Ed Young & Emma Lee Ramsey - "Chevrolet" [Sampler]

Listen to Ed Young and Emma Lee Ramsey perform "Chevrolet" from their album 'The Complete Friends of Old Time Music Concert.' "Chevrolet" is a duet between fife-and-drum master Young and Ramsey, who was a member of the Georgia Sea Island Singers. Young and Ramsey's arrangement is defined by syncopated clapping and stomping, thrilling tempo changes, and Young's distinctive fife playing. The song's legacy has continued to grow, with covers from key sixties folk revival figures like Donovan and Taj Mahal and, notably, Mary J. Blige, who recorded the song for a Chevrolet Superbowl advertisement.

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Bessie Jones, John Davis, and the Georgia Sea Island Singers gained wide renown during the 1960s and ‘70s for their powerful performances of traditional songs from the African American Gullah Geechee community on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Most in the group were born and raised on St. Simons, and could trace their ancestry to the enslaved West and Central Africans who worked on the island’s cotton plantations. Throughout the ‘60s, the Georgia Sea Island Singers were prominent voices in the civil rights movement, bringing hundreds of years of Black musical tradition to bear on a pivotal time in American history. This previously unheard recording captures their complete Friends of Old Time Music concert of April 1965, at which they were joined by legendary bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell, cane fife player Ed Young, and folklorist Alan Lomax, who acted as emcee. The album showcases a variety of traditional music from the Island and beyond, including stirring work songs, emotionally charged spirituals, jubilant songs for children, and revelatory renditions of Mississippi blues.

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