Cisco Houston Web Site

LPs

The Cisco Special

Vanguard: VRS 9057

1960

Vanguard Recording Society LP (VRS 9057)

The Cisco Special! The Cisco Special!

Track Listing:

Side 1
  1. Badman Ballad
  2. Hard Traveling
  3. Nine Hundred Miles
  4. Way Out There
  5. Old Smoky
  6. This Train
  7. Talking Dust Bowl
  8. This Land
Side 2 The Cisco Special!
  1. Old Dan Tucker
  2. Colorado Trail
  3. Old Blue
  4. Chilly Winds
  5. Dark as a Dungeon
  6. I Don't Mind Marrying
  7. Big Rock Candy Mountain

Review

Mark Eastman

After hearing Cisco's Best of the Vanguard Years CD, this is a lot better than I thought. It seems they left off the best songs from this LP. He does a nice version of Talking Dust Bowl on it, nothing but Cisco and his geetar. The most pleasant surprise, a wonderful rendering of On Top of Old Smoky (called simply Old Smoky on the LP). Just Cisco and a very gentle, melodic acoustic guitar. Closing out Side 1 is This Land, again, it sounds a lot better than on the CD. I don't think it's the same recording, but I'd need to hear them side by side. The LP version does have the chorus toward the end of the song. Maybe it's just that it's much better in original analog form. But this is an album I'm happy to say I have immensely underrated based on its sampling on the Vanguard "Best Of." Might be Cisco's most mainstream album and definitely his most produced but also his most varied.

See the notes from the LP Here.

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