The Mayor of MacDougal Street: Rarities 1957-69 (2005)

About this title: Dave Van Ronk's death in 2002 took away one of the key architects of the Great Folk Revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and while Van Ronk never made the kind of broad cultural impact that younger musicians like Bob Dylan or Joan Baez made at the time, his steady mentoring is everywhere apparent in the urban folk movement of the day. Known as a gruff-voiced singer of blues and folk songs, and as a skilled acoustic guitar player, Van Ronk was actually a jazz player at heart, and his fondness of the genre -- particularly ragtime -- informs his music in surprising and subtle ways. This ... read more

Tracks:

1. New Orleans Hop Scop Blues [Thomas]
2. On Top of Old Smoky [Traditional]
3. All My Trials [Traditional]
4. Buddy Bolden's Blues [Morton]
5. The Butcher Boy [Traditional]
6. Salty Dog [Jackson]
7. Two Trains Running [Waters]
8. Way Down in Lubyanka Prison [Berkeley]
9. Willie the Weeper [Traditional]
10. Shaving Cream [Bell]
11. The Cruel Ship's Captain [Traditional]
12. As You Make Your Bed [Brecht/Weill]
13. Bird on the Wire [Cohen]
14. Both Sides Now [Mitchell]
15. In Conditional Support of Beauty [VanRonk]
16. W.C. Fields Routine [Spoken] [Traditional]
17. Romping Through the Swamp [Stampfel]

Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is further described below.