The Manhattan Valley Ramblers are a New York based duo, comprising Bill Christophersen on fiddle and guitar and John Saroyan who uses guitar, banjo and mandolin. They play Bluegrass and old Country music based around close harmonies that was popularised by The Louvin Brothers during the 1950-60s. In fact four of the fourteen tracks here have been previously recorded by The Louvin Brothers, however, The Manhattan Valley Ramblers’ attention to detail and love of this musical genre is hard to fault.
The album kicks off with ‘Wayside Tavern’ a country murder ballad whose sombre lyrics are offset by an up tempo melody. This track is also known as ‘The Girl Behind the Bar’ and has all the right elements of love, loss, murder and miscarriage of justice, the lady in question being stabbed to death by a jealous lover and the singer wrongly accused.
“She did not know her lover followed, She did not know he was around, Until the fate of death had struck her, And now she sleeps beneath the ground.”
The singer is left to his fate and to lament her loss:
“I sit alone tonight in prison, My thoughts are of the one so fair, That I met that night in the Wayside Tavern, When the smell of drink was in the air.”
Railroading on the Great Divide’ is a slower paced travelling song, which features great harmonies and was first recorded in 1952 by the A.P. Carter Family.
“Nineteen and sixteen I started to roam, Out in the West, no money, no home;I went drifting along with the tide, I landed on the Great Divide.”
Both songs represent a good strong start. ‘Hell Broke Loose in Georgia’ is a fast paced banjo and fiddle instrumental which is a traditional song that commemorates William Sherman’s military campaign in Georgia during the Civil War.
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‘Midnight on the Stormy Deep’ is a love song from the 1930s once again with the eternal theme of loss and betrayal:
“Was midnight on the stormy deep, My solitary watch I keep,
But to think of her I left behind, And asked if she’d be true and kind.I have never proved false to thee, The heart I gave was true as thine, But you have proved untrue to me, I can no longer call the mine.”
The rest of the tracks on the CD follow the same format. There are several good instrumentals, ‘Forked Deer’, ‘Why Don’t You Shovel?’ and ‘Florida Blues’.
The vocal tracks are of an equally high standard, mainly dealing with loss and death. ‘A Year Ago Today’ pulls at the heartstrings:-
“It still grieves me when I wander, To the grave not far away,
Where we laid my little darling, Just a year ago today.
Uplifting stuff.
The real strengths to this CD are firstly, the strong combination of fiddle and guitar(there were no guest musicians, just John & Bill), which work extremely well together.
Secondly, the close vocal harmonies between the duo set the tone, and express the lyrics in a way that you can almost feel the pain.
The only (minor) criticism that could be levelled at the CD is that every track has been done before, and although I would have liked to see some original lyrics, this Cd brings a musical genre into the 21st Century and would sit well on any Country fan’s music shelf.
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