Folk Singer

About

<i>Folk Singer</i> is like a good mystery: What’s on the page might draw you in, but it’s what <i>isn’t</i> that keeps you going. Released in 1964, <i>Folk Singer</i> marked Muddy Waters’ first all-acoustic album—an experiment, in part, in trying to market him to a broader, whiter audience. While his early music released the energy that helped form rock ’n’ roll, <i>Folk Singer</i> was subtle and restrained, an exercise in negative space. You never sense him swinging for the fences or pouring it all out. If anything, the album’s most dramatic moments are its quietest ones (“My Captain,” “Long Distance,” “Country Boy”). And even when the music picks up—“Good Morning Little Schoolgirl”—the mood has a spectral quality more redolent of country blues than of Waters’ electric strut. He says he’s after the schoolgirl—but it sounds like he’s singing to the moon. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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