Going Back To Brooklyn

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Just as this 1985 album's title reminds us that folk legend Dave Van Ronk was a New York City native rather than a rural ragamuffin, its contents underline the fact that despite his songbag full of blues and folk chestnuts, his work always had a contemporary component. Though he's known primarily as an interpreter, Van Ronk wrote a bunch of his own tunes over the years, and he cut new versions of some of them for this, his lone all-original album. The instrumental "Antelope Rag" shows he could contribute sophisticated compositions of his own to the ragtime guitar canon he frequently explored, and the a cappella "Last Call" is as convincing an Irish-sounding drinking song as any New Yorker ever wrote. But Van Ronk's renowned joie de vivre is the real star of this set, emerging most strongly in the underemployed-musicians lament "Losers," the almost-surreal imagery of the spooky blues "Head Inspector," and the rag "Garden State Stomp," which features lyrics comprised entirely of odd-sounding New Jersey town names.

via Apple Music