“The Best of Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band” 1968, Vanguard Records. Occasionally I find records propped up next to my turntable and this one appeared today for our “should it stay or should it go?” project. This is my first listen, in fact first awareness, of Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band and it’s what you’d expect: old-timey, folky, rural blues and ragtime jug music complete with fiddle, banjo, kazoo and washtub bass filtered through the lens of 60′s kinda-hippies. The band was active from ‘63 to around ‘67 or ‘68 and played the Newport Folk Fest in ‘64. Most of the tracks on this comp are covers: one of the best is “I’m a Woman” written by Lieber and Stoller (not that old-timey, written in ‘62 and made famous by Peggy Lee) and sung by Maria Muldaur. “Fishing Blues,” first recorded by “Ragtime Texas” Henry Thomas in 1928, isn’t too bad – I’m pretty sure that my folks and their friends would play this one on their makeshift jug band while hanging out in the early 70′s. The rest is mostly too camp, too “juggy” for my tastes, especially tracks like “Boodle Am Shake,” “Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me” (which would actually be rocking but the prominent kazoo solo kinda ruins it for me) and while the sad fiddle on “Never Swat a Fly” is lovely, the lyrics are just silly and there’s an inappropriately placed kazoo solo (again). I think this one is going to go.