No Dirty Names

The last traditional folk effort that Dave Van Ronk would attempt before his brief and unsuccessful flirtation with the commercial mainstream, <i>No Dirty Names</i> is also one of the New York folk stalwart’s most satisfying releases, striking a rewarding balance between the virtuosic blues traditionalism of Van Ronk’s earliest albums and the denser arrangements that characterized his work in the late ‘60s. The album consists of a dozen well-selected covers and a single original composition. The covers encompass everything from country blues classics by the likes of Blind Willie McTell, Leroy Carr, and Mance Lipscomb, to Dizzie Gillespie’s lascivious “Blues Chante,” and even an extended reworking of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s ode to abandon and dissolution “Alabama Song.” The lone original composition is the striking “Zen Koans Gonna Rise Again,” a slang heavy and darkly humorous account of the catastrophic toll that hard drugs began to wreak on the Village folk scene as the ‘60s progressed. Producer David Woods drenches the entire set in ominous reverb, giving <i>No Dirty Names</i> an atmosphere of surreal foreboding.