It’s all change on the recording front from anything you have read here before or know from Eddie’s recording history. Mind To Ramble is still available on CD only. Hopefully it will be joined in 2004 by a new CD whose title will be Pickin’ Boys, and much of the content is already known and part of Eddie’s current repertoire. The album cover photo has already been shot as well! He’ll just have to record it now.
But last year after a very long time of having all the original vinyl albums available on cassette tape, they were all withdrawn along with the video album, Live At The Albert Hole. We know there were some tracks on the video that were never audio album tracks and might never be in the future either, but numbers of sales of videos, and we were warned about this before we ever did them, could not justify keeping them hanging around waiting. People told us years ago that they liked the cassettes because they could play them on the way home from a gig even, in the car! But it seems that to sit down with a video recording was something for a minority interest for people wanting to see how Eddie plays the stuff. If they wanted to just listen then an audio recording was better. And because more people were getting CD players both in their cars and at home then this is the way we’ve gone.
From the original four vinyl albums we have made two very long CDs. Breakfast in Delhi? (don’t ask! You’ll have to read the sleeve notes), is a compilation of most of the self-penned material from the four albums, as well as Judy’s Waltz and Chinon In The Rain, two pretty instrumentals composed by Eddie. The Blues Ain’t Nothin’ is a compilation of the ragtime, blues and hillbilly tracks from those albums. Almost all of the previous material is here with a few exceptions of songs already re-recorded that are on Mind To Ramble or that have not been in Eddie’s repertoire for a long, long time. The problem was that some cuts had to be made because the total album timings were longer than the total available space on two CDs at about 74 minutes maximum each. We stretched it close to that is it is! And so we think they are pretty good value at least and are wholly representative of Eddie Walker’s recording career to date. As with Mind To Ramble they retail at gigs at £12 each or by mail order direct from Ragged Records, 33 The Grove, Brookfield, Middlesbrough. TS5 8DT, inc. P&P they are £13.99.
Here are the track listings just as they appear on the back tray of the jewel case:
A collection of old blues, rags and hillbilly songs, from the
North East Delta, sung and played on guitar by Eddie Walker!
RICHLAND WOMEN BLUES Mississippi John Hurt
GLORY OF LOVE** Big Bill Broonzy
GEORGIA RAG Blind Willie McTell
STATESBORO BLUES Blind Willie McTell
PICKING MY WAY TO GEORGIA Norman Woodlief of the North Carolina Ramblers
MISSISSIPPI DELTA BLUES* Jimmie Rodgers
DELIA’S GONE Pete Seeger
BABY IT MUST BE LOVE~ Blind Willie McTell
MAYBE IT’S THE BLUES Georgia Tom Dorsey
NINE POUND HAMMER Merle Travis
LONESOME TEARS Buddy Holly
YOU DO ME ANY OLD WAY* Big Bill Broonzy
BUSY LINE Rose Murphy
NOBODIES DIRTY BUSINESS** Mississippi John Hurt
DEEP RIVER BLUES~ Doc Watson
MISS THE MISSISSIPPI AND YOU Jimmie Rodgers
KINDA WEARY BLUES** Eddie Walker and John James
RAG MAMA * Tom Rush
PIANO CODA is ‘SOLACE’ by Scott Joplin played by Judy Walker
* Bob Greenwood, dobro: **John James, lead acoustic guitar: ~ Nick Haig, fiddle and Frank Porter lead guitar and bass. Names after titles are not necessarily the writers but are the primary source for the songs.
Original recordings made at Pollen Studios, Bishop Wilton, between 1976 and 1985 and engineered by Dick Sefton. Album assembled and manufactured by Fairview Studio, Willerby, Hull, and produced by Eddie Walker. Artwork by Fairview.
Photography by John Slavin and drawing by Alex Houston.
Distributed by Ragged Records, 33 The Grove Brookfield, Middlesbrough. TS5 8DT. U.K. Website information www.eddiewalker.net
A collection of songs written by Eddie Walker
CASTLE CAFÉ
with Nick Haig, mandolin and Frank Porter bass
WHAT DOES IT TAKE
NORTH ROAD
THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT A BROKEN HEART
JUST ANOTHER JOHN
BOUNCER
CANDY
THE BAND PLAYED ON
ALL THE OLD COWBOYS
MY GRANDFATHER WAS A SEA CAPTAIN
CHINON IN THE RAIN
GREEN SO GREEN
AWAY FROM YOU
SONG FOR AN EVERYDAY MAN
LOVING YOU HAS BEEN SO EASY
JUDY’S WALTZ
All songs written by Eddie Walker, sung and accompanied by him on acoustic guitar and published by Simon Music Publishing. Original recordings made at Pollen Studios, Bishop Wilton, between 1976 and 1985 and engineered by Dick Sefton. Album assembled and manufactured by Fairview Studio, Willerby, Hull, and produced by Eddie Walker. Photography by John Slavin and drawing by Alex Houston. Artwork by Fairview.
Distributed by Ragged Records, 33 The Grove Brookfield, Middlesbrough. TS5 8DT. U.K. Website information www.eddiewalker.net
Don’t hesitate to email to Eddie and make enquiries and ask questions about the availability of the recordings, or to make trade enquiries too. Below and on a following page are the details of Eddie’s last album, Mind To Ramble.
Best to you all from Ragged Records
A value-for-money 17 Track CD using-up nearly all the available space with some classic Walker performances on ‘Raglan Road’, ‘Spoon River’ and his tribute to Doc Watson and The Carter Family, ‘Deepgap, Front porch’! The album is dedicated to the memory of Mississippi John Hurt, that most deceptively simple of the school of country blues players that were rediscovered in the early ‘60’s, but who inspired a whole generation to take-up the acoustic guitar and use it to entertain a new audience, just like it had been used more than 40 years before, during the first ‘blues-boom’ of the 1920’s. All the playing and singing is done by Eddie Walker with multi-layered arrangements of rhythm, picked and lead guitar to produce some fine folk music for the start of the 21st century.
Available on CD only.