Well, Well, Well...

As readers here know, I'm a big fan of the late folksinger/songwriter Bob Gibson, who had an admired solo career and also periodically teamed up with Hamilton Camp (who himself had a successful acting career, following his work at Second City).  I've posted a bunch of Gibson -- and Gibson & Camp -- videos.  I even had the chance to briefly meet and have a nice chat with him when he performed on the Northwestern University campus at their Amazingrace Coffeehouse.

Gibson, who passed away in 1996, was based in Chicago and part of the city's longtime folk scene that overlapped with people like Shel Silverstein and Win Stracke early on and later with Steve Goodman, John Prine, Bonnie Koloc and others.  I share my great appreciation of Gibson with longtime reader here Eric Boardman (who himself is a grad of Second City, among many other things).  And it's as a result of that mutual appreciation society that the Good Mr. Boardman informed me of a tremendous website -- BobGibsonfolk.com.

What's so tremendous about it is something I can't explain why it is.  Like all such artists, there is a page of all of Gibson's albums.  Unlike all such artists, you can click on any selection for any album, and it will play in its entirety.  In a good, crisp recording.  Even more remarkable is that it's all programmed for "continuous play," where when a song finishes, it jumps to the next song and plays that one, like listening to an album.  This isn't single play, where you have to click one song at a time.

I have absolutely no idea why the Gibson folks have done this.  The only theory Eric can come up with is that it's a way to interest people in buying the albums.  And perhaps so -- except they make it so easy to listening to everything that I just don't know.

Mind you, I'm not complaining.

For thems folk folks who like such things, you can find the album page here.  If I had to make two suggestions, both are albums of his with Hamilton Camp.  The first is their classic "Gibson & Camp at the Gate of Horn," which was a folk club in Chicago. This was considered a legendary album that went out of print, and so several years later Gibson and Camp got back together and re-recorded the same songs at Holstein's in Chicago.  The website not only has the "...Revisited" album, but the original, as well.  And the second album is "Homemade Music," made in 1980 when they reteamed after years apart and recorded this at McCabe's Music Shop in Santa Monica -- a concert I attended.

(If you want a solo album, "I Come for to Sing" has a long of good selections, including my favorite "To Morrow," which I've posted an in-concert video of, and which is the song I talked with him about at Amazingrace.  By the way, every version I've heard of this has been around three minutes long -- this, the original, to my great surprise is...11 minutes!)

But then if you closed your eyes and picked any one of the albums and selections, there's a good chance you'll enjoy the performance, whether or not the song is to your taste.

​Here he is in 1991 with "Sing Us Some of the Old Songs" which he co-wrote with Shel Silverstein, mixed in with a couple of his more popular old songs -- "Well, Well, Well" and "Daddy Roll 'Em."