music of the day some of which sounds like nothing you have heard before. Jon Savage - MOJO Dec 2005 PBefore motion pictures before radio before television the traveling Medicine Shows brought entertainment to America! Flamboyant pitch doctors roamed the land hawking their tonics elixirs and miracle cures and with them came a host of singers dancers comedians banjo pickers blues shouters jug blowers string ticklers and minstrel men. The shows died out by mid-20th century but not before a handful of seasoned veterans left their musical legacy on phonograph records. Here are classic performances by such colorful names as Pink Anderson Daddy Stovepipe Gid Tanner Blind Sammie Bogus Ben Covington Fiddlin John Carson Banjo Joe Shorty Godwin Beans Hambone Emmett Miller His Georgia Crackers the Three Tobacco Tags and many more! PTwo-CD Set / 48 Songs Digitally Remastered / Over 2 Hours of Music / Six-Panel Digipak with 72-page Full Color Booklet PA Profusely Illustrated History of the Medicine Shows many Rare Photographs and Firsthand Accounts never before published plus full discography and song descriptions.