Dave Van Ronk

Originally released in the late 1970s, this album was a follow-up to Sunday Street, an album on which Dave Van Ronk had abandoned any attempts to accommodate contemporary popular music and returned to an acoustic context and a repertoire of blues and jazz standards. He did much the same thing here, including material by Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin, as well as Furry Lewis and Brownie McGhee, fingerpicking with his usual care and singing in his usual comforting growl. "Did You Hear John Hurt?," "Pastures Of Plenty," and "Song To Woody" nodded to mentors Mississippi John Hurt and Woody Guthrie, and peers Tom Paxton and Bob Dylan. If the result was not quite the equal of Sunday Street, it was in the same league and continued Van Ronk's mature renaissance. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide