This soundtrack to the 2000 documentary film about
Elliott (directed by his daughter) also serves as a pretty good career retrospective. The 20 cuts are taken from an assortment of live, studio, television, radio, and film performances from 1953 to 1998. The chief flaw of
Elliott's output is that he was not an innovator. He wrote little of his own music (only one of the songs on this release is original), and his competent, homespun brand of folk was similar to, but not nearly as good as,
Woody Guthrie's or early
Bob Dylan's. The strength of
Elliott's music, on the other hand, is that he sounded the same pretty much whenever he sang or recorded. If you liked traditional American folk at any time during the last half of the 20th century,
Elliott was the old reliable, there to provide it for international audiences. So it's no surprise that this soundtrack is a consistent listen of engaging, if unremarkable, roots American folk music.
Elliott sounds a lot better, of course, when he's performing duets with greater talents, and there are a number of such duets on this compilation, including performances on
Johnny Cash's television show in the late '60s and early '70s; a 1953 studio cut with his mentor, Guthrie (also including
Sonny Terry on harmonica and vocals); and a song apiece with
Odetta and
Derroll Adams. There's also a live 1961 radio airshot of a duet with a then label-less
Bob Dylan on the silly, and not terribly witty, early rock & roll parody "Acne." ~ Richie Unterberger