PRICE:
$17.00
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1-2 Weeks
ARTIST
TITLE
Move On Down The Line
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
FLED 3074CD FLED 3074CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
8/4/2009

Jesse "The Lone Cat" Fuller (1896-1976) was one of the great American blues troubadours. A remarkably expressive singer and fine 12-string guitarist, Fuller developed his unique Bay Area street performance one-man-band around his fotdella (a foot-operated hammer-and-pedal string bass) and harmonica/kazoo/cymbals/washboard-rig, and would later go on to record for labels such as Cavalier, Good Time Jazz, and Prestige. This CD includes his earliest recordings, including the original version of his classic "San Francisco Bay Blues," together with a splendid session taped in London in 1965 for Topic Records. One track, "John Henry," has been unavailable since the early 1960s. In the 1960s, the decade when the wider world reached out to embrace him, Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues" became one of the most popular numbers in the standard repertoire of blues and folk singers at that time. But Fuller was not a blues musician, although he played the blues. Neither was he strictly-speaking a folk musician, as the term was then understood, for his act incorporated elements of minstrelsy and vaudeville -- in other words, show business -- and he'd travelled far beyond the "rurals" to work in Hollywood. His own term "folk songster" best describes who he was and what he did. This record is just as important as a document of an oft-neglected historical aspect of American music as it is a tribute to the peculiar talents of a quite remarkable musician. Housed in stylish digifile packaging, including extensive sleevenotes by legendary producer Joe Boyd and acclaimed UK photographer Val Wilmer.