It took me a while to cough up the do, re, mi for this one, but I'm glad I did now it's in my hands. I love this book because it's all about the music. It has enough ethnomusicoligy in it to assure you it's honest. It has a wealth of wonderful tunes both in print and on a CD. The CD gets the underlying rhythm across like notation just can't do. And the stories about the old boys and girls are a bonus. Too many old time fiddle books seem to be a catalogue of old boys. You sometimes wonder if the author ever heard them play. Not this book. This is a university press publication, so if it sells out it probably won't be available again for a long time, if ever. So get it now.

Titon's book is an excellent compilation of fiddle tunes from Kentucky. After introductory material that places his scholarship within the history of research on old-time fiddling, Titon focuses on the transcriptions of 170 tunes that are either unique to Kentucky or else characteristic of Kentucky fiddling styles. The tunes are transcribed in clear, accessible, and accurate musical notation. He includes transcriptions of older recordings made decades ago as well as transcriptions of recent field recordings. The tunes are from the repertoires of numerous players, and the transcriptions should thus be very useful in comparing individual techniques. They also will add to the store of tunes that fiddlers can play. Titon includes discographic and historical information on each tune, thereby adding to the usefulness of his study of Kentucky fiddling. I also appreciated the biographical information and photographs of the various fiddlers, and listening to the accompanying CD warmed the written notes on the cold, printed page. The book has a terrific bibliography for those interested in additional research on fiddling, and I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in folk music, folklorists' scholarship, and Kentucky history. My only critique of the book is that Titon could have included more information about the style of fiddling used in each tune. Simply discussing bowing techniques, tempo, and ornamentation for various tunes within the pages where they were transcribed would have helped round out the excellent treatment of Kentucky fiddling.

Very good book, very informative. A great in depth book about a mountain preacher who loves God and Jesus Christ and preaches fire and bremstone. It's a heartfelt book with great emotion and love demonstrated through self stories and bible truthes. I would strongly recommend this book to everyone. If you are looking for a book that will take you back in time and show you the need for Jesus then and now, this book is for you!!

This book is wonder and a treasure trove of musical ideas from around the planet. For example, how many music historians are aware of how the Native Amercians used song to identify each of their tribes?
Mr. Titon has provided very interesting facts about music making from many world cultures. He has also produced a 3 CD sound compilation of musical examples for this book that is indispensible.
If you're tired of today's bland market of music that has sadly squashed historical music making of any kind, this book is an excellent journey into the world's most basic roots of song and music.

This is a good book and he sermons read well. But while this is not bad on paper, this might be better as an audio book or on CD. Havign heard Rev. Franklin's sermons on the radio as a child (including some of the ones included in this book), I could testify that you would be better off hearing this.

In this collection of sermons and a narrative of a life, delivered to Jeff Todd Titon by the Reverend Franklin himself, the language and performance ability of a gifted preacher are presented carefully and revealingly. We learn how Franklin interpreted his conversion to the ministry, what it means to give a good sermon, and how Franklin's life history affected his religous work. The sermons themselves are presented with effective ethnopoetics which reveal the rhythms and pacing of Franklin's sermons. Yet, the texts of the sermons fail to reveal how the congregation responded to Franklin's sermons, and that audience response is integral to understanding the way Franklin spoke and paced and performed his sermons. I would also be interested in some analysis of the sermons, though I like that their presentation is in fact privileged, and absent of the editor's voice. Overall, an important and affective work that should be read by anyone who's interested in African American sermonic discourse, music, or religous traditions.

To begin with some background on Rev. Franklin: he was born in that hotbed of Afro-American culture, the Mississippi Delta; was a prodigy like his daughter Aretha, in that he was called to preach at fifteen; and was one of the ministers who backed Dr. King whenever the civil rights movement needed funds. Rev. Franklin became nationally known in the black community for the beauty, the literacy, the poetry of his song sermons. Besides his church work, he became a recording artist and toured with Aretha. His song sermons are divided into a prose development of his theme, which are studded with home truths about human nature and find deep and original insights in even the most well-worked veins of Biblical interpretation, and then break into the "whooping" of black preachers, which is rendered in the book as poetry. Finally he often turns to outright song. It is hard to exaggerate the important of Rev. Franklin as an artist. His is a God of kindness, power and patience; his is a vision that sees hardship as the teacher of wisdom, and his poetry are parables which lift each piece into a realm of exaltation. Several of the sermons recorded in the mid-1950's are uncanny predictions of the upcoming civil rights movment, when Afro-Americans took matters into their own hands and faced their oppressors by appealing to their better natures.

And if I say this book soars with the music of Mozart, do not say I exaggerate; and if I say this book is as wise as the wisdom of Solomon, do not say I am foolish; and if I say this book touches with the beauty of the Good Samaritian, do not say I chase dreams; for we are better than we think we are.

Titon unquestionably knows his subject matter well, and this does come through in the book. Unfortunately, he drains the topic of all the spontaneity and joy that one associates with music with a pendantic and tendetious approach. His writing style, in my experience, aptly reflects his personality. I once took a college class from him when he served as a visiting professor at Carleton College in Minnesota. This book was a mandatory assignment...more royalties for the professor. If you are prepared to take the subject as seriously as Titon takes himself, this book could be for you. Otherwise, there are surely more accessible and informative works to begin a study of this distinctively American musical form.