1. Riro's House
2. Kerr's Negro Jig
3. Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man?
4. Boodle-De-Bum-Bum
5. Country Girl
6. Run Mountain
7. Leaving Eden
8. Read 'Em John
9. Mahalla
10. West End Blues
11. Po' Black Sheep
12. I Truly Understand That You Love Another Man
13. No Man's Mama
14. Briggs' Corn Shucking Jig / Camptown Hornpipe
15. Pretty Bird

    Don Flemons - snare drum, bass drum, bones, 4-string banjo, jug, quills, guitar
    Rhiannon Giddens - fiddle, 5-strings gourd banjo, 5 string banjo, 5-string cello banjo
    Hubby Jenkins - 5-string banjo, mandolin, guitar, bones
    Adam Matta - beatbox, tambourine
    Leyla McCalla – cello

North Carolina–based Carolina Chocolate Drops follow up their critically lauded label debut—2010’s Grammy Award–winning Genuine Negro Jig, which reached #1 on the Billboard Bluegrass Chart and #2 on the Billboard Heatseekers and Folk Charts—with Leaving Eden, due February 28 on Nonesuch Records, with vinyl to follow on March 20. The group returns with a record of original compositions, covers, and traditional songs produced by Buddy Miller (Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant, Patty Griffin, Solomon Burke).

With Leaving Eden the Carolina Chocolate Drops’ founding members Dom Flemons and Rhiannon Giddens expand their lineup to include multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins; during their live sets the members share singing duties and swap instruments regularly. (Cellist Leyla McCalla also joins the band on the record.)

The Drops have toured year-round internationally since the band’s inception, playing festivals such as Bonnaroo, SXSW, and Telluride and selling out concert halls and clubs. The band regularly receives critical accolades from publications such as the Seattle Times, which said “What a treat to bask in this Grammy-winning group’s top-notch musicality, easy good humor and understated but sparkling showmanship with just the right dollop of historical background.” And the Capital Times (Madison, WI) said, “The string band performed a joyful, high-energy show that had the packed, sweaty theater moving and cheering for the entire time. The band’s sound is rooted in, and very reverent to, the traditional African-American string band sound of generations ago. But the attitude is anything but old-timey, as the band brought in hip-hop and soul elements, a no-holds-barred energy, and just a sense of playfulness to the songs.” --- nonesuch.com

download:

uploaded yandex 4shared mega solidfiles zalivalka cloudmailru filecloudio oboom

back

1 	Another Man Done Gone 	2:13
2 	Wayward Gal 	3:33
3 	Don't Get Trouble In Your Mind 	2:59
4 	Black Eye Blues 	3:20
5 	Georgie Buck 	2:49
6 	Earl King 	3:39
7 	Jack O'Diamonds 	2:47
8 	Short Life Of Trouble 	3:04
9 	Po' Lazarus 	3:21
10 	Rickett's Hornpipe 	2:49
11 	Cornbread And Butter Beans 	3:29
12 	Bye-Bye Policeman 	2:18
13 	Real Old Mountain Dew 	3:22
14 	Sittin' On Top Of The World 	3:28
15 	Banjo Dreams / Jalidong 	5:14
16 	Gambia 	1:20

Dom Flemons - 4-String Banjo, Clappers, Drums (Snare), Jug, Percussion, Vocals
Rhiannon Giddens - 5-string Banjo, Fiddle, Quotation Author, Vocals
Lalenja Harrington - Vocals
Justin Robinson - 5-string Banjo, Body Percussion, Clappers, Fiddle, Quotation Author, Vocals
Sule Greg Wilson - 5-string Banjo, Brushes, Cymbals, Frame Drum, Quotation Author, Vocals

Heritage isn't exactly a proper album; it's more of a compilation of various songs, both in studio and live from concerts, from the well from which the Carolina Chocolate Drops dip to showcase their love for and homage to early American roots music. They are well-educated across the board on styles of music long forgotten by many, and so, in that right, there's a certain charm to the listening experience, almost as if the music is spinning on a Victorola. That knowledge carries over into the liner notes, where group member Dom Flemons gives a brief description of the history of each song on the disc. It's a nice touch that allows the listening audience to get further acquainted with the history of these songs, given that many of them are at least 75 years old. Musically, the styles run the gamut, including an a cappella Rhiannon Giddens in "Po' Lazarus" that sounds like a Baptist revival in its presentation before you realize it's the dirge of an escaped convict. Originally made popular by Vera Hall, who was given a reintroduction to pop culture in 1999 with Moby's "Trouble so Hard," Giddens' operatically trained voice is up to the task with her quivering vibrato.

