Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Shootin' Creek
2. Baltimore Fire
3. Leaving Home
4. There'll Come a Time
5. White House Blues
6. Highwayman
7. Hungry Hash House
8. Letter That Never Came
9. Take a Drink on Me
10. Husband and Wife Were Angry One Night
11. Ramblin' Blues
12. Took My Gal A-Walkin'
13. Old and Only in the Way
14. Don't Let Your Deal Go Down Blues
15. Bill Mason
16. Kiss Waltz - North Carolina Ramblers, Posey Rorer
17. Flop Eared Mule - Highlanders
18. Trip to New York, Pt. 1
19. Sweet Sixteen
20. Write a Letter to My Mother
21. If the River Was Whiskey
22. Mother's Last Farewell Kiss
23. Milwaukee Blues
24. Where the Whippoorwill Is Whispering Good-Night

Disc 2:

1. Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee
2. Sunny Tennessee
3. Bulldog Down in Sunny Tennessee - Doc Walsh,
4. Moving Day
5. It's Movin' Day
6. Home Sweet, Home - Frank Jenkins
7. I'm the Man That Rode the Mule 'Round the World
8. Man That Rode the Mule Around the World - Sid Harkreader, Uncle Dave Macon
9. Lynchburg Town - Highlanders
10. Going Down to Lynchburg Town/Don't Let Your Deal Go Down - The Blue Ridge Highballers
11. Some One
12. Monkey on a String - Cal Stewart
13. Monkey on a String
14. Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight Mister
15. May I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister - Red Fox Chasers
16. Married Life Blues - Byron Parker
17. Infanta March - Fred Van Eps
18. Sunset March
19. I'll Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms
20. Goodbye Eliza Jane - Peerless Quartet
21. Good-Bye Sweet Liza Jane
22. Good-Bye Booze
23. Goodbye Booze - Fate Norris, Gid Tanner
24. You Ain't Talking to Me - Eddie Morton
25. You Ain't Talkin' to Me

Disc 3:

1. If I Lose, I Don't Care
2. Battleship of Maine - Red Patterson's Piedmont Log Rollers
3. Budded Rose
4. Standing by a Window - Clay "Henry" Everhart,
5. Uncle Dave's Beloved Solo - Uncle Dave Macon
6. Come Take a Trip in My Airship - Billy Murray
7. I Once Loved a Sailor
8. Dixie Medley [From Spooning and Ballooning] - Carl Freed,
9. My Wife, She Has Gone and Left Me - Kelly Harrell,
10. My Wife Went Away and Left Me
11. Baby Rose - Billy Murray
12. Just Keep Waiting Till the Good Time Comes
13. Shuffle Feet, Shuffle - Fisher Hendley, Marshall Small, Henry Whitter
14. Coon From Tennessee
15. Coon From Tennessee - The Georgia Crackers
16. On the Banks of the Kaney
17. Dixie Medley - Fred Van Eps
18. Southern Medley
19. Man That Wrote Home Sweet Home Never Was a Married Man - Charlie Parker, Mack Woolbright
20. Sweet Sunny South
21. Take Me Back to the Sweet Sunny South
22. Oh! Didn't He Ramble - Arthur Collins
23. He Rambled

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4579 in Music
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2005-05-17
• Number of discs: 3
• Formats: Box set, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .87 pounds

Amazon.com
It's fitting that this Charlie Poole box set comes in a beat-up cigar box. Enclosed are the stories, both in song and print, that serve to foreshadow a stereotypical hard-living country musician. Poole's tunes of gambling, girls, guns, and gin are real-world tales of a rambling drifter and fighter with a bum pickin' hand (broken on a drunken dare) and broken teeth (shot out during a run-in with the law).

The cover illustration by R. Crumb and the photos enclosed within hardly hint at Poole's being one of country music's earliest outlaws--rather, they portray him as a coiffed businessman-cum-banjo. It is in the three discs and the 35-page booklet that we begin to see a true picture of Charlie Poole. Though he didn't write the songs, he sang his rough-and-tumble life in the ones he chose: "Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight Mister?," "Husband and Wife Were Angry One Night," and "I'm the Man That Rode the Mule 'Round the World." These are songs of a simple and stubborn man in trying times. It's not all misery and strife though. The pure George Formby style of "Monkey on a String" hints at a lighter side. "Sunset March" (inspired by Fred van Eps's "Infanta March," also included in this set) may be the track that best gets at Poole's banjo style.

