Dave Van Ronk Sings

Greenwich Village folk revival linchpin Dave Van Ronk's singular slant on interpreting traditional tunes and pre-WWII blues was already fully fleshed out by 1961, when his second album was unveiled. Van Ronk sets the tone straight out of the gate here, with a version of Lonnie Johnson's "Bedbug Blues" as piercing and relentless as the bite of the pests the song laments. His grizzly bear growl and falling-spikes guitar lines add urgency and menace where other singers might have been satisfied with wry humor. His doomy, deadpan take on Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" was almost certainly a model for the version that appeared on Bob Dylan's debut the following year, further establishing Van Ronk's primacy in the '60s folk scene. And when Van Ronk roars and slashes his way through the hot-jazz-era standard "Willie the Weeper" (popularized by Louis Armstrong), his perennial claim that he considered himself a jazz singer rather than a folkie starts to make sense.