Zen and the art of Stealing.

Cellist (among other things) Fred Katz, in 1958, conducted a track by track jazz instrumentation variation, including John Williams on the keys before he started scoring the greatest movies of all time, through covers (transformativerecreations, more like) of folk songs. The album, blending folk tunes from different traditions (African, Hebrew, American),follows a continuous line from beginning to end despite changing instrementation, musicians, and traditions between nearly every track. Something is lost to us younger folks since the songs these covers came from would be unrecognizable to our ears. Yet many of the reviews of the day said the same things. Mr. Katz was not out to make a beatnik translation of grounded folk music. He had something more lofty in mind. The songs, to Mr. Katz, were more important for the emotions they portray than for their melody. He was more concerned with the idea of the song than the song itself. Apparently he had been reading his Lao-Tsu.

Google him. Read some quotes. To my modern eyes Katz comes off kind of silly and full of shit. But this albums was from 1958. Zen platitudes didn't seems so hackney then as they do now. I could go on, for a while, about this but here's the important part.The album has been re-released. All I have are some mp3s I downloaded years ago that sound like they were captured from vinyl. They are only 96kbps and they sound like crap. I could buy the album, sure. But I want to hear it in its full glory before I decide to do so. So if anyone knows of a torrent... hook me up.

Fred Katz: Folk Songs For Far Out Folk (1958/2007)