The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #155033   Message #3642912
Posted By: GUEST,Fred McCormick
17-Jul-14 - 02:09 PM
Thread Name: New CD of Bessie Jones due out Oct 2014
Subject: RE: New CD of Bessie Jones due out Oct 2014
I've just checked the Youtube link and it says the following:-

"From the forthcoming "Get In Union: Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers," a collection of Lomax's recordings of Jones (1959-1966) performing with the Singers, solo, and with Sweet Papa Stovepipe, Janie Hunter, Mable Hillery, and Rev. Gary Davis, among others, in many previously unavailable recordings. Produced by the Alan Lomax Archive and available through the Tompkins Square label in October 2014."

I'm not sure how Sweet Papa Stovepipe got in there. If they've got the right Stovepipe, he was an obscure bluesman who made a couple of recordings in Chicago in 1926 and then disappeared from sight. I didn't know that he was ever rediscovered.

The others are of course sterling performers in their own right (especially Mable Hillery). Interestingly, none of them appear on any of the Bessie Jones records I've already got. Which suggests that a large part of this stuff will be brand new to commercial release.

Oh hell, alright, I'll tell you about Mable Hillery. She was a blues singer from just outside Atlanta, Georgia, who moved to the Georgia Sea Islands (which is where Bessie Jones was from) in 1960. She toured Britain in the late '60s, appearing at the Calton folkclub in Liverpool, on a night when I couldn't make it, and recorded an LP for XTRA while she was over here. Mable's singing was great, but the producers chose to pair her with a very square sounding trad jazz band. So the overall effect was awful. I look forward to hearing her on this compilation, without the jazz band!