WORTH IT IN 2012: #12 - Old Timey Yazoo Comp

2012 IN OLD TIMEY REISSUES

Various Artists

The Return of the Stuff That Dreams are Made Of

(Yazoo)

Here's what I wrote at the PopMatters Best Reissues extravaganza:

Chances are you’ve already got some of these singles from the 1920s sitting around the house. Charlie Patton’s roaring “High Water Everywhere—Part 1”, Bukka White’s chugging proto-rap “The Panama Limited”, and J.P. Nester’s amazing “Train on the Island”, where fiddle and banjo meld into what resembles an electro-minimalist maelstrom—these are oft-compiled elsewhere. But unless you’re one of the 

dementeddedicated collectors depicted in this compilation’s 50-page booklet, you don’t have them all in one place, and you probably don’t have some of the other Stuff. Maybe you need Joe Evans & Arthur McClain’s deadpan “Two White Horses” (a.k.a. “See That My Grave is Kept Clean”), complete with church bell and coffin sound effects. Or “Old Molly Hair”—which, according to Fiddling Powers himself, was “lost in the building of King Solomon’s temple,” and concerns the shooting of a bear and cuckleberries caught in hair. Smattered with Irish and Polish rarities, these 46 exuberant oldies invite you to dance away your death obsessions.

Way better than Aretha Franklin's Best Of 1980-1998.