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Northern California Bluegrass Society provides this CD review. You can find our most current reviews on our Message Board, where you can comment or query the author directly. Our monthly magazine, Bluegrass By the Bay also publishes them. Return to CD Reviews. |
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| The Crooked Jades | Seven Sisters: A Kentucky Portrait |
| Review by Larry Carlin | February 2000 |
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Songs: Put My Little Shoes Away, Miner's Child, I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again, Pearl Bryan/Intro, Cumberland Gap, Letter Edged In Black (Intsr.), Little Bessie, Miner's Child (Instr.), Hard For To Love, She Lied To Me, Young Edward, Letter Edged In Black, Put My Little Shoes Away (Instr.), Moonshiner, Wayfaring Stranger (Instr.), Jenny Get Around, Wayfaring Stranger, Mystery Train, Pretty Polly (Instr.), Pearl Bryan/Outro. |
Crooked Music Personnel:
Special guests: |
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If you were going to make a documentary film about a family of sisters from Kentucky in the 30s and 40s and you wanted to use some old-time music for your soundtrack your first inclination would be to go down south to search out some band from that area. But if you were based in San Francisco there would be no need to travel afar to find some great old-time/bluegrass music since there are quite a few young bands playing mountain music in the hills of The City. And filmmaker Patrick Donahew could not have chosen a better band when he asked The Crooked Jades to record the soundtrack for his new documentary called Seven Sisters: A Kentucky Portrait, a film that will be coming to a PBS station near you sometime this summer. The film follows the journeys of seven sisters who loved to sing. They span a generation, growing up during the Depression in Kentucky, and their inspiring story proves that you don't need Hollywood movie stars in a movie or presidential candidates to tell a story about real family values. One of the sisters is the mother of director Donahew, so he knows his subject matter better than most documentary filmmakers do. The Crooked Jades debuted two years ago with their impressive Going To The Races CD, and on this new recording they gathered a few friends to help recreate the music that predates bluegrass. And they used mostly instruments that were used way back then, from parlor guitars and Weissenborns to banjo-ukuleles and minstrel banjos. The band got inspiration for many of the songs from a little-known singer and banjo player from Eastern Kentucky by the name of Roscoe Holcomb. The director provided a list of eight songs that he wanted the band to record, and Jades founder Jeff Kazor found the rest of the material. All of the songs except for one are 70-125 years old, and the sound the Jades produced on this CD is about as authentic as you will find these days. There are 20 songs and almost an hour's worth of music on Seven Sisters, as well as a wonderful mix of story songs and instrumentals. While all of the songs are well done, highlights include Put My Little Shoes Away (which is also the first song), Cumberland Gap, Hard For To Love, and I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again. Five of the songs that are sung also have instrumental versions played elsewhere on the CD, and this makes for a nice contrast. Special guests Martha Hawthorne's haunting vocals and Bill Foss's fiddle/banjo/mandolin provide a nice addition to the old-time sound those fans of the Jades have become so familiar with. How many times have you bought a soundtrack because of one song you heard in a film, and then found out the rest of the recording was terrible? A lot of work and thoughtful planning went into the making of Seven Sisters: A Kentucky Portrait by The Crooked Jades, and it is one of the best soundtracks to come along in a long time. Who'd have thought that the songs of 100 years ago could still sound this good in the year 2000? Every song on Seven Sisters tells a story, one that you will want to listen to time and again. |
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