Terry Callier: The New Folk Sound Of Terry Callier [CRAFT RECORDINGS]

Why you'll love it

Craft cut this edition all-analog from the original mono tapes, on 180g vinyl in a replica heavy tip-on jacket with an obi. It's the Chicago singer's first album, a hushed voice-and-guitar folk set.

This edition

• All-analog (AAA) remaster from the original mono tapes
• Mono
• 180g vinyl
• Tip-on jacket
• Obi strip

About the album

Terry Callier grew up in Chicago's Cabrini-Green alongside childhood friends Curtis Mayfield, Major Lance and Jerry Butler, sang doo-wop as a teenager and cut a single for Chess at 17. Then he found the city's folk clubs and coffee houses, fell hard for John Coltrane, and started to make a sound all his own. In 1964 he met Samuel Charters of Prestige, and the following year they made this album.

It's just Callier, his acoustic guitar and that deep, warm, unhurried voice, taking traditional songs like "900 Miles," "Cotton Eyed Joe" and "Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be" somewhere slower and more searching than the usual hootenanny. His own "It's About Time" and "Spin, Spin, Spin" show a songwriter already finding his own voice, and the psychedelic band H. P. Lovecraft liked both enough to record them in 1968.

Charters took the tapes with him into the Mexican desert, and the album didn't surface until 1968. We've had records take a while to arrive at the shop, but none, as far as we know, has gone via the Sonoran.

Also at Kops: more Terry Callier on vinyl · browse Folk

Tracklist

Listen

On Prestige / Craft Recordings (cat# CR00844), a reissue of the 1968 album.