World of Folk Music

AMG Review of World of Folk Music

Skip Jansen
All Music Guide

Originally release on the FM label in 1963, this release was known as Hootenanny Live at the Bitter End, on which the late legendary folk singer/songwriter Fred Neil performed three songs, "Linin' Track," "The Sky Is Fallin'," and "That's the Bag I'm In." Len Chandler, Jo Maples, and Bob Carey also contribute to the compilation, only to be outshone by Neil, who was in astonishing form on this candid, low-key event. The Hootenanny album is reissued here as World of Folk Music, which came out the following year with the exact same material and one more song, "Raindrops Falling," which Neil later reworked into "Yonder Comes the Blues," included on his masterful album Bleecker & MacDougal. Though this is effectively a compilation, it will be remembered primarily as an obscurity in the Fred Neil catalog for collectors of the great American folksinger, for it was immediately after this pivotal period in his career that he began sharing stages with Lenny Bruce, Richie Havens, Tim Hardin, and Vince Martin, subsequently becoming an enormously influential songwriter throughout the following decades.