Blue

Only one mention of Joni Mitchell? I'm disappointed. I guess I personally don't know much Dylan, Elliot Smith, Tim Buckley or Woody Guthrie so I'm just as much at fault here.

Also, glad to see some mentions of Pentangle and The Incredible String Band.

FaSho

Does Kevin Devine count? He's pretty cool.

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Gavin B.

Blind Willie McTell
Ry Cooder
Woody Guthrie
Rev. Gary Davis
Mississippi John Hurt
Rory Block
Joni Mitchell
John Hammond Jr.
Bob Dylan
Dave Van Ronk

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

lieasleep

did you hear the stuff tha try cooder did with ali farka toure? soooooooo good.

Inuzuka Skysword

Elliott Smith
Nick Drake
Comus
Sol Invictus
Joanna Newsom
The Angels of Light
John Martyn
Roy Harper
Vashti Bunyan
Agalloch (Not really a "folk" band but their one EP that was strictly Neofolk was genius)

Gavin B.

Ali Farka Toure's music was hypnotic. It was like listening to John Lee Hooker jam with an African musican ensemble.

Ry Cooder is a one man folk revival. The only reason I ever got exposed to the music of Blind Blake, Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Sleepy John Estes, Blind Willie McTell and Furry Lewis was the tireless efforts of young blues enthusiasts like Ry Cooder, John Fahey and Blind Al Wilson to promote the great blues of the 1920s and 1930s which were largely unheard by the American public in the 1970s.

John Fahey used to go door to door in Mississippi looking for old 78 rpm blues records and trying to locate old blues musicians who made those unheard records. In the process Fahey rediscovered Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Son House and a dozen or so other blues musicians of great significance to the American folkways.

The only reason I learned how to do ragtime fingerpicking and play open tuned bottleneck guitar was that Ry Cooder's first three albums blew me away. I didn't even know that delta blues existed prior to that and that's the way I wanted to play guitar. The first real country blues album I ever heard was Taj Mahal's debut on Columbia Records and Ry Cooder's amazing bottleneck guitar was on most of the cuts.

Intrestingly enough Taj Mahal was from Springfield Massachusetts and attended University of Massachusetts in Amherst. In the Seventies I was working as a Vista volunteer in Springfield and ran into Taj Mahal's mother at a community meeting. She lived in a middle class black neighborhood called the Upper Hill in Springfield. At first I though she was putting me on, but I checked Taj's biography and found out he was indeed from Springfield. From listening to his music I thought Taj Mahal grew in a sharecropper's shack in Mississippi.

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

lieasleep

i just saw Taj at the clearwater music festival. i love that man. and, honestly, the early delta blues of the 20's and 30's is the only blues i will listen too, i mean obviously i love the more contemporary blues artists like Ry Cooder but only because he is really making attempts to get back to that original sound. but the early stuff, that is when it was alive, when it was real, you can hear it in the music.

Lost & Found

If you love the bands in the top ten here then you'll love Viking Moses! He's playing in London in a tiny venue on Saturday 18th July. Usually he plays bigger venues but he's making a live dvd at the Birdcage 58 Stamford Hill London N16 6PR.

Spidersaretoads

Liked the last list!

clarksided

I can't really be bothered to make a list, but if I did, Joni would certainly be in the top half.

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