Hamper McBee - The Good Old-Fashioned Way

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4...according to our Phil on Thu 24 Jun, 2010.

It's an informative record sleeve. You know immediately it's by Hamper Mcbee, you know he's from Monteagle, Tennessee and you know he knows how to handle a woman after a few drinks. He looks like he means business. Also worthy of note is the killer moustache on board Hamper's face... it's nothing but genius. The album was recorded in 1977 and it's been recently compiled by Sol Karine (Harmony's son). Here you get 29 songs/ spoken word segments of pure American folk music which is as old as the hills. It's very much like the Nimrod Workman album which came out a while back (which was totally awesome and I totally recommend it!) If you're into American folklore and history and early roots music which is sung from the heart then this is for you. It's true music with not an air of pretension... Beautiful stuff!

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‘The Good Old-Fashioned Way’ is the first Hamper McBee release in over thirty years, and his first-ever CD release.

•   “I just like them old songs better.”
•   The late Hamper McBee was a moonshiner, carnival barker, and ballad singer of legendary proportions. First “discovered” and recorded by folklorist and performer Guy Carawan in 1964, Hamper’s prodigious talent and personality won him admirers not only in his native Smoky Mountains but throughout the folk music world, where his wholly unique approach to old-time ballads and lyric songs struck like revelations. He drew from both the oral tradition and from records — he especially loved Bradley Kincaid, Vernon Dalhart, and, surprisingly, Burl Ives — to create a repertoire entirely his own, and that he sung in a warm, powerful voice seasoned by prodigious quantities of cigarettes, booze, and joie de vivre.
•   Recorded by renowned country music scholar Charles K. Wolfe and filmmaker Sol Korine at Hamper’s home in Monteagle, Tennessee, in 1977, ‘The Good Old-Fashioned Way’ compiles the best of McBee’s traditional ballads, affecting original compositions, and outlandish, side- splitting stories of life on the carnival circuit, at the moonshine still, in the back of Sheriff Bill Malone’s patrol car, and as Hamper McBee. You’ve never met anyone like him before. You’ll be glad you did.
• This expansion features Charles K. Wolfe’s original liner notes.
• ‘The Good Old-Fashioned Way’ contains twelve previously unreleased tracks, including a number of especially hilarious and vulgar items unsuitable for radio play — title track among them.
•   ‘The Good Old-Fashioned Way’ reissue is co-produced by Sol Korine’s filmmaker son, Harmony Korine, and Nathan Salsburg of Twos & Fews.

Tracklisting:

Black Jack Davy * Wreck Of The Number 9 * Jasper Jail * Talk On Bill Malone * Billy Richardson’s Last Ride * Streets Of Laredo * Talk On Old-time Songs * Young Roger The Miller * Talk On Carnival Barking * Cabbage Head (Three Nights Drunk) * Three Nights Drunk (The “Limey Version”) * John Hardy * Talk On Hot Rod Hogan * Sally Make Water * Jack Of Diamonds * Shady Grove * Talk On Carnival & Childhood Recollections * The Little Shirt My Mama Made For Me * Talk On Drinking Still Mash * 100 Gallons * Wauhatchie Yards * Talk On Racing The Southern * Knoxville Girl * The Devil And The Farmer’s Wife * Talk On Religion & Drinking On Sunday * Methodist Pie * The Good Old-fashioned Way * Wearisome Farmer * Dark As A Dungeon

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