"Hellions both, the pair loved nothing more than traveling, raising Cain, playing music, and having a drink, and another tune, and another drink." --Henry "Hank" Sapoznik on Poole and close friend Posey Wilson Rorrer (from the booklet)

It's not the lightning speed that the world would hear in the bluegrass greats, but a unique clawhammer arpeggio plucking style that comes across rough yet streetwise, like the player himself.

Not all the tracks in this set are performed by Poole, hence the subtitle ...and the Roots of Country Music. Also included are a couple dozen tracks recorded by Poole's mentors and contemporaries, giving excellent context to Poole's work. The term "bluegrass" was yet to be coined and the country outlaw profile was still a good 20 years away. It's surprising to learn that Charlie Poole only recorded and released records during a five-year period leading up to the hell-bent bender that led directly to his death at 39.

In terms of packaging, this box set is top-notch. The design, typography, and photographs are as genuine as the music. The booklet contains a brief introduction by Roanoke, Virginia, DJ Kinney Rorrer, whose father was close with Poole. Also included are accounts of Charlie's run-ins with hecklers, women, and the law, as well as an in-depth bio that surely contains the majority of what is known of his short life. Perhaps only Rorrer's out-of-print Rambling Blues: The Life and Songs of Charlie Poole reveals more about this grandfather of country music and godfather to country ruffians. --Peter Hilgendorf

Anthony DeCurtis ROLLING STONE
Rating: **** "Poole's jazz-oriented flair for swinging rhythms shaped a style that blazed a trail to the future."

TORONTO STAR
"An impressive, important and revelatory audio experience…"

Customer Reviews

Best box set of 2005 for the old-time fan
I had heard about this set several months before it was released and I expected the typical major label treatment for the very important, but largely ignored, Charlie Poole. This box set has completely reversed my expectations. Not only was the artist well-represented in the set, but the design, the notes, and especially the remastering were topnotch! Previous collections from Sony/Legacy left me cold, particularly the dull, overcompensated and heavyhanded remastering (like the Bluegrass box that came out earlier). Not so with this collection! Most of the material on this set sounds far better than I have ever heard and many of the tracks sound like Charlie, Posey, and Roy are in the room with you. I did check the notes and it was no surprise that this is due, probably in large part, to the efforts of Chris King who has done remastering for County, Old Hat, Bear Family and others. In addition, the notes & selections of the producer, Hank Sapoznik, are really exceptional. He shows a rare interest and insight into both the music of Charlie Poole (and old-time music) and also the musicians from which Poole learned. Add to this the fact that the set itself is extremely well-designed and attractive in a nostalgic sense (it resembles an old cigar box)with cover art by R. Crumb and period-style CD sleeves. This is really one well thought out project and I'm glad I pre-ordered it. I highly recommend this to fans of old-time, bluegrass, and roots music.

Give Charlie Poole's music another shot in the arm
Comprised of three generous CDs with a total 72 tracks, this box set compiles music of Charlie Poole. In his book "Classic Country," Charles K. Wolfe relates an anecdote about a group of musicians pulling up to country store in Virginia in the late 1920s. Examining the watermelons, a jug-eared man asked the shopkeeper, "How much are those cucumbers? I'm down from North Carolina, and we have cucumbers bigger than these things." After introducing himself, Charlie Poole introduced himself, grabbed his banjo, and played a few tunes. The shopkeeper went into the back and returned with a half-gallon of prime moonshine. Stories are still told about Charlie today, and his songs are still sung today. Born in a textile mill town in 1892, the rough, unsettled and temperamental hard-living man was a skilled banjo picker, songwriter, and arranger of the old folk songs. Some of his songs are "Take a Drink on Me," "Hungry Hash House," and "Husband and Wife were Angry One Night." Liking a good fight, in "Coon from Tennessee," he sings about wanting to run a cemetery of his own.

