Carolyn Hester

Carolyn Hester – Carolyn Hester 1959 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 31:41 minutes | 252 MB | Genre: Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

Carolyn Sue Hester (born January 28, 1937) is an American folk singer and songwriter. She was a figure in the early 1960s folk music revival.

Hester’s first album was produced by Norman Petty in 1957. She made her second album for Tradition Records, run by the Clancy Brothers, in 1960. She became known for “The House of the Rising Sun” and “She Moved Through the Fair”.

(more…)

Carolyn Hester – Scarlet Ribbons (1958/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 34:06 minutes | 261 MB | Genre: Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

Hester’s rare late-’50s debut album is a sedate, if quite prettily sung, traditional folk record. Even more so than Hester’s self-titled early-’60s album for Tradition, this has a reverent recital quality in the John Jacob Niles school that, while admirable in its purity, is also kind of sterile. (Niles is in fact credited with three of the adaptations here, including the famous “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.”) Whether or not Joan Baez was influenced by this specific record, Hester’s high voice and pristine execution certainly foreshadow the kind of recordings made by several high-voiced woman folksingers (Baez, Judy Collins, and others) in the early-’60s folk revival. There’s also a much fainter foreshadowing of folk-rock in the presence of Jerry Allison, drummer for Buddy Holly & the Crickets, who plays brushes on a cardboard box on “The Wreck of the Old Ninety-Seven.” Too, Holly producer Norman Petty nabs the co-credit for the adaptation of “Hush-A-Bye.”

(more…)

Carolyn Hester – Carolyn Hester (1962/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 40:35 minutes | 384 MB | Genre: Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

The cover of the first Caroline Hester Coalition record features a blonde, longhaired Hester, breasts barely contained by an embroidered vest, hugging three very nebbish fellows to her waist. Despite appearances, Hester was not an adult movie star and her Coalition didn’t play schmaltzy covers of ’60s hits. In fact, the album is not as campy as it looks, although it’s certainly of its time. Hester was actually a long-haul Greenwich folkie, best known nowadays for her brief marriage to Richard Farina and association with a young, unsigned Bob Dylan; the Coalition were her foray into psychedelia, featuring an all-male team of pros. The band survived for two albums ― a self-titled debut and Magazine ― both of which bear the marks of Hester’s folk revivalist past: starry-eyed idealism and girlish, high-pitched vocals. The records are similar, with roughly the same ratio of high to low points, and both are surprisingly enjoyable listens, with startlingly great moments (jazzy tunes “Hey, Jay” and “Plant the Crops in the Garden”) alongside awful ones (a cover of “Last Night I had the Strangest Dream,” which I still associate with elementary school choir practice, and a maudlin version of “St. James Infirmary Blues” that could compete with the Beach Boys’ “Student Demonstration Time” for worst countercultural adaptation of a classic song). Any fan of ’60s music needs to stomach a bit of syrup, and Hester, while at times painfully earnest, redeems herself with great tunes, a lovely voice and a beautiful hippie lid to match.

(more…)