Folk Songs, Bill Frisell, Nonesuch

Initially, I was thinking I would start this post commenting that Folk Songs sure wasn't the Bill Frisell of, say, Unspeakable. But in relistening to the latter, as well as Nashville, I am struck by Elvis Costello's excellent liner notes, which come down to a comment Monk supposedly once made to a young Bob Dylan, who approached Monk one night between Monk's sets and told the pianist he was Bob Dylan and played folk music in The Village. Monk looked up from his piano and said: "We all play folk music."

Profound when you consider the roots of jazz and applicable to Frisell because in reality Folk Songs, Nashville, Unspeakable or The Intercontinentals for that matter are all folk music of a stripe. More avant-garde, or more like Monk's jazz, in the case of Unspeakable to be sure, country music-oriented in Nashville, tilted toward traditional European folk music in the Intercontinentals and a compilation of Frisell performances of American folk music, loosely stated, in Folk Songs, kind of a Frisell folk "best of." That covers a boffo rendition of I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, and cool versions of Shenandoah and Sittin' On Top of the World, among other things. Fine Frisell.