Pete Seeger - American Favorite Ballads (5CD Box Set) (2009)

In his 60-some years as a public performer, Pete Seeger has left an indelible footprint on popular music. As a member of the Almanac Singers in the '40s and the Weavers a decade later, Seeger helped midwife the urban folk boom of the '60s. His comfortable voice and graceful banjo style give his many compositions and folk adaptations an easy and elegant dignity, and on the political front, well, he's been a kind of canary in the coal mine for decades, speaking (and singing) out on any number of vital issues. This wonderful five-disc set (each disc comes with its own booklet) shows Seeger at his calm, plainspoken best as he runs through the American folk songbook accompanied only by guitar or banjo. The discs were originally released by Moses Asch's Folkways Records as individual LPs between 1957 and 1962 (in all, Seeger recorded some 40 albums for Folkways between 1950 and 1964), and Smithsonian Folkways reshuffled and reissued them as stand-alone CDs in the digital era, but put together like this, they make a grand and sweeping survey of the songs America has been singing for a century or two, all filtered through Seeger's wise, politically aware perspective. It adds up to some six hours of music, history, and memories, a fine testament to Seeger, Asch, Folkways, and the grand music of the American people.

Tracklist:

CD1 (Recording Date 1950 - 1962)

01. Jonn Henry
02. Shenandoah
03. Blue-Tailed Fly
04. Black Girl
05. Skip to my Lou
06. The Big Rock Candy Mountain
07. Clementine
08. Yankee Doodle
09. Home on the Range
10. John Brown's Body
11. Goodnight, Irene
12. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
13. Oh, Susanna
14. Wayfaring Stranger
15. Oh, Mary Don't You Weep
16. Down in the Valley
17. The Wabash Cannon Ball
18. On Top of Old Smokey
19. Frankie and Johny
20. I Ride an Old Paint
21. The Wreck of the Old 97
22. Wagoner's Lad
23. Old Dan Tucker
24. I've Been Working on the Railroad
25. Cielito Lindo
26. So Long, It's Been Good to Know You
27. America the Beautiful
28. This Land Is Your Land

CD2 (Recording Date 1958)

01. Barbara Allen
02. Young Man Who Would't Hoe Corn
03. Midnight Special
04. House of the Rising Sun
05. Careless Love
06. Oh, What a Beautiful City
07. Poor Boy
08. Sally Ann
09. The Riddle Song
10. Go Tell Aunt Rhody
11. The Water Is Wide
12. The Fox
13. The Keeper and the Doe
14. Pretty Polly
15. Jesse James
16. Stagolee
17. Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair
18. Camptown Races
19. Blow the Man Down
20. Froggie Went a Courtin'
21. I Had a Rooster
22. Putting on the Style
23. The Farmer's Curst Wife
24. Hard Travellin'
25. Alabama Bound
26. Wimoweh
27. Dink's Song

CD3 (Recording Date 1954 - 1962)

01. Gipsy Davy
02. Deep Blue Sea
03. New River Train
04. St.James Hospital
05. E-Ri-E Canal
06. St.Louis Blues
07. Boll Weevil
08. The Girl I Left Behind
09. When I First Came to this Land
10. The Titanic
11. El-A-Noy
12. Lady of Carslile
13. My Good Man
14. Golden Vanity
15. Ain't It A Shame
16. Swanee River
17. Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child
18. The Boys from County Mayo
19. No Irish Need Apply
20. Paddy Works on the Railroad
21. Arkansas Traveller
22. When I Was Single
23. Wond'rous Love
24. Ground Hog
25. Old Blue
26. She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain
27. Erie Canal

CD4 (Recording Date 1961)

01. Banks of the Ohio
02. You Are My Sunnshine
03. Hallelujah, I'm a Bum
04. The Foggy Dew
05. Molly Malone
06. Old Maid's Song
07. Oh, How He Lied
08. Where the Old Allegheny and the Monongahela Flow
09. Leatherwing Bat
10. Johny Has Gone for a Soldier
11. Farther Along
12. Go Down, Moses
13. All My Trials
14. Monsieur Banjo
15. No More Auction Block
16. Hole in the Bucket
17. What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor
18. Army Life
19. Blue Mountain Lake
20. Lady Margaret
21. John Hardy
22. Johnson
23. John Riley
24. Washer Lad
25. Talking Blues
26. Lolly Too Dum
27. T.B. Blues
28. Summertime

CD5 (Recording Date 1962)

01. Trail to Mexico
02. Red River Valley
03. Old Joe Clark
04. St.James Infirmary
05. Green County Bachelor
06. Ox Driver's Song
07. Buffalo Gals
08. Joe Bowers
09. Texian Boys
10. My Sweerheart Is the Mule in the Mines
11. Johny Gray
12. Cowboy Yodel
13. Siouz Indians
14. Ida Red
15. Holler
16. Cumberland Gap
17. Wake Up, Jacob
18. Sweet Betsy from Pike
19. Buffalo Skinners
20. Whiskey, Rye Whiskey
21. Stewball
22. Whoopie Ti-Yi-Yo, Get Along, Little Doggies
23. Strawberry Roan
24. Jay Gould's Daughter
25. Play-Party
26. I Never Will Marry
27. Rifflemen of Bennington
28. Kingdom Coming
29. Cumberland Mountain Bear Chase