Andy Cohen, Eleanor Ellis and William Lee Ellis - Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard

Thirty-three years between albums must be something of a record, but the follow-up to their 1993 debut sees the trio reunite for another collection of traditional acoustic folk, country and blues. Playing guitar, mandola and dolceola, Andy Cohen’s a fingerstyle guitarist influenced by Reverend Gary Davis who specialises in pre-WW2 traditional blues and folk music. On slide and both 6 and 12 string William Lee Ellis is another blues fingerpicker guitarist and Louisiana guitarist Eleanor Ellis is rooted in Piedmont blues and gospel.

Alternating lead vocals and joined by Steve Feinbloom on bass, Fraser Spiers on harmonica, and vocalists Julia Coffey and Vernita Weller, they’ve assembled a 21-track homage to and celebration of old time and traditional American music. Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard opens up with Andy and Eleanor singing Columbus Stockade, a song dating back to 1927 and first recorded by Darby and Tarlton, the former the song’s author. Eleanor takes the spotlight for Riley & Spencer, another 20s tune with bluegrass roots, the narrator declaring how she “played cards with the king and queen/Shot dice with Jesse James”, the title likely referring to towns in North Carolina, Raleigh and Spencer.

Featuring Cohen on mandola, it’s Williams turn to step up for his self-penned Pearl River Blues, written during a tour of China with co-author Larry Nager but sounding like it was dredged from the Mississippi. The pair are also responsible for the nimbly picked title track, a bass and guitar instrumental.

Ellis also takes solo credit for two further numbers, the instrumental rag Handful Of Frets (For Fats Waller) and, with Eleanor taking the vocals, the bluesy swing Memphis Minnie And Me. Cohen also contributes an original with a solo turn on the whimsical jailhouse rag Chicken.

Mining the blues repertoire, Andy sings lead and plays dolceola backed by Williams’s guitar on Mr. Furry’s Blues, written by William Furry Lewis, as was the lurching I Will Turn Your Money Green with Ellis on vocals and 12-string. Of course, it can’t be a proper blues tribute album without something by Blind Blake, Joseph Spence, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Charley Patton, here lined up successively as Police Dog Blues (given a Tampa Red flavour), the instrumental Won’t That Be A Happy Time with Cohen on piano, Eleanor’s solo reading of Shuckin’ Sugar (albeit based on an arrangement by English musician Simon Prager) and, played on dolceola with all three and Coffey on descant vocals, the spiritual I’m Goin Home.

Eleanor sings lead with William on 12-string on Red River Blues by 20’s Ragtime Texas bluesman Henry Thomas, a less well-known name but an influence on Dylan, Taj Mahal and The Grateful Dead. Meanwhile, also a somewhat obscure figure from the late 20s, Roosevelt Graves is represented by another spiritual, I’ll Be Rested (When The Roll Is Called) with Feinbloom on bass and Weller joining the trio on vocals and gospel tambourine.

The remaining tracks are equally eclectic choices, Eleanor accompanied by William’s banjo on the traditional Drunkard’s Lament with legendary Hollywood singing cowboy Gene Autry the writer of Do Right Woman, though in actuality this is based on the Hank Snow version with the original titled Do Right Daddy. There’s a doff of the cap to ragtime legend Scott Joplin with Gary Davis’s guitar instrumental arrangement of Make Believe Stunt adapting from Maple Leaf Rag. While on the most contemporary note, accompanied by bass and slide, Eleanor picks and sings Steve Earle’s South Nashville Blues.

Then, in something of a departure from the album’s core inspirations, Cohen offers a guitar instrumental of Robert Burns’s Ye Banks And Braes. Arranged by William, who sings lead and plays 12-string with the others on backing and Andy on dolceola, it ends with the movingly simple I Am Born To Preach The Gospel by Texas gospel preacher Washington Philips affording a perfect closure to an album that will prove essential to all aficionados of old time American music.