New Lost City Ramblers

File:NLCRA Tag.jpg

New Lost City Ramblers (a parody of the National Recovery Administration logo)

The New Lost City Ramblers is a contemporary old-time string band that formed in New York City in 1958 during the Folk Revival. The founding members of the Ramblers, or NLCR, are Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tom Paley. Tom Paley later left the group and was replaced by Tracy Schwarz.

The New Lost City Ramblers not only directly participated in the old-time music revival, but has continued to directly influence countless musicians who have followed. Indeed, except for The Kingston Trio, the NLCR may well be the longest-running popular music group still performing, albeit irregularly.

The Ramblers distinguished themselves by focusing on the traditional playing styles they heard on old 78rpm records of musicians recorded during the 1920s and 1930s, many of whom would later appear on the Anthology of American Folk Music. The NLCR refused to "sanitize" these southern sounds as did other folk groups of the time, such as the Weavers or Kingston Trio. Instead, the Ramblers have always strived for an authentic sound. However, the Ramblers did not merely copy the old recordings that inspired them. Rather, they would use the various old-time styles they encountered while at the same time not becoming slaves to imitation.
On "Songs From the Depression," they performed a variety of political contemporary popular songs from the New Deal days, all but one of them taken from commercially issued 78s, and that one is "Keep Moving," identified in the album notes only as "from Tony Schwartz' collection — singer unidentified" when actually it is by Agnes "Sis" Cunningham, the full title being "How Can You Keep On Moving (Unless You Migrate Too)." The omission later caused Ry Cooder, who listened to the Ramblers album, to record the song as Traditional on the first edition of his "Into the Purple Valley", an omission he gladly corrected when informed of it. Cooder also covered another song from the same NLCR album, which he may have heard on a poorly labeled cassette copy: "Taxes on the Farmer Feeds Us All" which the NLCR credit to Fiddling John Carson but which the Cooder notes still list as "traditional."

The New Lost City Ramblers' extensive recordings for the Folkways label, after the death of Moe Asch, became part of the Smithsonian Institution, which reissues Folkways titles on CD.

Discography

• The New Lost City Ramblers (1958)
• The New Lost City Ramblers Vol. II (1959)
• Songs From the Depression (1959): see [[1]]
• Old-Timey Songs For Children (1959)
• The New Lost City Ramblers Vol. III (1961)
• Tom Paley, John Cohen, Mike Seeger Sing Songs of The New Lost City Ramblers (1961)
• The New Lost City Ramblers (1961)
• Earth Is Earth Sung by The New Lost City Bang Boys (1961)
• The New Lost City Ramblers Vol. 4 (1962)
• American Moonshine & Prohibition (1962)
• The New Lost City Ramblers Vol. 5 (1963)
• Gone to the Country (1963)
• Radio Special # 1 (1963)
• String Band Instrumentals (1964)
• Old Timey Music (1964)
• Rural Delivery No. 1 (1965)
• Remembrance of Things to Come (1966)
• Modern Times (1968)
• The New Lost City Ramblers with Cousin Emmy (1968)
• On the Great Divide (1973)
• 20th Anniversary Concert (1978)
• 20 Years-Concert Performances (1978)
• Old Time Music (1994)
• The Early Years, 1958-1962 (1991)
• Outstanding In Their Field-Vol. II, 1963-1973 (1993)
• There Ain't No Way Out (1997)
• 40 Years of Concert Performances (2001)

External links

• Illustrated New Lost City Ramblers discography
• Illustrated Tom Paley discography
• Smithsonian Folkways Records information