Vintage Album Review – Kossoy Sisters “Bowling Green”
When it comes to primitive American recordings of country music, it is Ralph Peer and his Bristol Sessions from 1927 capturing Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, and others in their most primitive state that defines the sound of what country music was before commercial concerns corrupted the purity of the expressions of America’s rural people. Even today, the simplicity and innocence embodied on those recordings sets the standard for neo-traditional country, bluegrass, old time, Americana, and folks artists looking to recapture the raw emotion and untouched virtue inherent in early 20th Century rural America.
Though they may try, modern artists will always fail to some degree to rekindle that primitive magic. Even if they get close to the sound and the sentiment, it’s only from interpretation, not from authenticity. Modern society has long since laid its indelible, spoiling touch on all of us, and that is what makes the appeal for early recordings so priceless and incomparable.
However there’s one record, newer than the Bristol Sessions, but still a vintage recording, that captures the pureness of American country music in its primitive state that has never properly received its due as a heavy influence on the modern ear and country modes.
Unlike Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family who were plucked right out of the American countryside and plopped in front of a field recorder, The Kossoy Sisters come from New York City; born some 11 years after the Bristol Sessions. The identical twins started singing together at the age of six, taking their cues from their mother and aunt who sung in close harmonies to old-time and Appalachian tunes around the house. The sisters attended a summer camp at the age of fifteen where folk legend Pete Seeger performed, and suddenly found themselves engrossed in the burgeoning folk scene in New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1950’s.
By the time they were seventeen, it was 1956 and sisters Irene and Ellen were recording their first, and only album from the period called Bowling Green. Helping them along was songwriter and musician Erik Darling, best known for replacing Pete Seeger in The Weavers in 1958. Irene sang lead mezzo soprano and played guitar, while Ellen supplied soprano harmony parts and played banjo.
Though The Kossoy Sisters were surrounded by the folk revival, much of the inspiration and compositions for their music originated farther south in the Southern Appalachians. Their focus was gospel and primitive country murder ballads. Most importantly, that innocence and purity that the world had scarcely heard since those original Ralph Peer Bristol Sessions was present in their music. The close harmonies the sisters employed also set a more Southern tone, indicative more of The Louvin Brothers than other folk performers of the time.
The Kossoy Sisters as identical twins were unmatched in how effortlessly they could sync pitch, anticipate changes, and craft harmony lines with each other. But this isn’t the only thing that makes Bowling Green a treasure of the American musical lexicon. The dark pall that lingers over their music from the Gothic, sometimes disturbing themes—many that refer to death and murder with striking honesty and vibrant recollection—matched with The Kossoy Sister’s dry, innocent, 17-year-old voices, make such a contrast that even when they sing an uplifting spiritual like “I’ll Fly Away” it seems to refer more to poor desperation, hunger, and the chronic fear and wonder that pervaded the early American experience. The paired voices of The Kossoy Sisters don’t sound like they originate from the material world, but from a memory captured in a faded, black-and-white photo enclosed in a tarnished locket clasped tightly in the hand of a dying 1800’s Appalachian settler.
After Bowling Green, The Kossoy Sisters never made another record until 2002, and why would they? They had struck perfection with their first one, and as they grew older and got swept up in the 50’s folk revival—playing at the prestigious Newport Folk Festival in 1959 along with other noteworthy festivals and venues—it could be argued they would never be able to capture that raw, untouched, and innocent sound again. And similar to many of their Ralph Peer-discovered predecessors, The Kossoy Sisters really weren’t interested in fame. They were two young women that sang for love and life, and nothing more.
The Bowling Green album received some renewed attention when the Kassoy Sisters’ version of “I’ll Fly Away” found its way onto the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack in 2000, but that song just scratches the surface of what The Kassoy Sisters and Bowling Green have to offer. It was one of the very first American country records that set out to capture the magic of a by-gone era, and was one of the only ones to truly succeed.
