Joe-- don't worry so much! Many of the posted songs are grouped, as the project evolved, by similarity of song*, and no, I do not foresee adding all the lyrics for the Allen, Hampton, or Higginson collections here at Mudcat. (I do keep a copy of thoses collections saved on my puder, in case those sites ever stop offering the spirituals.) Nor do I see any need to add any tune-add threads. It would be silly, since we can index them in the permathread along with links to their location at these other sites. (This is how I handled the Max Hunter gospel material in another thread.)

As to posting requirements-- if they are posted at Mudcat, they will certainly follow Mudcat guidelines on collected and posted tunes, and obviously the first two who have responded about helping know these guidelines well. I may offer these MIDIs to the people whose sites contain the collections, first, as well as keeping a set on my computer as I do all the materials in the project, and it may be that what we will post here is just the set of links. I need to know if there will be a result, before I offer the MIDIs to these folks and ask how THEY would like them done.

Mmario, Mary, I do want to go over any MIDIs before they are submitted to the Mudcat MIDI page, so please email me anything you work on. There are issues of filenaming, tempo, pickup notes, etc., and I want to be sure these are handled consistently, however many help and however each one goes about their effort. Also, by reviewing each one I will be able to hear how they may relate to melodies used for other spirituals or later blues.... and be sure to post those relationships. I have a theory that tunes floated in much the same way the verses did, now that I have listened to and performed a lot of the Lomax stuff at LOC.

Mary, do you want to send me one as a .mid in Cakewalk so I can see how NWC likes it?

~Susan


* The reason they are grouped that way, and not by source, is because as we find similar songs in new collections, sources, and recordings, we search up the existing thread for that song (by text/title fragments) and we continue to add the new details there. This has been working well for those of us doing the work as well as for those accessing it. I always enjoy snagging Jerry Rasmussen's interest (by song title) when we pop up an "old" thread; he tells us how he and his group do them now, or offer different variants and recorded versions, and he often has some history/origins stuff to offer since his guys go WAY back in time.