Steve Howell & Fats Kaplin – Know You From Old
Out Of The Past Music
13 songs – 52 minutes
Between them, Steve Howell and Fats Kaplin are a walking encyclopaedia of early American music. Texan Howell started his journey in the mid-1960s, tracing a path from Mississippi John Hurt to Blind Willie McTell and Leadbelly and on to Robert Johnson, Son House, Rev. Gary Davis and a host of other black acoustic guitar players and singers. Nashville-based Kaplin is a freakishly talented multi-instrumentalist, known primarily for his fiddle playing but also more than adept on guitar, button accordion, banjo, mandolin, steel guitar, the Arab oud and the Turkish cümbüs. On Know You From Old, he plays fiddle, mandolin, 5-string banjo, tenor banjo and bouzouki in combination with Howell’s finger-picked acoustic guitar.
Beautifully recorded by Jason Weinheimer at Fellowship Hall Sound in Little Rock, Arkansas, Know You From Old is a glorious collection of traditional blues, ballads, gospel spirituals and early jazz, played with reverence and respect by two master musicians. But this is no mere homage. The duo breathe life and wit into everything they do.
Opening with “Black Dog”, a rollicking Kentucky rag first recorded in 1930, it is immediately apparent that listeners are in for a treat. Instruments subtly combine to create momentum and drive and Howell’s weathered, seasoned voice fits the music perfectly.
Well-known classics sit happily side by side with a number of lesser-known gems. On the jazz side, Gershwin’s “But Not For Me” benefits from a stripped-down, melancholy reading while the plaintive fiddle on Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” injects an additional layer of pathos to the famous melody. Folk fans will appreciate “The Cuckoo”, a centuries-old English ballad with a history stretching back to the thirteenth century, while “The Escape Of Old John Webb” recounts the tale of a 1730 jailbreak in Salem, Massachusetts. Likewise, “Buffalo Skinners” is a traditional American folk song telling the story of an 1873 buffalo hunt on the southern plains.
Howell and Kaplin dip into the well of sacred songs with “Gospel Plow”, the traditional African-American spiritual also known as “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.” A Civil Rights anthem about perseverance, linking biblical faith (Luke 9:62) to the struggle for freedom, the track was perhaps most famously covered by Mahalia Jackson but Mavis Staples has also produced an incendiary version in 2007.
Jesse Fuller’s “San Francisco Bay Blues” has been recorded by a multitude of artists. Howell and Kaplin smartly take the pace down a little to accentuate the sadness of the lyrics. Meanwhile, Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “One Kind Favor” is one of the highlights of the album, with Kaplin’s delicate mandolin meshing perfectly with Howell’s guitar.
Know You From Old is a glorious celebration of the traditional American songbook, played by two superb musicians, highlighting how the threads of folk, blues, gospel and jazz can be combined and entwined to create a singular all-encompassing tapestry of American music. Quite mesmerising.
