Blues and Lamentations.BLUES AND LAMENTATIONS Kate Campbell (Large River Music, 2005) How many artists have a page on the Country Music Television website and quotes from Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American folklorist and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, best known for the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. , Annie Dillard Annie Dillard (born 30 April 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, best known for her narrative nonfiction. She has also published poetry, essays, literary criticism, autobiography, and fiction. , and Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia Totti O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887—March 6,1986) was an American artist. She is typically associated with the American Southwest and particularly New Mexico where she settled late in life. O'Keeffe has been a major figure in American art since the 1920s. on their CD booklet? The answer is one: Kate Campbell, with her new album Blues and Lamentations. Campbell, who has turned out 10 albums in as many years, is firmly rooted in the musical, religious, and literary traditions of the South. Born in New Orleans while her father attended the Southern Baptist seminary there, she grew up as a preacher's kid in the Delta town of Sledge, Mississippi, and later in Nashville. In the liner notes for her latest CD, Campbell writes about the blues as the "understory un·der·sto·ry n. An underlying layer of vegetation, especially the plants that grow beneath a forest's canopy. " for her music, and five of the songs have the word "blue" in the title. But this is not a blues album. It is essentially the same subdued acoustic country music as from Campbell's earlier albums. But the idea of the blues--suffering transmuted into beauty--is all over these lyrics. There's "Genesis Blues," which situates the Garden of Eden Garden of Eden n. See Eden. Noun 1. Garden of Eden - a beautiful garden where Adam and Eve were placed at the Creation; when they disobeyed and ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil they were in the poverty of the Mississippi Delta, and Creation in the moment when the first bluesman laid the first glass bottleneck across a guitar string. And a song is salvation for the prisoner Campbell shows gazing through the bars at the "Free World" I've always felt that Campbell's finely-crafted songs could benefit from some loosening up and some drumming, and I still do. But I can find no fault with her cover tunes here. On "Pans of Biscuits," a traditional song about a poor cotton farmer cheated in this life and hoping for biscuits and gravy Biscuits and gravy is a popular breakfast dish in both the southeastern and northwestern regions of the United States. It consists of (American-style) biscuits (which are actually savory scones) covered in thick "country" or "white" gravy made from the drippings of cooked pork in the next, Campbell is joined by the cracked and weathered voice of legendary country songwriter Guy Clark. On "Lord Help the Poor and Needy," borrowed from North Mississippi blueswoman Jessie Mae Hemphill, Campbell sings alone, accompanied only by a tambourine tambourine (tăm'bərēn`), musical instrument of the percussion family, having a narrow circular frame and a single parchment drumhead, with metal plates or jingles set in the frame. , and the song's prayer for the gamblers, motherless children, and war-torn peoples "in this land" becomes, well, a prayer. |
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