America over the Water
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America over the Water
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Narrated by:
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David Tibet
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Pip Barnes
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Shirley Collins
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By:
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Shirley Collins
About this listen
In America over the Water, celebrated English folksinger Shirley Collins offers an affecting account of her year-long stint as assistant to legendary musical historian and folklorist Alan Lomax. Together, they travelled to Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Georgia, discovering Mississippi Fred McDowell and many others, in their tireless work to uncover the traditional music of America's heartland.
Blending the personal story of Shirley Collins' relationship with Lomax and offering a unique first-hand account of a country on the brink of the civil rights era, America over the Water cuts right to the heart of the blues in a fascinating account of Collins' and Lomax's ground-breaking journey across the Southern states of the USA to record the music that started it all.
Originally published more than 15 years ago, this definitive edition includes a new introduction by Shirley Collins.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2022 Shirley Collins (P)2022 White RabbitListeners also enjoyed...
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Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 247
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 212
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 209
In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
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5 out of 5 stars
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MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
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Good Poems
- Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor
- By: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and others
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 203
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 164
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 153
Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very good, but. . .
- By KSmith on 01-27-11
By: Emily Dickinson, and others
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Owls Do Cry
- By: Janet Frame
- Narrated by: Heather Bolton
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Owls Do Cry is Janet Frame's first novel. She describes her idea behind it in the second volume of her autobiography: 'Pictures of great treasure in the midst of sadness and waste haunted me and I began to think, in fiction, of a childhood, home life, hospital life, using people known to me as a base for main characters, and inventing minor characters.'
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4 out of 5 stars
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well told but a wee bit depressing.
- By Muzza on 11-03-19
By: Janet Frame
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Travels with Charley in Search of America
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Gary Sinise
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5,530
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 4,849
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 4,848
In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America, from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck’s attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature—to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Gary Sinise is fantastic!
- By C. Wilson on 01-11-17
By: John Steinbeck
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Made in Scotland
- My Grand Adventures in a Wee Country
- By: Billy Connolly
- Narrated by: Gordon Kennedy
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 216
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 198
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 197
Billy Connolly may be a citizen of the world, but in his heart he's never been far from his homeland. Made in Scotland is Billy's unique and intimate portrait of his native Scotland, a love letter to the places and people that made him. It's an adventure inspired by a single incident: the moment Billy received his Knighthood and was asked, 'How does it feel to have achieved all this when you came from nothing?' His response was, 'But I did come from something!'
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1 out of 5 stars
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I can't believe I wasted a credit on this blather.
- By J. M. Popa on 01-23-20
By: Billy Connolly
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Breakfast at Tiffany's
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Michael C. Hall
- Length: 2 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13,115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 11,908
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 11,889
Golden Globe-winning actor Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) performs Truman Capote's masterstroke about a young writer's charmed fascination with his unorthodox neighbor, the "American geisha" Holly Golightly. Holly - a World War II-era society girl in her late teens - survives via socialization, attending parties and restaurants with men from the wealthy upper class who also provide her with money and expensive gifts. Over the course of the novella, the seemingly shallow Holly slowly opens up to the curious protagonist.
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5 out of 5 stars
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"Better to look at the sky than live there"
- By W Perry Hall on 02-12-14
By: Truman Capote
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All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
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One of Ours
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Kristen Underwood
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 127
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4 out of 5 stars 92
Claude Wheeler resembles the youngest son of an American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It is only when his country enters the First World War that Claude finds what he has been searching for all his life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Cather's writing is impeccable
- By Kelly on 12-20-19
By: Willa Cather
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Letters of a Woman Homesteader
- By: Elinore Pruitt Stewart
- Narrated by: Gwen Hughes
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 137
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 139
Letters of a Woman Homesteader is a frontier classic by Elinore Pruitt Stewart, a widowed young mother who accepted an offer to assist with a ranch in Wyoming. In Stewart's delightful collection of letters, she describes her homesteading experiences to her former employer, Mrs. Coney.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Every woman in the US should read this book.
- By Dolly Jane Prenzel on 03-17-15
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Ava's Man
- By: Rick Bragg
- Narrated by: Rick Bragg
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 656
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 454
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Story5 out of 5 stars 451
With the same emotional generosity and effortlessly compelling storytelling that made All Over But the Shoutin’ a beloved bestseller, Rick Bragg continues his personal history of the Deep South. This time he’s writing about his grandfather Charlie Bundrum, a man who died before Bragg was born but left an indelible imprint on the people who loved him. Drawing on their memories, Bragg reconstructs the life of an unlettered roofer who kept food on his family’s table through the worst of the Great Depression
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5 out of 5 stars
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Deeply moving
- By Kate on 08-12-03
By: Rick Bragg
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Grandma Gatewood's Walk
- The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
- By: Ben Montgomery
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,596
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,272
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,262
Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Inspiring story about a strong amazing woman
- By David Shear on 12-22-14
By: Ben Montgomery
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The House at Sugar Beach
- A Memoir
- By: Helene Cooper
- Narrated by: Helene Cooper
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 304
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 186
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 186
At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper's long voyage home.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Can't recommend it
- By Taryn on 03-25-16
By: Helene Cooper
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Running on Red Dog Road
- And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood
- By: Drema Hall Berkheimer
- Narrated by: Bailey Carr
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 196
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 166
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 167
Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers weave through Drema's childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed in the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that feels like a novel with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema's coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, poetry-writing hobos, and traveling carnivals, and through it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational family.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Narrator’s attempt at a southern accent distracting to story
- By Ryan C. Bango on 01-05-22
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 513
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 364
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Story4 out of 5 stars 362
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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Main Street
- By: Sinclair Lewis
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 193
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 130
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Story4 out of 5 stars 131
Widely hailed as a milestone in American literature, Sinclair Lewis' Main Street vividly describes a country on the verge of massive change, with traditional values being threatened by progress. The novel's heroine, Carol Milford, is a highly educated, ambitious woman who plans to join a newly enlightened society. But after marrying a small-town doctor, she finds herself trapped in the role of a dutiful wife. Carol's desires for social change conflict with the security of her comfortable married life, as she struggles to understand the cost of conformity...and rebellion. As relevant today as it was upon its 1920 publication, Main Street is both a masterful piece of writing and a fascinating microcosm of America's social evolution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Delightful reading of an excellent book
- By Steve Bird on 06-14-05
By: Sinclair Lewis
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On Hitler's Mountain
- Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood
- By: Irmgard A. Hunt
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden - just steps from Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat - Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war - and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime - aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A rare and very much appreciated perspective.
- By tabounds on 12-28-17
By: Irmgard A. Hunt
What listeners say about America over the Water
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Grant Stewart
- 05-18-22
Essential listening for fans of Collins, Lomax and folk music
An absolutely beautiful book, read by Shirley Collins herself. Her reading is warm, lovingly told and you can see it all coming out of her memory as she laughs at the stories she tells. An incredible experience.
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