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