Irish Music Critic Hitchner on Cold Mountain Soundtrack
Emily Fine
Enthusiasts and performers of American old-time music, which partly stems
from the Irish-Scottish immigrant music tradition of rural Appalachia, are
hoping the soundtrack of the movie "Cold Mountain" will do for the genre
what the multi-platinum, Grammy-winning soundtrack of the movie "O Brother,
Where Art Thou?" did for bluegrass.
The producer is the same, T-Bone Burnett, and so are some of the musicians:
Alison Krauss, Tim O'Brien, Norman Blake, Cheryl White, Mike Compton, and
Stuart Duncan. (Irish actor Brendan Gleeson contributes a harmony vocal to
one song, "Christmas Time Will Soon Be Over," and, in the film, does his own
fiddling, just as he did on Karan Casey's "Distant Shore" album last year.)
But "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" also had music performed by the likes of
Ralph Stanley, the Cox Family, John Hartford, Fairfield Four, James Carter,
and Dan Tyminski, who dubbed George Clooney's singing. (Funniest comment I
heard about the "O Brother" movie came from Dan Tyminski's wife: "That's
been my dream -- Dan's voice in George Clooney's body.") The music of "Cold
Mountain," on the other hand, features some performers not drawn from or
truly in sync with the genre they've been asked to represent.
The White Stripes' Jack White, who does a fair job of sepia-simulated
singing, pops up on five of the soundtrack's dozen cuts. Why so many for the
garage-rock leader? Sting adds an out-of-place, pop-jazz harmony to a song
he wrote, "You Will Be My Ain True Love," that Alison Krauss sings lead on.
Four other cuts on the soundtrack are original music composed by Gabriel
Yared. They have a soft-focus, touchy-feely quality that runs counter to the
hardscrabble detail depicted on screen and described in Charles Frazier's
1997 novel.
My question to Burnett, Yared, and film director Anthony Minghella is: Were
such old-time music masters as Ralph Blizard, Bruce Molsky, Beverly Smith,
Ginny Hawker, Sheila Kay Adams, Kirk Sutphin, Gordy Hinners, and Brad
Leftwich all unavailable at the same time?
The involvement of Norman Blake, Dirk Powell, and New Lost City Ramblers'
founding member John Cohen is certainly welcome, as is that of Tim O'Brien.
His love of Frazier's novel motivated O'Brien to record "Songs from the
Mountain" (Howdy Skies, 1998), a virtual early audition for the movie
soundtrack. Dirk Powell and old-time, clawhammer-style banjoist John
Herrmann are also on that album, just reissued by Sugar Hill to slipstream
some of the "Cold Mountain" publicity.
What also makes me second-guess the potential for "Cold Mountain" soundtrack
success is that many music critics are largely ignoring the other musical
participants to focus on the samples of shape-note singing in the movie and
on the soundtrack. And that's understandable. The two best tracks are those
by the 63 shape-note singers recorded inside the small, clapboard Liberty
Baptist Church on Sand Mountain in Henagar, Ala.
This centuries-old a cappella form of singing relies on four "shape
notes" -- fa, so, la, mi -- marked by a triangle, circle, square, and
diamond in hymnals to indicate pitch for singers grouped by basses, tenors,
altos, and trebles. Tim Eriksen, a musician who consulted on the "Cold
Mountain" soundtrack and sings on it, calls shape-note singing "incredibly
vibrant," and that it is.
But my hunch is that American old-time music will get no more than a brief
commercial bump from this soundtrack. And that's a pity because old-time
music is long overdue for wider rediscovery by the CD-buying public.
http://www.irishecho.com/newspaper/story.cfm?id=14045
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LG
Joel Shimberg
>My question to Burnett, Yared, and film director Anthony Minghella is: Were
>such old-time music masters as Ralph Blizard, Bruce Molsky, Beverly Smith,
>Ginny Hawker, Sheila Kay Adams, Kirk Sutphin, Gordy Hinners, and Brad
>Leftwich all unavailable at the same time?
Here's a fine example of the difficulties of 'authenticity'. Frank,
Ralph Blizard is a wonderful fiddler, and a link to the tradition
who's very, very important. However, I do think that he would be
incapable of playing music that would be appropriate for the period of
the movie. I think that Ralph is very much an original, and his music
grows out of the blend of jazz, blues, and fiddle music that produced
Arthur Smith and bluegrass. He certainly would look perfect there, if
you could get that foam rubber off'n his fiddle.
Joel
Library Guy
Of courese what you say is right on the money, Joel, and I agree 100%.
But you get the idea of what Earl Hitchner is saying, and I think he's
right.
FD