This Life I'm Living

by Richie Unterberger Hester's second Columbia album was similar to her first, but has gotten far less attention by historians, probably for the unfair but simple reason that Bob Dylan played on a few tracks on the first Columbia LP, but is not on the second. Again she played an assortment of traditional folk numbers, her vocals and guitar backed by light accompaniment from bass, another guitarist (Bruce Langhorne, famous for his work on early Dylan electric folk-rock sessions), and even an itsy bitsy bit of percussion. Actually, it has an edge on the first Columbia album because Hester favors moodier material that's usually heavy on the minor melodies. "East Virginia" (which she would re-record in the late 1960s in a folk-rock-psychedelic arrangement with the Carolyn Hester Coalition) and "Coo-Coo" are the only instantly familiar standards here; she also gets into something of a Latin/world music vein with "Pera Stous" and "Tumbando Cana." The entire album, along with unreleased outtakes of two songs left off the LP ("Summertime" and Buddy Holly's "Lonesome Tears"), is available as part of Bear Family's two-CD Dear Companion anthology.