Elsewhere, "Don't Get Trouble in Your Mind" is one of the most fun songs in the Carolina Chocolate Drops' canon. This version is from a festival in St. Louis circa 2006 and translates live as well as it does in the studio version on a later release (Genuine Negro Jig) in their catalog. "Jack Of Diamonds," with its knee-slap percussion, and "Short Life of Trouble" are two waltzes that bridge one side of the album to the other. Given their expertise on early American music, it's fitting that the embedded bonus video interview is filmed in what looks to be a library. They're true students of the game, and sew another patch into the woven tapestry of music. Heritage delves into the cultures of bluegrass and African American string bands with results that mostly that this type of music is still alive due because of its emphasis on storytelling and keen musicianship. The Carolina Chocolate Drops have these in spades, and despite the fact that nearly all the material is not original, they breathe life into the recordings, proving they're a band to be reckoned with in roots music. ---Eric Luecking, Rovi

There's nothing new in American musicians getting together with banjos and fiddles to revive the string-band songs or blues of the 1920s and 30s - but they almost always tend to be white folk revivalists. But Carolina Chocolate Drops are different: they are a young black trio who have studied the history of the old string bands, black and white alike, and are determined to keep the tradition going. Their playing and singing show that this is a band worth checking out. Many of their songs are standards, from the prison lament Another Man Done Gone to the Mississippi Sheiks' good-time favourite from the 30s, Sitting on Top of the World, and even the Irish-Appalachian fiddle workout, Real Old Mountain Dew. They throw in just one west African song, to show their range. The result is a cheerfully enthusiastic set, dressed up with some fine unaccompanied singing. There is excellent banjo and fiddle work from Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson, who sound equally good when they swap instruments. --- Robin Denselow, theguardian.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

uploaded yandex 4shared mega solidfiles zalivalka cloudmailru filecloudio oboom uplea

back

1.Peace Behind The Bridge 	2:34
2.Trouble In Your Mind 	2:56
3.Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine 	3:00
4.Hit 'Em Up Style 	3:57
5.Cornbread And Butterbeans 	3:10
6.Snowden's Jig (Genuine Negro Jig) 	3:52
7.Why Don't You Do Right? 	3:37
8.Cindy Gal 	2:28
9.Kissin' And Cussin' 	3:21
10.Sandy Boys 	2:25
11.Reynadine 	2:37
12.Trampled Rose 	4:37

Dom Flemons - 	4-String Banjo, Drums (Bass), Foot Percussion, Guitar, Jug, Throat Singing, Vocals
Rhiannon Giddens - 5-string Banjo, Fiddle, Kazoo, Vocals
Justin Robinson - Autoharp, Beat Box, Fiddle, Foot Percussion, Handclapping, Vocals
Sule Greg Wilson - Frame Drum, Percussion, Tambourine

The problem with flirting with old music styles in the digital speedway of the 21st century is the curse of revivalism, a tendency to reduce contemporary stresses and pressures to a perceived better time in the safe and distant past when things were simpler, clearer, and, well, more pure. But of course it’s always now -- it’s never then or when -- and musical revivalism can suffer from a kind of strictly enforced and ultimately empty artifice. A facsimile is still a facsimile -- it can never, by definition, be the thing itself. This is the dilemma for the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a contemporary string band trio who, under the watchful eye of mentor Joe Thompson, re-create the look, feel, and sound of a 19th century black North Carolina fiddle and banjo band. Oh, and they do it well, with passion and integrity. But the problem is that it’s not that hard to find the original recordings of the old black string bands, so why re-create them? There’s the crack in the ice of music revivals. The original stuff -- this is the 21st century, after all, and the whole history of recorded music is readily available -- is still out there. Genuine Negro Jig doesn’t rise above this conundrum, but with Joe Henry’s clear, open-spaced and sparse production, it has a wonderful warmth and immediacy. The classic “Trouble in Your Mind,” even with the flashback approach and instrumentation, sounds relevant to today’s troubles. The gentle street ragtime of “Your Baby Ain’t Sweet Like Mine” would sound just fine in any era, as would the delightful romp of “Cindy Gal,” or the easy, natural blues of “Why Don’t You Do Right?” Genuine Negro Jig is perfectly recorded, balanced between the best sound this century can deliver and the rustic, throwback feel of an old-time string band in action at a picnic, dance or rent party in the '30s. That’s the accomplishment here. The next step, if the Carolina Chocolate Drops are willing to go there, is to stretch things from being a great facsimile to being a natural extension of an ongoing tradition. That’s when revival changes into evolution. ---Steve Leggett, Rovi

