Kerouac’s Last Dream (Red House/Appleseed) (star) (star) (star) (star)
Veteran folk singer Ramblin’ Jack Elliott has never been one to worry about coming up with new material. For more than 30 years, the singer-guitarist has sung and often recorded the same songs time and again. “I have been asked, sometimes, why I don’t learn new songs,” Elliott writes in the liner notes to his latest release, which actually was recorded 17 years ago in a wine cellar studio during a trip to Germany. “These are old ones and I have sung them for a long time. They are good and I think they shall always be good.” The 17 songs here, including Woody Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre” and “Pretty Boy Floyd,” traditionals such as “Buffalo Skinners” and “Roving Gambler” and Elliott’s own talking blues, “912 Greens,” are familiar fare indeed to Elliott fans, but they have seldom sounded better.