John Hartford - Hamilton Ironworks

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Music reviews of Hamilton Ironworks

Music Review: Superb fiddle playing, and a little history too
Rating: 5 Stars

In this Hamilton Ironworks album, whenever a break from the sound of the fiddle is needed, his voice interjects anecdotes, chants, and fragments of thought that have the sound and rhythm of music. Over the course of the whole album you find out how he learnt about fiddling and string-band playing, and get to know the individuals and families that peopled his musical life - all those Goforths, Dillards, Pursingers and Woolivers. The tunes in a minor key, such as "Dusty Miller" and "Quail is a Pretty Bird", are perhaps my favorites on the album.

His is a kind of bottom-up playing, evolving out of what sounds he intuited as being right for a tune, rather than top-down, i.e. created to please as large a mass of people as possible. The period when he decided to write and perform music for the mass market must have been a time of conflict for him, as reflected in some of his songs of that time. The lure of fame and money must not have been strong enough to overcome the power of the instinctive path that he needed to follow in his music - releasing the sounds that intuition told him must be found and played, as exemplified in Hamilton Ironworks.

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