Patrick Sky

Artist: Patrick Sky
Label: Vanguard Records
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio Cassette

UPC: 015707917940
EAN: 0015707917940
ASIN: B000000EID

Release Date: 1995-08-01

Related Categories:

General

| Contemporary Folk | Folk | Styles | Music

General

| Folk | Styles | Music

Traditional Folk

| Folk | Styles | Music

Native American

| North America | International | Styles | Music

General

| Pop | Styles | Music

Singer-Songwriters

| Pop | Styles | Music

Singer-Songwriters

| Contemporary Folk | Folk | Styles | Music

Tracks:

Many a Mile
Hangin' Round
Love Will Endure
Reuben
Rattlesnake Mountain
Everytime
Come With Me Love
Nectar of God
Separation Blues
Ballad of Ira Hayes
Words Without Music
Wreck of the Old '97

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Customer Reviews:

Not the Perfect Folk Album.......2006-12-04

I have to disagree with the reviewer who calls this the best folk album ever. (I was 27 when it was released.) I don't know what my pick would be but it would probably be Woody Guthrie or Cisco Houston. Nonetheless, this is a fine album and worth your money, better than his second, but not as good in my opinion as the two he made after he left Vanguard, which I wish someone would reissue as CDs. Calling them folk music is a bit of a stretch. The last 2 albums he made of which I am aware, one on Adelphi and the other a collection of other writers and traditional but no Sky originals, are mediocre. But the first four albums should be on CD now, and you should buy all of them. I know I would.

Great album but there is more..............2006-10-24

This is great stuff, but there is another (I think) Patrick Sky track that I cannot find which among the most amusing folky tunes I have ever heard. It was titled either "The Wreck of the Titanic" or "The Ballad of Jack Johnson", a talking blues format. Powerful, ironic, amusing. Anybody know where I can find it? I thought it was on this album.

The Perfect Folk Album .......2005-12-29

Way back when I was a little bitty boy (alright, I was 25) I decided it was time I started to seriously get into folk music, and I asked a friend who knew all about it where I should start. He didn't hesitate - Patrick Sky, he told me, and he described the self-titled 1964 Vanguard album as "the perfect folk album". Well, that was in 1979. It's now 2005, and I have acquired and listened to a lot of folk albums in the last quarter century, and I'm here to tell you that my friend was 100% spot on - Patrick Sky is still "the perfect folk album".

The album starts with his self-penned rambling song, Many A Mile, which was later recorded by Buffy Sainte Marie, among others. There is something about this song that kinda makes you want to start a long journey. "I damn near walked this world around, another city, another town; the only home I ever knowed was a suitcase and the open road. And it's many a mile I've spent on this road, it's many a mile I've gone..." The delivery is tender, almost as though he were caressing the words; the melody wistful and plaintive.

For the second track, he immediately switches gears, and we get "Hangin' `Round" a light hearted comical "break-up" song, whose humor is both light and graceful at the same time. Love Will Endure is as gentle and tender as Hangin' Round is playful. "Reuben" is the obligatory harmonica tune, and like every other tune here shows his guitar skills and vocal prowess in the best possible light. Rattlesnake Mountain, a tongue-twisting fun-filled epic comic narrative about the fate of two star-crossed lovers will have you playing it again and again just to catch all the words. I like songs like that, and have actually typed the words out so that when friends ask "What did he just say" when this album is playing in the background, I can actually show them.

"Everytime" is the perfect love song, hauntingly beautiful and stunningly simple. Come With Me Love is the perfect song to follow Everytime.

Nectar of God is so powerful that it defies description, and is probably the high point of the album. The Ballad of Ira Hayes, which was also covered by Johnny Cash (but less effectively) is easily the second best track on the album, maybe first if you're not bowled over by Nectar of God.

Words Without Music is music without words, and Wreck of the Old '97 is, I suppose, a nod to those who insist that a folk album must contain some traditional folk songs. If that's true, it's some nod, for it's one of the best recordings of it I've ever heard (including the celebrated version by Ramblin' Jack Elliott).

If you are just discovering folk music, Patrick Sky is indeed a good place to start. If you are a folk aficionado and somehow have not come across his first album until now, trust me, he ranks right up there with the best of them.

I'm glad it's still available.......2005-07-13

I know that practically every item reviewed on Amazon has 4 or 5 stars, because people usually review things that they like, but this is really wonderful music. I remember particularly the guitar accompaniment to "Love Will Endure," with its dissonant f-sharp in the bass against a C-major chord. This album is one of my all-time favorites.

an enduring classic.......2001-09-21

Though little remembered today, long retired from the music business, Patrick Sky recorded two classic Vanguard albums which are among the most artistically vital recordings of the 1960s folk revival. In this, the first of them (the second, A Harvest of Gentle Clang, has yet to be reissued), he proved himself a masterly interpreter of traditional material and a talented composer of original songs. In the former category is his brittle reading of "Reuben," a post-Civil War song of murky origins and many variants, its lyrics conjuring up cryptic images of loss, distance, and violence, leaving it to the uneasy listener to fill in the blanks. Sky's own composition "Nectar of God" is an overlooked masterpiece, as good as any Dylan song of the period, as emotionally compelling as the best of Townes Van Zandt and John Prine. With his dry, laconic vocal style, accompanied on all but two cuts by solo acoustic guitar (with occasional harmonica), he proves that great music does not depend on walls of sound and state-of-the-art studio technology. To me this record sounds as powerful now as it did when, thousands of albums heard since, I first put it on my record player more than three decades ago and was touched by its understated beauty.

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