Album Notes

IN HIGH COTTON

Five years after the release of their critically acclaimed SOUTHERN SOLDIER album, comes their newest, long awaited sequel; IN HIGH COTTON! Picking up where they left off, the boys are back in fine form and high style with their best work ever.

Here are more minstrel tunes, plantation melodies and military airs that were beloved and familiar companions to the hundreds of thousands of young men, from north and south. These songs were as much a part of them as knapsack, bedroll or bible when they left civil life behind to take up arms to fight and die for the causes they believed in during America's great Civil War.

IN HIGH COTTON will bring the listener back more than 150 years to hear music that was essentially laying the foundations of American popular music in the years leading up to the War Between the States. You'll hear timeless melodies created by American musical icons Stephen Foster and Daniel Emmett, such as The Old Folks at Home (Swanee River) and The Blue Tail Fly. Songs about life on the nation's earliest highways of commerce - America's mighty rivers. You'll hear songs of heartbreak and songs of joy and delight. The listener will hear minstrel melodies that were adapted by the soldiers to reflect the experiences of war and by making fun of those hardships in song, make them easier to bear.

The 2nd South Carolina String Band is recognized far and wide for their ability to breathe new life into music muted only by the passage of time and fashion - great music from our nation's turbulent past - making it exciting and enjoyable to the 21st century listener. IN HIGH COTTON is bursting with the same exuberant spirit that this band has always been famous for.