In the Tradition is a 1964 album by American folksinger Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....

 and The Red Onion Jazz Band. It is unusual in the fact that the tracks are evenly split between Van Ronk and the Red Onions.

In the Tradition is out-of-print but is included in the 2002 Fantasy Records

Fantasy Records

Fantasy Records is a United States-based record label that was founded by Max and Sol Weiss in 1949 in San Francisco, California. They had previously operated a record-pressing plant called Circle Record Company before forming the Fantasy label...

 CD reissue Two Sides of Dave Van Ronk

Two Sides of Dave Van Ronk

Two Sides of Dave Van Ronk is a compilation album by American folksinger Dave Van Ronk, released in 2002. It includes the complete 1963 LP, In the Tradition and all of 1982’s Your Basic Dave Van Ronk except for "In the Midnight Hour" and "Stagolee"....

which also contains most of Your Basic Dave Van Ronk

Your Basic Dave Van Ronk

Your Basic Dave Van Ronk is an album by American folk and blues singer Dave Van Ronk, released in 1982.Your Basic Dave Van Ronk was recorded in one single night session in London in 1981. It is out-of-print but was re-released along with In the Tradition in 2002 by Fantasy Records as Two Sides of...

. Some songs are also included in the Big Beat compilation Hesitation Blues

Hesitation Blues (Dave Van Ronk album)

Hesitation Blues is a compilation album by American folk and blues singer Dave Van Ronk, released in 1988.The 16 songs in the compilation come from three '60s Prestige LPs — Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger, In the Tradition, and the original Inside Dave Van Ronk...

.

Reception

Writing for Allmusic, critic Richie Unterberger

Richie Unterberger

Richie Unterberger is a US author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing.-Life and writing:Having worked as a DJ at WXPN in Philadelphia, he started reviewing records for Op magazine in 1983...

 wrote of the album "a little strange for an early Dave Van Ronk LP, with the album split evenly between tracks on which the singer is backed by the Dixieland jazz-style combo the Red Onions and by more customary acoustic folk-blues solo guitar. Both of those styles were part of his persona, though it's the more somber acoustic folk-blues that stand out more. It's a reasonably strong album, not too much different from much of the rest of his catalog, other than in the balanced mixture between jazz and folk approaches."

Track listing

1. "Cake Walkin' Babies From Home" (Smith, Troy, Williams) – 2:59
2. "Ace in the Hole" (Dempsey, Mitchell) – 2:53
3. "St. Louis Tickle" (Barney, Seymour) – 3:25
4. "Death Letter Blues" (Traditional) – 4:48
5. "If I Had To Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You" (Bob Dylan
   Bob Dylan
   Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
   
   ) – 3:33
6. "Whoa Back Buck" (Huddie Ledbetter, Alan Lomax
   Alan Lomax
   Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...
   
   ) – 3:39
7. "Sister Kate" (Piron) – 3:04
8. "Kansas City Blues" (Jackson) – 2:10
9. "Green Rocky Road" (Chandler, Kaufman) – 3:39
10. "See See Rider" (Rainey) – 5:18
11. "Rocks and Gravel" (Traditional) – 4:27
12. "Hesitation Blues" (Traditional) – 3:32