Two guns up!
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April 13, 2014 @ 11:19 am
Love this! Very lonely sounding. Excellent. Thanks for reviewing it.
April 13, 2014 @ 1:08 pm
Great call, I love this album. Note that the original artwork was way more awesome:
http://goo.gl/XVShrW
April 13, 2014 @ 2:01 pm
Will definitely be picking this one up. Great review!
April 13, 2014 @ 2:08 pm
I’ve been waiting for a return of the Vintage Album review format here on SCM. While I don’t typically take stock in hindsight articles (as they tend to be more biased than ones written for the time, in my experience), I like the ones you write, Trigger. More often than not, I find them informative. I went out and bought the Grateful Dead’s albums Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty based simply on those articles and I’d be remiss if I claimed to know anything about the band before reading. Now all we need is some Chris LeDoux, Johnny Paycheck, Big & Rich (since I’m feeling facetious) and especially Hank Jr., since his newer output is so politically charged it can cause one to forget that he used to just make music for fun. In fact, Hank Williams Jr. & Friends is one of my all-time favorite country albums, along with The New South and Born to Boogie being cuts I’m partial to as well. Perhaps a series spotlighting Johnny Cash’s American Recordings series wouldn’t be a bad idea, either? Since you allowed readers to essentially pick which entry to include on your “All-Time Greatest” lists, it’d be interesting to hear your opinion of each of the individual releases (and since they’re being issued on vinyl for what I believe is the first time, there couldn’t be a better time). Of course, I know you’re busy enough with newer material to go back and review whole discographies of older acts, but pitching the idea never hurts. 😉
April 13, 2014 @ 9:28 pm
My friend, I hope this is a new, regular feature on SCM. And I hope vintage covers 1920’s through the 80’s. I’d love your take on albums I may not know of (case in point) and classics. Well done!
April 13, 2014 @ 10:32 pm
Actually this is an old, regular feature that I just haven’t had time to keep going lately. I’d consider the review I did for Emmylou Harris’s “Wrecking Ball” a few weeks ago a part of this series, though I didn’t title it “Vintage Album Review”. My desire to do these is really dependent on how much new music I feel like writing about at any time. I really feel like 2014 has been kind of thin so far. I’ve done a ton of listening, but there’s just not a lot out there capturing my ear at the moment. So if there’s nothing great in the present, we’ll look towards the past.
April 16, 2014 @ 1:09 pm
Trigger, thanks a lot for writing this. Like everybody else, I first heard this group via “O Brother.” The harmonies on “I’ll Fly Away” send chills up my spine every time I see the film, and I was disappointed that the Kossoys’ version of the song didn’t make the official sound track. I remember I did some research on the sisters after one particular viewing of the movie, and I they said they had no idea their recording was going to be featured in the movie when they saw it the first time, and it was a big shock!
I love close harmony singing. I guess the Kossoy Sisters can be considered part of the harmony tradition that passed from groups like the Blue Sky Boys to the Louvins, then down to the Everly Brothers, and from there to all over the place…
April 14, 2014 @ 7:22 am
It sounds far better than the Carters!!! Thanks you, Mr. Trigger.
April 14, 2014 @ 12:44 pm
They have a beautiful rich history and the Kossoy surname is rare.
KOSSOY
The vast majority migrated from small towns or shtetels of Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Germany, Romania or Ukraine, leaving behind most of their relatives. After two or three generations, those families lost track of their relatives, having been saved from the war, emigrated to other countries like USA, England or Australia.
April 15, 2014 @ 12:09 am
You’re right. It’s obviously a slavic name, I don’t think it’s Polish. Maybe it belongs to one of the other nations you mentioned.
October 20, 2015 @ 4:28 pm
Just saw this review, and ran right over to iTunes and bought the album. Thanks Trigger, this is right up my alley, and I didn’t have an inkling of their existence! Do some more vintage album reviews please, these are great!