From the same Catfish stable (Catfish creek?) as last month's The Roots of Ry Cooder, and the more I interrogate these 'imaginary playlist' compilations, the more cynical I get.
This one seems to have been driven much more by what the compilers had available on cheap licensing deals than by what the title demands. Hence we have Goodnight Irene again. We have Midnight Special, Frankie and Johnny and Mulskinner Blues — all of which Van played on The Skiffle Sessions, but they were included there because they were part of Lonnie Donegan's repertoire, not Van's.
Meanwhile singers and songs that form part of Van's repertoire, or are explicitly name-checked by him, are notably absent. No I Believe to My Soul or Ray Charles, no I Just Want to Make Love to You or Willie Dixon, no Bring It on Home to Me or Sam Cooke, none of the traditional songs from Irish Heartbeat or other albums, no I Can't Stop Loving You or Don Gibson, no Jimmy Witherspoon, no Sly Stone, no Vince Taylor, so Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, no Muddy Waters singing "I'm a Rolling Stone". But three Hank Williams songs. You get my point, I think: a missed opportunity to create a really useful Van reference album.
I saw Van, for the 15th time by my reckoning, ten days ago at the Hammersmith Odeon. It was almost exactly what everyone has come to expect of Van these days. As he has done over many years, he played Help Me by Sonny Boy Williamson (not included on this album), but also threw in a version of St James Infirmary, which I hadn't seen him do before and was one of the evening's highlights. Lots of standard Van tics: "Big Joe Turner said…" (no Big Joe Turner on this album either), "…in the mystic church…", "…on higher ground…"
| Last.fm entry for this album |
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