Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir and Ed Trickett
In addition to their groundbreaking field recordings, Folk-Legacy Records also showcased new voices that came out of the 1960s folk revival. Among the label’s greatest contributions in this vein was the trio of Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir, and Ed Trickett, who together put out and collaborated on numerous releases throughout the catalog, becoming something of the label’s flagship artists. They are distinguished by their masterful and powerful use of three-part vocal harmony including Bok’s distinctive, rich baritone as well as their warm instrumentation, featuring 6- and 12-string guitar, hammer dulcimer, flute, and Bok’s musical inventions, the cellamba and bokwhistle. Over decades working with the label, the trio focused mostly on the Anglo-American tradition and Bok’s original songwriting, often taking inspiration from maritime music that reflected Bok’s life on the Maine coast. Together, the trio’s style is invit
Gordon Bok, a prolific musician for Folk-Legacy Records, is a folksinger and songwriter from Camden, Maine.
Return to the Land was the last album of new material he recorded for the label in 1990. Here, he performs new and traditional songs, including two of his own, sung in his warm bass and accompanied on his characteristic 12-string guitar and fretted-cello invention, the cellamba.
The Folklore of the Mormon Country by Hector Lee, CD artwork
Hector Lee was an academic and folklorist specializing in folklore of the American West. On this recording, he recites stories and yarns about J. Golden Kimball, a cowboy-turned-preacher who rose in the ranks of the Mormon Church and achieved the status of President of the Seventies, a position in the church hierarchy second only to the Twelve Apostles. Despite his piety and post, Kimball (or Brother Golden, as he was known) often slipped into the colorful vernacular of his buckaroo days, leaving his sermons sprinkled with spiritual insight, humor, and profanity; when asked if this was intentional, he replied, “I never intend to cuss, but every time I get up to speak, those words just come out.” On the second side of the recording, Lee tells the Brother Peterson Yarns, light-hearted stories about the sizeable population of Scandinavian Mormons who settled in Utah and Idaho in the 19th century. A special recording, Lee
Born in Midland, Ontario, in 1927, Tom Brandon was a second-generation Canadian whose grandparents had left Ireland in the 19th century. His repertoire hailed from both his paternal roots in Belfast and maternal roots in Wexford, spanning northern and southern regions of the island. On this recording, made by the Canadian folklorist Edith Fowke, Brandon sings unaccompanied ballads with a clear Irish brogue, which somehow survived two generations outside of Ireland. The selection here is varied, including Irish broadsides, rebel songs, lumberjack songs, and even American cowboy ballads, all sung with a keen grasp of melody and phrasing perfectly suited for his style of singing. The Rambling Irishman was originally released by Folk-Legacy Records in 1962.
Originally released by Folk-Legacy Records in in 1976, Harry Tuft’s
Across the Blue Mountains is a collection of traditional and new folk songs in the spirit of the folk revival. First an important figure in the Philadelphia folk scene of the late 1950s, in the 1960s in Colorado Tuft went on to establish the Denver Folklore Center, one of the city’s most significant venues for folk music, welcoming the likes of Doc Watson and Leo Kottke. On
Across the Blue Mountains, Tuft plays arrangements that sound both traditional and contemporary, inspired by trends in fingerstyle guitar playing from the 1970s. Highlights include a gorgeous 12-string rendition of The Mermaid (Child 289) featuring Ed Trickett, and a version of Lord Gregory (Child 76) taught to Tuft by the great Karen Dalton.