Dom Flemons’s Prospect Hill

Dom Flemons’s Prospect Hill

Fat Possum/Music Maker
By Michael Verity

As a founding member of Carolina Chocolate Drops, singer and multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons’ stock in trade has long been the indigenous music of the American south. With Prospect Hill, he continues his examination of Americana’s deepest roots, from ragtime to blues to spirituals to the street music of New Orleans.

Included here are tunes like “Sonora Church Two-Step,” a grandmotherly instrumental dance tune originally recorded by an African-American fiddle group known as Gu’achi Fiddlers; “Hot Chicken,” a slow tap-dancing blues number, still fresh from the vaudeville stage; and “Marching Up Prospect Hill,” a spoons and harp, hoot and holler country jam.

“Grotto Beat” is creole in its spirit, an amalgamation of Native American and New Orleans while “I Can’t Do It Anymore” draws on the Mississippi blues tradition, a I-IV-V swinger that never works up much of a sweat.

Though he lays claim to “reinterpreting (this) music to suit 21st century audiences,” the only thing that sounds even vaguely modern about this collection is the clarity of the recording. Everything else about the record sounds straight from the back porch, a cornbread in the pan, pig on the spit, cowboy boots on a sawdust floor brand of music. Those who dig this style of old-timey stuff will dig this record large; those who don’t should seek musical shelter elsewhere.

Visit Dom Flemons online and purchase Prospect Hill.