Add Date: February 23
Artist: Carolina Chocolate Drops
Album: Genuine Negro Jig
Label: Nonesuch
Genre: Country, bluegrass/old-time, blues
Comments: The title of the Carolina Chocolate Drops' Nonesuch debut is both misleading and perfectly appropriate. Misleading, as the songs on Genuine Negro Jig come from all over: from traditional country and bluegrass to Blu Cantrell to Tom Waits; appropriate, because this African-American trio is out to dispel the notion that this style of music is exclusive to one ethnicity and one geographical region of the South. As band member Rhiannon Giddens told NPR: "it seems that two things get left out of the history books. One, that there was string band music in the (North Carolina) Piedmont, period... [and that] black folk were such a huge part of that string tradition."
Giddens plays the five-string banjo on the record, but she steals the show by absolutely slaying Cantrell's 2001 smash "Hit 'Em Up Style," which appears here as a '40s-style swing jam. Over the rest of the record, the band fuses bluegrass and old-time, traditional blues, and classic country. Check out the traditionals "Trouble in Your Mind" and "Sandy Boys," get more of Giddens' splendid voice on "Why Don't You Do Right?," and don't miss Justin Robinson's original "Kissin' and Cussin'."
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