A Salute to Travis Edmonson in His Diamond Jubilee Year
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click logo for more infoFor a website featuring over 75 Travis Edmonson music clips go to
Perspective on Bud & Travis
Liberty LST 7341
1963
TRACKS
Side One
Maria Christina
Fiesta In Guadalajara
Abilene
Ay, Jalisco
I Never Will Marry
Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Goin' To California
Side Two
So Long, Stay Well
Take Off Your Old Coat 
Two Brothers
Sabras Que Te Quiero
A Long Time Back 
Ay, Maria
denotes Travis Edmonson compositions denotes Travis Edmonson arrangements in collaboration
DISCUSSION
This 'reunion' album represented a venture into some new material, and includes the breath-taking "So Long, Stay Well."
LINER NOTES
The trend in the folk field seems to be to try for something "new" - some sort of gimmick which will distinguish a particular artist from others. The result is often something patently artificial, quite unmusical -and usually unsuccessful anyway, perhaps for those very reasons.
Bud Dashiell and Travis Edmonson, on the other hand, have not participated in fads. They feel that they are not in competition with others, but rather with themselves, so to speak, their principal aim being to make their presentations the very best they can, musically.
An important step in making these presentations the best is, of course, in arranging. Bud & Travis believe that arrangements should be simple and clear, in order to arrive at the true motivation of the material. Their harmonies are not "way out," their rhythms are not unnatural; thus, their arrangements "wear well." Perhaps the best example of the lasting quality of their presentations is that the concert and club crowds wherever Bud & Travis appear, loudly and enthusiastically request selections which they have been singing, in the same arrangements, for several years. There is, then, simply no reason to "update" an arrangement. Such Bud & Travis specialties as "Raspberries, Strawberries," "Bon Soir Dame," and "Malaguena Salerosa" demonstrate this.
promotional insert for "Perspective"
This present album displays Bud & Travis at their best. They have created some of their finest arrangements, and present them here in the simplest possible manner, generally employing just their two guitars and a bass, (However, in one song, "Ay Maria," they used percussion, because it seemed to them essential to the intent of the music].
In the matter of the songs themselves, Bud & Travis have chosen a wide variety of material from diverse sources. You will find one of Bob Dylan's finest songs, "Tomorrow Is A Long Time," the hilarious spoof "Fiesta In Guadalajara," from the pen of humorist (and college professor) Tom Lehrer, “So Long, Stay Well" by the talented young writer of folk-type songs, Rod McKuen, and many others in a wide latitude, both geographically and in mood.
They rewrote and adapted several of the songs, both musically and in lyric content, putting them into the Bud & Travis idiom. The selection "A Long Time Back," for example, was originally entitled "Oh, Miss Mary " and is from the Georgia Sea Islands, an unusual area culturally isolated from the U.S. mainland. Travis says he kept the song's story line, but wrote a whole new set of lyrics and additional music.
Another interesting example is the song "Ay Maria," for which Bud rewrote the lyrics, not keeping to its original story line, yet retaining its tongue-in-cheek quality, this being an esthetic adaptation rather than a literal one.
Special note should be made here about a couple of other songs in this album. "Sabras Que Te Quiero," for example, a song by Southern California writer, Teddy Fregoso, was a big hit in much of Latin America. It, like many other songs by Fregoso, has impressed Bud & Travis immensely, his musical and lyric ideas being so completely in tune with theirs.
"Ay Jalisco" is sung here as a tribute to Carlos Gonzales, Bud & Travis' previous accompanist and "faithful guide and companion," as they were wont to call him.
In the nidst of all of the preparatory work for this album, was Bud & Travis' current accompanist and arranger, David Wheat, with whom they worked very closely. Mr. Wheat, incidentally, is the writer of the jazz-and-blues oriented "Goin' To California," included in this collection.
Credit for bringing all of this musical creativity together into recorded form goes to Dave Pell, a producer for Liberty and a versatile musician in his own right (the Dave Pell Octet, etc.). He has produced recordings in many fields-All in all, this album is the result of a great deal of creativity on many levels; it is a fine example of the overall artistry of two balladeers of our time -Bud & Travis.
PRODUCER: DAVE PELL
Engineer: Dave Wiechman
Cover Design: Studio Five
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