1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 16. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – Jack Takes The Floor (1958)


Time for some bluesy folk (or is that folksy blues?). Ramblin’ Jack must surely have been an influence on Bob Dylan, and I note that he was friends with Woody Guthrie, another inspiration for Dylan. Most of the tracks are Elliott and his guitar (with a bit of harmonica sometimes), singing what I guess to be traditional songs about working the mule train for a borax mine, a faithful old dog, and a few about insects – Bed Bug Blues (“Bed bugs are evil”), and Boll Weevil, about the boll weevil coming up from Mexico “looking for a home”. 

There’s a lot of folksy humour on display in the lyrics - “I got a girl, she’s six feet tall, sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall” for example). Elliott tends to give a little bit of background to each song and its roots, which is possibly considerably truncated for the album since the “Ramblin’” nickname comes not from his travels but his anecdotes. It feels, though like he’s a troubadour collecting old American folk songs that would otherwise have been lost to time, and it’s great for that.  

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