Track Listing

1. Is It Really Love at All
2. Pearl's Goodtime Blues
3. Wind and Sand
4. Faithful
5. Blue River
6. Florentine
7. Sheila
8. More Often Than Not
9. Round the Bend

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36306 in Music
• Released on: 2009-12-16
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Blue River - Eric Andersen

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Amazon.com
Originally recorded in 1971 and composed during a time of intense creativity, anguish, and physical and mental exhaustion, Eric Andersen's ode to despair and cry for renewal is widely acknowledged to be his masterpiece. Along with Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Joni Mitchell's Blue, it is a defining moment for the singer/songwriter genre. Andersen delivers these nine country- and gospel-flavored songs as if in a trance; a fragile and flowing analog warmth threads them together. All the airy, spacious lyricism of Norbert Putnam's delicate production is now before the listener, and the musical experience, even for those who know the album well, will be a revelation. The smallest details--Grady Martin's gut-string guitar on "Faithful," Weldon Myrick's steel guitar and Joni Mitchell's intricately phrased harmony on "Blue River," and Farell Morris's barely audible but finely textured vibes on "Florentine"--arise as if for the first time. Columbia has also unearthed two unreleased tracks--a soulful reinterpretation of the early ballad "Come to My Bedside" and a Cajun vamp-up of Hank Williams's "Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used to Do?" If it's a crime that an album this moving ever went out of print, it's also a triumph that it has returned meticulously remastered and elegantly annotated and presented. --Roy Kasten

Customer Reviews

Quite Simply, One of Eric Andersen's Masterpieces!
This classic album was the early culmination of Andersen's rise to prominence in the sixties with its thoughtful, poignant, and philosophic look both within Andersen himself and in the world as he saw it during a period of personal difficulty and inner turmoil.Eric Andersen is nothing if not a consummate writer, performer, and interpreter of classic folk melodies and subjects, and he delivers on his considerable promise. Certainly both earlier and later professional efforts by Andersen indicate just how talented and durable his abilities as a writer and performer he is. Here he is in superb form, with original songs ranging from the opening stunner "Is It Really Love At All" to "Wind And Sand" to other wistful interpretations like "Florentine" and the very wry "Faithful", which Linda Ronstadt did a terrific cover version of years later. My personal favorites here are ""Blue River", a haunting and evocative song about life simply led, and "More Often Than Not", an unusual (to say the least) take on life as a road-traveling performer. One often hears albums described as a collection of songs, but this is truly a song cycle that has a special mood, atmosphere, and timbre of its own. This is a special album by a monumental talent who has never gotten the wide acclaim and popular recognition his unusually gifted abilities seem to deserve. Buy this CD and I guarantee you will soon find yourself referring to it reverently, as most "folkies" do.

An Outstanding Collection of Songs
If you at all like the singer/songwriter folk genre, you'll love this album. I have three copies--one on vinyl, one CD at home and one CD at work. This is Eric Andersen at his best-- beautifully orchestrated, lovely melodies, touching lyrics. The poetic artistry shadowed in earlier works like "Close the Door Lightly" matured here. If you've ever broken up with a loved one, you'll see yourself in "Faithful". If you've ever had a fleeting romantic encounter, you'll recognize "Is It Really Love At All". "Florentine" will remind you of all your idealized loves, and the "Blue River" duet (as Eric Andersen calls it) with Joni Mitchell will haunt you and touch your soul.

Hooray! Blue River is available again!
I bought this in vinyl when it first came out and played it until the tracks were gone. Still, I refused to give it up and have been listening to a tape I made from the original vinyl.....like a pair of jeans you simply refuse to give up :)

Eric did his best work on this album and the back up musicians did superb work as well, including a haunting vocal by Joni Mitchell on Blue River.

I have never written a review, but this release is a cause for great joy in my house! If you love folk music, buy this CD...you won't be sorry.