As of January 1, 2008, all recordings made in 1957 or earlier were in the public domain in Europe, where copyright on them extends only 50 years. Among the LPs newly available to any European company that wanted to reissue unlicensed, unauthorized versions of them were two similarly titled ones by Pete Seeger that had been released in 1957 by Folkways Records, American Ballads and American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 1. American Industrial Ballads, yet another Seeger album with a similar title, had fallen out of copyright in Europe a year earlier, having been released in 1956. The British Not Now Music label combines most of the contents of those three albums, throwing in half-a-dozen extra tracks for good measure (some of which actually feature the Almanac Singers, the Weavers, or the Song Swappers, not Seeger alone), on this three-CD set. The "American ballads" Seeger sang on the album of that name (Disc 1) were folk songs sung in the U.S., but often didn't originate there. Still, they were collected from rural American singers whose ancestors brought them across the Atlantic. And there were songs that clearly did originate, at least in terms of lyrical content, in the U.S. "Jesse James" recounts the murder of the famous American outlaw, and "The Titanic Disaster" looks back only to 1912. Whether or not there was a traceable historical person or event, however, the songs told stories of love, adventure, and criminality, siding with the poor and disadvantaged over the rich and privileged. The main characters of the songs often came to bad ends, but they remained folk heroes. American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 1 (Disc 2) contained Seeger's solo versions of a batch of popular folk songs, some of which he had sung previously with the Weavers. There was some conceptual overlap with the other discs, as "The Wreck of the Old 97," for instance, could have fit the themes of either American Industrial Ballads or American Ballads, and "Frankie and Johnny," a classic story song, would have been perfect for American Ballads. For the most part, however, this was a distinct collection containing much-loved folk songs. Sometimes, the lyrics seemed interchangeable from one song to another, and, in fact, that old warning about a false-hearted lover being worse than a thief turned up in both "The Wagoner's Lad" and "On Top of Old Smoky." Seeger as usual presented the songs in his vibrant, clear-voiced manner, as if trying to preserve them as much as perform them. On American Industrial Ballads (Disc 3), he sang a history of the Industrial Revolution and its impact on working people. As this album went on, the workers' complaints about ill treatment and low pay became more extreme, and eventually, the need for unions to represent them seemed overwhelming. Taken together, the songs chronicle a century-and-a-half of the efforts of farmers, textile workers, and miners, primarily, to get what they deserved from increasingly rich and powerful captains of industry. Typical of the slipshod manner of unlicensed reissues, this one inexplicably deletes tracks ("Jay Gould's Daughter" is missing from American Ballads, as is "Buffalo Gals" from American Favorite Ballads); the song titles have typos in them; and the brief liner notes are littered with factual errors. William Ruhlmann.
CD 1 : (American Ballads) Pretty Polly The Three Butchers John Henry The Titanic Disaster Fair Margaret and Sweet William John Hardy The Golden Vanity Gypsy Davy The Farmers Curst Wife Down in Carlisle St. James Hospital Jesse James Barbara Allen Sioux Indians Texian Boys Hold the Fort Ground Hog The Derby Ram
CD 2:(American Favourite Ballads) Down in the Valley Mary Dont You Weep The Blue Tail Fly Yankee Doodle Cielito Lindo Wabash Cannonball So Long, Its Been Good to Know You Skip to My Lou The Wagoners Lad The Wreck of the Old 97 Old Dan Tucker I Ride an Old Paint Frankie and Johnnie On Top of Old Smokey The Big Rock Candy Mountain Home On the Range Kisses Sweeter Than Wine Shell Be Comin Round the Mountain
CD 3:(American Industrial Ballads) Peg and Awl The Blind Fiddler Buffalo Skinners Eight Hour Day Hard Times in the Mill Roll Down the Line Hayseed Like Me The Farmer Is the Man Come All You Hardy Miners He Lies in the American Land Casey Jones Let Them Wear Their Watches Fine Cotton Mill Colic Seven Cent Cotton & Forty Cent Meat Mill Mother's Lament Fare Ye Well Old Ely Branch Beans, Bacon and Gravy The Death of Harry Simms Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues Ballad of Barney Graham My Children Are Seven in Number Raggedy Pittsburgh Town Sixty Per Cent