Bill Frisell: The Best of Bill Frisell: Vol. 1 - Folk Songs (2009)

John Kelman

Senior Editor since 2004

With the realization that there will always be more music coming at him than he can keep up with, John wonders why anyone would think that jazz is dead or dying.

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Published: February 28, 2009

Bill Frisell: The Best of Bill Frisell: Vol. 1 - Folk Songs

Despite decidedly left-of-center beginnings—on his own ECM discs Rambler (1985) and Lookout for Hope (1988), and in collaboration with artists including Jan Garbarek and John Zorn—guitarist Bill Frisell has always been a melodist at heart. Even at his most outré—his oblique yet stunningly constructed solo on "Next Love," from clarinetist Don Byron's minor classic, Tuskegee Experiment (Elektra/Nonesuch, 1992), an ideal example—there's always been an imbued lyricism.

Frisell's personal approach to Americana music—beginning in earnest with Nonesuch albums Nashville (1997), Gone, Just Like a Train (1998), and Good Dog, Happy Man (1999)—may have perturbed purists, but the same idiosyncrasies brought to experimental works like This Land (1994) and Quartet (1996) remain perennially counterbalanced by an appreciation for the beauty of a simple melody. No matter where the music goes, Frisell remains unmistakably—and curiously—appealing.

The Best of Bill Frisell: Vol. 1 - Folk Songs is, as the title suggests, largely folkloric. That doesn't mean, however, an absence of the skewed eccentricities that define his more overtly jazz material; they're just tempered down and, with influences ranging from elder blues statesmen like Robert Johnson to the overlooked and under-appreciated Johnny Smith, re-contextualized into a nexus point of beauty and ethereality. Nashville's "We're Not From Around Here" is a blues but, with the injection of a quirky, unequivocally Frisellian chord that makes the head cock the same way a dog's does when presented with something curious, it becomes something more. Frisell can take a simple theme and repeat it beyond what, for anyone else, would be ad nauseam; but his magic is an enduring ability to bring subtle new meaning with each iteration. Trance-inducing, it's proof of the power of an unaffected and occasionally even naïve melody.

There are no unreleased tracks or alternate takes, so those who already own Frisell's albums will have this material, culled from albums as early as 1990's Is That You? (the gorgeously layered acoustic "Tag"), middle period discs including 1993's Have a Little Faith (John Hiatt's title track, delivered with sublime sensitivity by Frisell's trio with bassist Kermit Driscoll and drummer Joey Baron) and Good Dog, Happy Man (the loop-driven "The Pioneers," with drummer Jim Keltner's behind-the-beat playing powering the tune's poignancy) through to recent discs like 2002's overlooked The Willies (atmospherics meet newgrass on the traditional "Sittin' On Top of the World") and ambitious Blues Dream (the tender, backbeat-driven "Poem for Eva," with Frisell's repeated descending major scale a thing of profound beauty). But Folk Songs' sequencing makes it stand on its own—who'd have thought that the buoyant "Verona," from Gone, Just Like a Train, would be such a perfect follow-up to "Tag"?

For those yet to become converts to Frisell's decidedly unorthodox yet pathologically respectful approach to American roots music, The Best of Bill Frisell: Vol. 1 - Folk Songs is a perfect entry point—not to mention an ideal warm-up for Vol. 2, which will most likely feature his more experimental, jazz-centric side.

Track Listing: I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry; Raccoon Cat; Sugar Baby; We're Not From Around Here; The Pioneers; Rag; Verona; Shenandoah; Ballroom; Have A Little Faith In Me; Mr Memory; Wildwood Flower; Slow Dance; Sittin' On Top Of The World; Poem For Eva.

Personnel: Bill Frisell: electric and acoustic guitars, loop (5); Danny Barnes: banjo (3, 14); Jerry Douglas: dobro (4, 11); Greg Leisz: dobro (13), pedal steel guitar (5, 15); Ry Cooder: electric and Ripley guitar (8); Wayne Horvitz: organ (5, 15); Viktor Krauss: bass (2, 4, 5, 7-9, 11, 15); Keith Lowe: bass (3, 14 ); Kermit Driscoll: bass (10); David Pitch: bass (13); Jim Keltner: drums (2, 5, 8, 9), percussion (7, 15); Joey Baron: drums (10); Kenny Wollesen: drums (13).

Record Label: Nonesuch Records
Style: Fringes of Jazz

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View more Bill Frisell photos | Upload Bill Frisell photos

Date	Venue	Tickets
Jun02	Jackson Theater At Sonoma Country Day School Santa Rosa, CA	buy
Jun02	Jackson Theater At Sonoma Country Day School Santa Rosa, CA	buy
Sep01	Detroit International Jazz Festival Detroit, MI

Bill Frisell performs "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" at the 2002 Montreal Jazz Festival, with Greg Liesz (pedal steel guitar), Billy Drewes (alto saxophone), Curtis Fowlkes (trombone), Ron Miles (trumpet), David Piltch (bass), Matt Chamberlain (drums):