The Never Ending Pool

From "Country Home," "Germany's Premier Country Music Magazine." Review by
Christian Lamitschka.

JACK ELLIOTT At Lansdowne Studios, London.

Talking Guitar Blues; San Francisco Bay Blues; Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms*;
East Virginia Blues*; Ain't It A Shame*; Muleskinner Blues*; Ain't It A Shame
(comic version)*; Howdido; My Daddy; Why Oh Why; The Fox; Riding In My Car; Old
Rattler; Rusty Jiggs And Sandy Sam (The Sierry Petes); Git Along Little Dogies;
My Little Lady (Sadie Brown); Night Herding Song; The Old Chisholm Trail;
Fifteen Cents And A Dollar; Rocky Mountain Belle; Talking Blues; Diamond Joe;
Down In The Willow Garden; I Ride An Old Paint; Jack O'Diamonds; Pretty Boy
Floyd; Do-Re-Me; Dead Or Alive; Grand Coulee Dam; Dust Storm Disaster; I Ain't
Got No Home; So Long, It's Been Good To Know You; Whippin' That Old T. B.
(tracks marked * are duets with DERROLL ADAMS)....

(Bear Family BCD 16630 AH)

Although there were devotees spread around the country, Ramblin' Jack Elliott
effectively brought folk music to ....Britain.... in the mid 1950s and, busking
his way around the nation, introduced the songs of his mentor Woody Guthrie and
of the American Southwest to brand new audiences. Britain also launched
Elliott's recording career, virtually beginning at the time of his arrival in
the country when he was signed up to Topic Records, a non-exclusive that also
saw the American recording for record shop owner Doug Dobell's 77 Records. But
it wasn't until 1958, and his association with Lansdown Studios (created by
broadcaster, record producer and jazz critic Denis Preston, who had earlier
achieved success with skiffle productions) and released through EMI's Columbia
label, that Elliott recorded the majority of his British output. The first
sessions comprised mainly traditional western folk songs like Git Along Little
Doggies, The Old ..Chisholm Trail.., Jack O'Diamonds and I Ride An Old Paint but
it wasn't until a year later – after a short break in the States - that he would
record material from Woody Guthrie's much revered catalogue. In a lineup that
included Alexis Korner (mandolin) and Jack Fallon (string bass), Elliott first
covered such familiar titles as Do-Re-Me, Grand Coulee Dam, I Ain't Got No Home
and So Long, It's Been Good To Know You before, at second session, recording a
selection of children's songs like Howdido, Old Rattler and Riding In My Car.
This collection of 33 tracks (with a running time of almost 89 minutes), brings
together the majority of Elliott's Lansdown Studios recordings, hitherto
unavailable for years, alongside a handful of previously unreleased recordings.
These include Guthrie's Pretty Boy Floyd, Jesse Fuller's San Francisco Bay Blues
and five titles laid down in a 1960 reunion with fellow American Derroll Adams
with whom Elliott toured during his initial British years as the duo The
Rambling Boys. Regarded as a major influence on the development of the folk
scene in Britain (as well as upon Bob Dylan, who idolized Elliott), the
background of the recordings and this period of Ramblin' Jack Elliott's life, is
precisely detailed by Hank Reineke in the accompanying 42 page booklet that also
contains photographs and discography.