What's That I Hear?: The Songs of Phil Ochs - Overview

Overview

Producer Gene Shay says that he never intended the project to be a tribute album: "It was coming up on the twentieth anniversary of Phil 's death. I always had loved his music and his politics and respected what he did. Then I happened to hear this group disappear fear—Sonia Rutstein and her sister Cindy—do the song 'Is There Anybody Here?' That just clicked the light on, you know, that here's a young group in their twenties, doing Phil Ochs material and doing it in a really dynamic way. I was really inspired. That demonstrated to me that the songs were still valid, still vigorous, and could be done in contemporary way." A core group of the artists from the compilation were frequent participants in the "Phil Och's Song Nights" that Phil's sister Sonny Ochs had been holding for the past 15 years. Five of these artist participated in a tour to support the album. They were Pat Humphries, Nancy Tucker, Kim and Reggie Harris, Magpie, and Greg Greenway.

Three of the songs included were not recorded by Ochs in his lifetime: "Hands", "Freedom Riders", and "Sailors and Soldiers". Some of the songs are performed in a style similar to Ochs's, but others are given new arrangements. For example, Rex Fowler of Aztec Two Step performs "There but for Fortune" with a reggae rhythm and updates the lyrics with references to the incident at Tiananmen Square.

The album was the second-most-played album by folk radio DJs in 1998. It ranked behind another major folk music tribute double album released the same week, Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger (Appleseed/Red House).

Writing for Allmusic, Bruce Eder said of the compilation: "The quality of the performances is uniformly first-rate, and it's astonishing to discover the full range of admirers that Ochs' songs attract, as well as the sheer selection of songs, some of which Ochs never got to record officially — few key bases are left untouched in the two-hour-plus collection, although it would have been nice if someone had covered released obscurities such as 'Basket in the Pool.' The notes are very thorough, personal, and affecting."