The
Cincinnati Pops Orchestra under
John Morris Russell has come up with a genuinely original set of
American Originals here, and if some parts of it work better than others, that should not diminish the scope of the accomplishment represented by the whole. The main innovation in this January 2015 live recording at Cincinnati's cavernous Music Hall (which yields just adequate sound here) is the presence of folk, bluegrass, and country musicians rather than the usual pop mega-stars who tend to deliver rather generic performances. The musicians here presumably share the orchestra's commitment to investigating the musical past, and the results, though a mixed bag, are unique. Songs of
Stephen Foster predominate in the program, and perhaps the centerpiece are the two famous ones sung by
Rosanne Cash, whose vocal resonances come very close to equaling those of her famous father. But the variety is equally appealing. The gravelly-voiced
Joe Henry, a cousin of
Madonna, seems to be one of the precious few performers who realizes that
Oh, Susanna is a serious song, and the underrated Cincinnati folk-rock duo
Over the Rhine, whose namesake is the location of the venerable Music Hall, offers an extraordinary
Foster rarity,
Why No One to Love? (track 6). The arrangers acquit themselves well in a few fantasy-like treatments. The treatments of banjo-flavored tunes by
Dom Flemons, an African-American specialist in old-time music, are especially arresting, for
Foster worked within, although he also subverted, the minstrel tradition that began the long process of the appropriation of black American music by whites. The rather generic vocals of folksinger
Aoife O'Donovan and the rhythmically constrained massed bluegrass musicians on several tunes are less effective. But this is a very fresh entry in the rather moribund patriotic pops genre. ~ James Manheim
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