I Think I Got A Bootleg

I'm a big fan of Clarence White.

I hope nobody's too shocked by that.

Anyway, I was at a local record shop last week. I found a recording I have been looking for. The Tuff & Stringy Sessions.

Once upon a time, Clarence was a flatpicker in a bluegrass band, but Dylan going electric and the Byrds doing Dylan had caused a folk bust, which killed the gigs for his kind of music. So he started to learn to play a Telecaster like Don Rich and James Burton, doing country sessions and playing clubs until a spot opened up for him in the Byrds. I own all the Byrds stuff I want, from Sweetheart of the Rodeo to Farther Along. I have a copy of Muleskinner, his one-off proto-newgrass outfit. I have the classic Kentucky Colonels albums. I have Nashville West, recorded at one of the aforementioned club gigs. But I had none of that post-Colonels, pre-Byrds session work.

I had seen it on Amazon and other websites, but I hadn't had a copy in arm's reach before, and I felt I could not delay, I could not refuse. So I bought it. And as soon as I opened it, I thought something was up. First of all, as you can see, the liner notes are not stapled. They are on thick enough paper that it is difficult to fold it and put it into the case. And they are not printed in order. I'm one of those big geeks, and part of the reason big music geeks get physical media is so they can read the liners.

It is quite difficult to read the liners if you cannot actually find the order the liners should go.

It is also difficult to read the liners if they are printed poorly. Previous non-Legacy releases may have been a wasted opportunities, but I've never seen them poorly reproduced until now. And there's usually some font and layout continuity between the packaging and the CD itself.

The music itself seems OK, but digital-to-digital copying should not cause much degradation. One of the benefits of CDs, and one of the problems for the music industry.

For me, this one's a special thing. Because I want as much benefit as possible to folks who release CW material, so as much CW material as possible gets released. There might've found things I have found before where the copyright holders received just as much nothing as they got from this, if I am right and this is a bootleg.

Anybody know? Anybody here have this already?