Swedish vocals, spoken word
International relevance: **
Cornelis Vreeswijk came to
Sweden from The Netherlands as a 12 year old, well in time to learn
Swedish to the point he mastered the Swedish language better than
many native Swedes. His debut album ”Ballader och oförskämdheter”
hit like a bomb upon its release in 1964 and more or less kickstarted
the wave of new Swedish troubadours and visa singers. No-one could
touch his excellence though, and up to his untimely death in 1987, he
had released dozens of albums of sharp-witted observations, great
acoustic guitar playing and brilliant songwriting. Not a lot of it is
within the progg realm however, but he did have some friends in high
progg places as proven by his albums around the turn of the decade
1969/71. Looking closely at the musician credits from these years,
you'll find names like Kenny Håkansson, Lasse Wellander and Slim Borgudd. Borgudd is also on ”Poem, ballader och lite blues” along
with Jojje Wadenius and Bosse Häggström meaning the entire Made In Sweden is present here. Add to that Björn J:son Lindh and Sten Bergman, and you have an album with progg credentials enough.
The
title is self-explanatory. It translates to ”poems, ballads and a
bit of blues”, and that's exactly what you get. The poetry recitals
may be short but they're nevertheless distracting and interrupts the
flow but the strictly musical parts are, for the most part, simply
brilliant. You could argue that it would have been an even better
album if the double album had been trimmed down to a single disc
omitting a few out-of-place numbers, but that's essentially
hairsplitting. Not only does it feature some of Vreeswijk's best
songs of all time, the musicianship is absolutely great on tracks
like ”Rosenblad, rosenblad”, ”Cool Water – på den Gyldene
Freden” and the really heavy blues ”Ett gammalt bergtroll”.
Eveyrhing adds up to Cornelis's best album and thus, one of the great Swedish albums.
Full album playlist