Poole recorded 84 songs from 1925-31 for such companies as Columbia, Paramount and Brunswick. Joining him for his earliest New York sessions were fiddler Posey Rorer and guitarist Norman Woodlieff. "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down" would become a bluegrass standard. I don't see his other hit, "Can I Sleep in your Barn Tonight, Mister?" included in this compilation. After selling over 100,000 copies of the first disc (about five times the normal sales for a 1925 hit), the band released "The Man That Rode the Mule Around Town" and "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee." Both selections are included on this CD set. Fingerstyle guitarist Roy Harvey replaced Woodlieff, and various hits followed.
Included in this collection are White House Blues, There'll Come a Time, Leavin' Home, Budded Rose, and Hungry Hash House. The Depression hurt record sales, but his legacy remained with songs like "Old and Only in the Way," "If the River was Whiskey," "It's Movin' Day," and "He Rambled" (a New Orleans funeral song).

True to his band's name, North Carolina Ramblers, Charlie Poole would sometimes disappear for weeks. Columbia Records wanted him to stick to older musical styles, but Charlie wanted to explore new ones. He formed The Highlanders with piano and twin fiddles. In this box set, "Lynchburg Town" and "Flop Eared Mule" are two selections from this band. "A Trip to New York" is attributed to The Allegheny Highlanders, a name used when they recorded for Brunswick. Poole's drinking led to a heart attack and his ultimate demise in 1931 at age 39.

Nearly thirty tracks on these CDs feature some other old-timey musicians from Poole's time. Some of the singers and groups he learned from are sampled from old 78s and cylinder recordings. Such artists featured are Floyd County Ramblers, Arthur Colins, Dock Walsh, Uncle Dave Macon, Cal Stewart,Blue Ridge Highballers, Branch & Coleman, Fred Van Eps, Red Fox Chasers, Peerless Quartet, Gid Tanner, Eddie Morton and many others. Transferred by sound engineer Christopher King, these digital transfers have an amazingly high fidelity. "You Ain't Talkin' To Me" was produced by Henry Sapoznik, an old-time (and klezmer) musician himself. He also wrote the informative 6,000-word liner notes that accompany the package.

About 1960 following the folk revival, there was a revival of Charlie Poole's old-timey sound. This 3-CD set will give his music another shot in the arm and ensure he and the North Carolina Ramblers aren't forgotten. The release precedes the annual "Charlie Poole Festival" in May in his hometown of Eden, North Carolina. There is also a documentary film about Poole in the works. (Joe Ross, staff writer, Bluegrass Now)

Essential for anyone into Old Time Music
This is the best collection of Charlie Poole to have. This was the product of a lot of serious research This collection was put together by a serious old time musician and historian, accompanied by extensive research into Poole's life.

Hank Sopoznick who put this together worked together with Kenny Rorrer and other descendants of the North Carolina Ramblers not only to issue this collection, but to organize a serious academic conference on Poole at UNC, to organize the republication of Rorrers book on Poole, and even to see that
Gibson would come out with a Charlie Poole memorial banjo. This collection has a lot more meaning than a bunch of the pirated collections issued with no concern for the heritage of this music.

Here, we not only have Poole's key recordings but also recordings of musicians who influenced him as well as of musicians who followed Poole's lead.

Poole's music was unique in that it was highly arranged, and showed strong influneces of ragtime and early jazz swing. While he did many traditional songs, and played square dance music in local shows, he included many songs out of the pop music of his times. He also had a unique sense of humor and fun in his times.

Poole was quite popular with the original old time music players of the late 1950s and early 1960s led by the New Lost City Ramblers who did a number of Poole songs. If you are like me, and got used to the sound of the NC Ramblers from the New Lost City Ramblers, you will find hearing the same songs by Poole much better, more swinging, and more fun.

The banjo playing here is unique and interesting. Poole plays a ragtimey finger picking style which anticipates bluegrass in its syncopation and in Poole's use of barred chords. Of course, Poole's style of banjo owed much to classic banjo, which Pool also played, whereas Bluegrass banjo played by Snuffy Jenkins and Earl Scruggs really came from North Carolina finger picking styles that descend from clawhammer.

Yet, Poole's idea of a tight band with the guitar playing runs, the banjo chording with runs, and the fiddle playing a semijazzy lead, contributes much more to the way Bluegrass bands would function. Both Poole's music and Bluegrass had in comon, a desire to take string band music to places offered by Black-influenced popular music (ragtime and classic Jazz in Poole's time, Swing in Monroe and Scruggs's time)/

Sadly, Poole's popularity among contemporary fans of old time music faded as the music became more focused on playing dance music, on fiddle and banjo tunes, and less on songs and singing. Let's hope these recordings will help bring the fun of Charlie Poole to more ears.