Back when yours truly was a college student, if you wanted to establish your politically progressive cred, you had to own at least one Vanguard Records platter. The New York-based record company was one of the first to challenge the entertainment industry's black list in the fifties (putting out new releases by then political pariahs like Paul Robeson and the Weavers) and was home to a host of bluesfolk (Mississippi John Hurt, Big Mama Thornton, Buddy Guy, et al) and uppity folk singers (Joan Baez, Buffy St. Marie, Rambling Jack Elliot, etc.) in the sixties. And though Vanguard didn't get into rock as firmly as fellow folk label Elektra Records would, it was the home of Country Joe & the Fish Cheer – decidedly a counter-cultural touchstone all by itself.

The label was bought up by Welk Music Group (of Lawrence Welk fame) back in the 80's and has since soldiered on, but for most folk & blues buffs, Vanguard's peak period would have to be the 1960s. In part to remind folks of those glory days, the label has started issuing a series of budget retrospectives entitled "Vanguard Visionaries," ten-track CD sets devoted to all of their company's big acts. Been listening to several of these little discs recently, so let's take a look back at some of the background music I remember from too many late-nite undergraduate political argument sessions back in 1969...

My first choice would have to be the guy whose original Vanguard long-players took up the most space on my dorm room record shelf: Jim Kweskin. Of all the artists on Vanguard's roster, Kweskin was the least sternly political – his primary medium was a jug band, fergawdsakes – though his career would later take a decidedly strange turn into counter-cultural cultishness. Jug Bands enjoyed a brief vogue in the folk community in the sixties and were a proving ground for rock artists like Jerry Garcia and John Sebastian, but the only one to have an extensive recording legacy was Kweskin's group. The loose-knit Boston-based collective released three albums on Vanguard – and a fourth on Warner Bros. – before disbanding. Kweskin himself put out three more solo albums for the label.

The "Vanguard Visionaries" set is credited just to Jim Kweskin, though the photo on the cover is a black-and-white cropping of the cover to the first Jug Band LP. The band's most famous alumnus, Maria Muldaur isn't even repped in the picture, though one of her better tracks, "Richland Woman Blues," is thankfully included in the set. Though Kweskin was the group's top billed singer, the band had a variety of personable lead vocalists – Maria, her bluesy vocalist husband Geoff Muldaur, nasally crooner Bruno Wolfe – contributing, and on the eight tracks featuring the Jug Band, they all get to take center mic at least once. Two songs on the set are from the man's solo albums, though to be honest, I wish compilation producer Vince Hans had put in two more Jug Band cuts instead. Solo Kweskin was for the die-hards and the New England folk crowd; the juggers provided syncopated folkiness at its most universally irrepressible.