Lead Belly
Take This Hammer (compilation, best of)
Label: Complete Blues (division of Snapper Music)Released: 2004
Genre: Blues, Folk Blues, Country Blues
First a little history on the name of the album - because it's been reused at least half a dozen times by as many labels. All of them a 'best of' collection in some form or another. Ledbetter never put out any formal albums himself, only a large collection of singles through out his life (both in and out of jail). Take This Hammer, a famous folk song, was recorded once by Lead Belly and put out on a single in 1942. He died in 1949 and the first anthology to use this title was released in 1950. The one I found happens to also be a U.K. Release, technically an import into the US.
Some of the collections are long out of print, only a few ever made it out onto CD, under this title at least - he has literally dozens of collections out there. So what's in this one? Aside from being the most recent, and easily found collections (well, under this title...), twenty songs across his entire career. A pretty good selection from straight blues to faster jump and slower country blues. Leadbelly had a fantastic range in his repertoire, and this collection shows it off nicely.
While the collection is good at providing accurate credits of who wrote which songs, and any accompaniment (of which there are very few). It does not provide when or where these recordings were made. Some appear to have been pulled from his library of congress recordings, some from various sessions throughout his life. But I'm not entirely sure to be honest, just going by the quality of the songs. All are of good quality, but some are better than others. A Decent enough collection with a good diversity of songs on it.
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