download (mp3 @256):

uploaded yandex 4shared mega solidfiles zalivalka cloudmailru filecloudio oboom uplea

back

1. Starry Crown - 2:57
2. Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind - 2:47
3. Rickett's Hornpipe - 2:34
4. Ol' Corn Likker - 4:10
5. Little Sadie - 3:36
6. Little Margaret - 2:06
7. Dixie - 1:41
8. Black Annie - 3:15
9. Tom Dula - 3:29
10. Georgie Buck - 3:01
11. Old Cat Died - 2:29
12. Another Man Done Gone - 2:15
13. Black-Eyed Daisy - 3:58
14. Short Life of Trouble - 2:47
15. Sally Ann - 3:19
16. Sourwood Mountain - 3:21

Rhiannon Giddens - fiddle, banjo
Dom Flemons- guitar, jug, harmonica, percussion, banjo
Justin Robinson – fiddle
+
Sule Greg Wilson – percussion

To say that Carolina Chocolate Drops are an anomaly in the 21st century would be a huge understatement. Here are three twenty-something African-Americans playing a brand of acoustic, banjo- and fiddle-driven string band music that is nearly extinct today, and in fact peaked in the pre-WWII era. Although a number of Southern-bred black string bands gained popularity during the first half of the 20th century -- this band's name pays tribute to one of them, the Tennessee Chocolate Drops -- the style is generally associated with Caucasian musicians from the Appalachians, not with African-Americans from the North Carolina Piedmont style, so the emergence of a new group reactivating the tradition is truly a phenomenon. So is the music. This is no novelty; the Carolina Chocolate Drops are serious scholars of this sound and are adept at re-creating it. Two of the members, Rhiannon Giddens (fiddle, banjo) and Justin Robinson (fiddle), are from the Carolinas, and the third, Dom Flemons (guitar, jug, harmonica, percussion, banjo), is an Arizona native. All had established solo careers when they met in 2005 at a North Carolina event called the Black Banjo Gathering. Soon thereafter, coached by octogenarian fiddler Joe Thompson and inspired by Piedmont antecedents such as Dink Roberts and Elizabeth Cotten, they began developing their own take on the traditional black string band sound, not so much updating it as giving it new life. The 14 uncredited (read: traditional) songs on the record touch on ancient blues and country, but to align what the CCD do with either of those branches would be an error. Songs like "Ol' Corn Likker" and "Black-Eyed Daisy" evoke a time and place far removed not only from the present but from contemporary notions of what those genres signify. When the trio plays "Dixie," you're listening not to a patriotic rebel anthem but a yearning, mournful moan. And the purity of Giddens' solo a cappella vocal on "Little Margaret" belongs to an era when music was not something to be sold but something from the soul. The Carolina Chocolate Drops have stated that they are on a mission to keep this tradition alive, and that they do. But they do so not from the staid position of lecturers on ethnomusicology or as strident sociopolitical posturers but as musicians truly in love with this disappearing slice of Americana, more specifically a little known slice of black Americana. That they do it with zeal as well as respect, and that they have the talent to back up their knowledge, is why it works on its own merits, not merely as a historical study. --- Jeff Tamarkin, Rovi

download: uploaded yandex 4shared mediafire solidfiles mega zalivalka filecloudio nornar anonfiles oboom ziddu

back