Album – I COME FOR TO SING

I COME FOR TO SING

This classic album features Bob on banjo, guitarist Dick Rosmini (with whom Bob recorded and performed for over two decades) with Trigger Albert on bass, and Pete Berry on conga. Bob’s most famous song “Abilene” first recorded here, was a big hit for George Hamilton IV in 1963 and has since been recorded by hundreds of other performers. Another of Bob’s songs, “To Morrow” has been recorded by many groups including The Kingston Trio and The Muppets Bluegrass Band. Many traditional songs were later recorded by other folk singers and groups who followed in Bob’s footsteps including Bob Dylan who recorded “Ol’ Bill” and Joan Baez who recorded “Lily of the West”.

PLAYERS:
Dick Rosmini, guitar
Trigger Alpert, bass
Pete Berry, conga drum

Riverside, 1957

JOY JOY! THE YOUNG AND WONDERFUL BOB GIBSON
Fantasy/Concord Music Group
Includes tracks 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 14.

John Henry

02 Dance, Boatman, Dance

11 I'm Gonna Leave Old Texas

12 Mattie Groves

13 The Squirrel

I Come For To Sing

15 The Lily of the West

16 Springfield Mountain

Digital recording not yet available except tracks 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 14 which are included on Joy, Joy! The Young and Wonderful Bob Gibson.

There can be few musical experiences more exciting than the emergence of a young new star in a beloved old tradition. And it is precisely such an experience that can be sampled in this album…

Orrin Keepnews

There can be few musical experiences more exciting than the emergence of a young new star in a beloved old tradition. And it is precisely such an experience that can be sampled in this album. BOB GIBSON is a folk-singer in every sense of the word. He knows and loves the music that has been one of America’s most enduring inheritances from England. He is fully familiar with the songs that have developed out of the folk patterns of both Negro and white life in this country. He is deeply aware of the fact that folk music is not part of the musty pages of history, but is a living, constantly evolving force-that valid folk material is just as likely to be created or newly transmuted today as two centuries ago. He had travelled extensively through the United States and the West Indies, collecting his ever-expanding repertoire from all possible sources: traditional singers, night club performers, college students, books, records.

All this amounts to an exceptionally thorough ground-work. In itself, however, it actually not too much more than any firmly dedicated amateur might do. But Gibson has been able to take all this knowledge of and love for folk music several steps further. For he is also a thorough-going professional: a skilled singer and banjoist, and the possessor of a rare and remarkable natural charm as a performer that has, in a comparatively short time, won him a large, rapidly growing, and highly enthusiastic following.

And, possibly most important of all, he is a performer with his own style and his own point of view. This is something that can be heard immediately, and is to be appreciated and understood, once you have heard Bob at work, far more readily than it can be described in words. But there can be advance indication of it in the unusually wide range of material he offers here: from calypso to work songs to nonsense song, from lumberjack and cowboy ballads to those that have their roots in old English tradition. It is the surest sign of Gibson’s artistry that, although none of the material here is in any way distorted, all of it clearly bears the stamp of his individual approach.

Still in his early twenties, Gibson has crowded a great deal of activity into an as-yet brief career: concert appearances in Florida, New York, throughout the Midwest and New England (often before school and university audiences); a particularly successful long engagement at The gate of Horn club in Chicago; and, in the Spring of 1957, a New York night club debut at the Village Vanguard, one of the country’s most celebrated jumping-off spots for new talent on its way to the top.

Bob Gibson’s first appearance on record was in a Riverside album featuring rarely-recorded material: Offbeat Folk Songs: BOB GIBSON and his banjo (RLP 12-802). -ORRIN KEEPNEWS

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Orrin Keepnews Liner Notes

NEWS, REVIEWS & NOTES

…“Abilene,” recorded by George Hamilton IV, topped Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart in 1963.

…“Abilene,” the version with which most listeners are familiar, first appeared on Bob Gibson’s album, I COME FOR TO SING, in 1957.

ABILENE IN SONG

Joe Specht

The Women There Don't Treat You Mean

A traditional jazz bassist and bandleader, Trigger Alpert issued one album on Riverside in 1956 titled Trigger Happy! It had an all-star lineup with Tony Scott, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Joe Wilder, Urbie Green, and Ed Shaugnessy joining Alpert.

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Trigger Alpert

Sept. 3, 1916 – Dec. 21, 2013