Country Comedy

Country Comedy: Songs & Frolic by
Ham & Scram, featuring Buzz Busby
Mount Vernon Music, MVM 176
Made in Mount Vernon, NY, USA

This one could have also been called Don't Judge a Book By its Cover, Part 2. My expectancy with this record after investigating the cover was to hear backwoods slapstick humor and I was worried that such a well loved yet ominous folk ballad as Pretty Polly is, would be totally butchered by such irreverent looking characters on the cover (and I didn't even show the back side!) And I was wrong, totally wrong, their Pretty Polly is in fact one of the most intriguing versions I've heard, and the  record as a whole easily falls into the A category of American traditional music. Ham & Scram is the musical duo of Pete Pike and Buzz Busby from Washington, DC. Guitar player Pete Pike from Virginia is mainly known for his association with the mandolin player Buzz Busby, who is an established name in the history of Bluegrass music. Bernarr Busbice was born in 1933 in Louisiana and among his credits is the formation of the popular group The Country Gentleman in 1957. But after the successful decade of the 1950s, Busby's career went downhill due to his "growing fondness of alcohol and drugs". After a term in jail he only occasionally performed and recorded. He died of heart failure in 2003. You can listen to Pretty Polly below.