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The Folkswingers

The Folkswingers

The Folkswingers has been played on NTS shows including Loose Bones, with Eight Miles High first played on 14 February 2021.

The Folkswingers were an American studio band with constantly changing personnel. On 12 String Guitar!, an instrumental folk album released in 1963, they are Glen Campbell on 12-string guitar and The Dillards, an American bluegrass band from Salem, Missouri. The producer Jim Dickson called the group The Folkswingers and they recorded folk and bluegrass songs to cash-in on the current trends. Basically they kept the name for the 1966 album and tried to tackle another musical trend. It's interesting to note that World Pacific actually put out a Ravi Shankar sitar album in 1965. Raga Rock unashamedly cashed in on the success of Ravi Shankar and the emerging use of the sitar in Western pop/rock (Beatles, Stones, Byrds), offering up instrumental versions of the latest cool hit sounds, many with fuzzed guitar, and all topped off with that exotic sound. The more obvious and successful choices for such treatment are here - Paint It Black, a regular on later "exploito" LPs of exotic-psych, Eight Miles High and Shapes Of Things. Also tackled (with varying success) are Norwegian Wood, The Association's Along Comes Mary, Outsiders' Time Won't Let Me, Kicks, Hey Joe, Homeward Bound and The Turtles' Grim Reaper Of Love. Their own Raga Rock is the finale - although it starts off rather pedestrian, it's soon spiralling off into Eight Miles High territory, but comes back to earth way too soon. A couple of the names on the Raga Rock release should also strike a chord - Larry Knechtel (later of Bread) and Hal Blaine were part of the elite corps of L.A. session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew.

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The Folkswingers

The Folkswingers has been played on NTS shows including Loose Bones, with Eight Miles High first played on 14 February 2021.

The Folkswingers were an American studio band with constantly changing personnel. On 12 String Guitar!, an instrumental folk album released in 1963, they are Glen Campbell on 12-string guitar and The Dillards, an American bluegrass band from Salem, Missouri. The producer Jim Dickson called the group The Folkswingers and they recorded folk and bluegrass songs to cash-in on the current trends. Basically they kept the name for the 1966 album and tried to tackle another musical trend. It's interesting to note that World Pacific actually put out a Ravi Shankar sitar album in 1965. Raga Rock unashamedly cashed in on the success of Ravi Shankar and the emerging use of the sitar in Western pop/rock (Beatles, Stones, Byrds), offering up instrumental versions of the latest cool hit sounds, many with fuzzed guitar, and all topped off with that exotic sound. The more obvious and successful choices for such treatment are here - Paint It Black, a regular on later "exploito" LPs of exotic-psych, Eight Miles High and Shapes Of Things. Also tackled (with varying success) are Norwegian Wood, The Association's Along Comes Mary, Outsiders' Time Won't Let Me, Kicks, Hey Joe, Homeward Bound and The Turtles' Grim Reaper Of Love. Their own Raga Rock is the finale - although it starts off rather pedestrian, it's soon spiralling off into Eight Miles High territory, but comes back to earth way too soon. A couple of the names on the Raga Rock release should also strike a chord - Larry Knechtel (later of Bread) and Hal Blaine were part of the elite corps of L.A. session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew.

Original source: Last.fm

Tracks featured on

Most played tracks

Eight Miles High
The Folkswingers, Harihar Rao
World Pacific Records1966