Performer Notes

Solo performer: Ramblin' Jack Elliott (vocals, guitar).
Recorded at Pachyderm Studios, Cannon Falls, Minnesota. Includes liner notes by Guy Clark, Jackson Browne, Joan Baez, Jerry Jeff Walker and Bob Weir.
SOUTH COAST won a 1996 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album.
Personnel: Ramblin' Jack Elliott (vocals, guitar).
Audio Mixers: Eric Peltoniemi; Paul Baron.
Recording information: Pachyderm Studio, Cannon Falls, MN.
Editors: Chris Frymire; Eric Peltoniemi.
Photographer: Michael Crouser.
Ramblin' Jack Elliott, this 1995 album (his first after more than a two-decade hiatus from the studio) goes to show, only gets better with age. The 70-something-year-old voice resonates here with the long miles and experience it once just impersonated, the distinctive guitar playing likewise aged into a rich and mesmerizing style. Elliott also reveals himself as one of the few truly enduring figures of the folk era, partly because his music is more honest, and as a result more timeless, than so much of that era's music. This anticipated, Grammy-winning return to the studio represents Elliott at the top of his game, rendering several of his standards (his repertoire is admittedly lean, and the same songs crop up on album after album) at some of their best. There is the usual run of Woody Guthrie songs here (four out of the 12 total tracks) alongside a mix of folk revival tunes, ballads, and blues. The old faithful "San Francisco Bay Blues" is appropriately older, slower, and world-wearier here than in Elliott's earlier, hell-for-leather performances, but it holds up well, proving itself worth at least one more listen. Elliott's real strength, though, comes through on songs like "South Coast" and "Buffalo Skinners," both of them haunting and desperate Western epics. Jack Elliott used to sound more like Woody Guthrie than Woody Guthrie, which itself was no small feat, but where lesser imitators would have ceased, Elliott kept on rambling, and finally sounds like nothing but Jack Elliott, a sound itself worthy of imitation and with its own place in the canon of American roots legends. With South Coast, Elliott's legend is irrevocably cemented. ~ Burgin Mathews

Professional Reviews

Option (9-10/95, p.108) - "...Elliot is a great acoustic guitar player, no question, and the themes he choses to cover are dark and unpleasant (like a certain black-clad Mr. Cash)..."

Living Blues (9-10/95, p.103) - "...Elliott is one of those vocalists who can't sing at all by any conventional standard, but who can put across a song with tremendous emotional force. His eccentric guitar style produces endless melodic rhythmic surprises, and sometimes recalls Robert Pete Williams..."

Mojo (Publisher) (7/95, p.112) - "...SOUTH COAST assembles newly-recorded performances of Jack singing and strumming guitar on such songs as 'San Francisco Bay Blues', 'South Coast', 'Pastures of Plenty' and (the highlight of the set) a crackling version of 'The Buffalo Skinners'."

Album: South Coast
#	Song Title		Time
1)	Pastures of Plenty	More Info...	0:02
2)	If I Were a Carpenter	More Info...	0:05
3)	Cocaine Blues	More Info...	0:02
4)	I Ain't Got No Home	More Info...	0:02
5)	Will James	More Info...	0:02
6)	The Buffalo Skinners	More Info...	0:05
7)	Rake and Ramblin' Boy	More Info...	0:02
8)	South Coast	More Info...	0:08
9)	Talkin' Dust Bowl	More Info...	0:03
10)	Mean Old Bedbug Blues	More Info...	0:03
11)	Ludlow Massacre	More Info...	0:04
12)	San Francisco Bay Blues	More Info...	0:02

Album: South Coast
#	Song Title		Time
1)	Pastures of Plenty	More Info...	0:02
2)	If I Were a Carpenter	More Info...	0:05
3)	Cocaine Blues	More Info...	0:02
4)	I Ain't Got No Home	More Info...	0:02
5)	Will James	More Info...	0:02
6)	The Buffalo Skinners	More Info...	0:05
7)	Rake and Ramblin' Boy	More Info...	0:02
8)	South Coast	More Info...	0:08
9)	Talkin' Dust Bowl	More Info...	0:03
10)	Mean Old Bedbug Blues	More Info...	0:03
11)	Ludlow Massacre	More Info...	0:04
12)	San Francisco Bay Blues	More Info...	0:02