New CD of Bessie Jones due out Oct 2014

Subject: New CD of Bessie Jones due out Oct 2014
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 01:22 PM

I've just seen a message on Facebook from the Alan Lomax Archive that they are planning to release a 2-CD set of recordings of Bessie Jones recorded by Alan Lomax between 1959 and 1966. Some of the recordings are previously unreleased, and include Bessie singing with the Georgia Sea Island Singers and others such as Rev Gary Davis. The CD set is due out in October 2014 on the Tompkins Square label, and it should be a great tribute to this wonderful singer.

The Archive has marked the announcement with a YouTube recording of Bessie singing Diamond Joe. Bessie died 30 years ago today, on 17 July 1984, aged 82.

The Alan Lomax foundation, the Association for Cultural Equity, has a very good article about Bessie Jones.

Matthew

Subject: RE: New CD of Bessie Jones due out Oct 2014
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 01:42 PM

Hi Matthew. Hope it's boiling hot in Bradfield. I've got that much Bessie Jones stuff already that I'll have to check the tracklisting and see how many duplicates there are.

For anyone who hasn't got such a surfeit of riches, or has never heard Bessie Jones, make sure you buy it. She was wonderful!

There's nothing about it on the the Tompkins Square website yet, BTW.

Subject: RE: New CD of Bessie Jones due out Oct 2014
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 02:09 PM

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!

Subject: RE: New CD of Bessie Jones due out Oct 2014
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 04:37 PM

As ever Fred you are a fountain of musical knowledge, and I am now very much looking forward to encountering Sweet Papa Stovepipe. The Association for Cultural Equity website notes that he was recorded with Bessie Jones in New York in 1961 singing You've Got To Reap Just What You Sow under the name of the Reverend McKinley Peebles.

I will not be arriving in Bradfield until tomorrow, and have been getting boiled alive on Welsh hills instead today. I trust everyone behaved at the session at the Belvedere.

Matthew

Subject: RE: New CD of Bessie Jones due out Oct 2014
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 06:03 PM

Concerning Sweet Papa Stovepipe, Daddy Stovepipe, Stovepipe No.1 -
There is a WIKI article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daddy_Stovepipe

Thanks for the news of this forthcoming release - certainly a "must have" regardless of having previous LP's by Bessie Jones and other Sea Island musicians.

Thanks! Thomas.

Subject: Sweet Papa Stovepipe (McKinley Peebles 1897-1985)
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 07:26 PM

I never cease to be amazed at what turns up on YouTube; the two 1926 recordings by Sweet Papa Stovepipe mentioned earlier by Fred are available there:-

All Birds Look Like Chicken To Me.

According to Songfacts the song was written by the black songwriter Irving Jones in 1899, in response to the hit song by Ernest Hogan "All Coons Look Alike To Me". So this song perhaps has some claim to being an early anti-racist song.

Mama's Angel Child

Google Books also turns up part of an article by Anton J Mikofsky in the Encyclopedia of the Blues, Gerard Herzhaft, 2nd edition, 1997 describing McKinley Peebles/ Sweet Papa Stovepipe as a well-known street performer in 1970's New York with a theatrical style, and also a colleague of the Rev. Gary Davis.

Matthew

Subject: RE: New CD of Bessie Jones due out Oct 2014
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 06:19 AM

Matthew. Now that throws some light on the matter. Smithsonian Folkways SFWCD 40160 Friends of Old Time Music-The Folk Arrival contains a track by one McKinley Peebles; Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt, recorded in May 02.05.64.

That presumably will be the same guy.

The Belvedere session was excellent. In fact it was enlivened immensely by the fact that Karina Knigh and her bloke, Sean Cooney, came over from Manchester. She's just starting a new job, so probably won't be able to get over again in the forseeable future. Rats.

Anyway, gotta go. I'm off to shout rude epithets at Esther McVey who, as the local MP gets a free ticket to see the Hoylake International golf tournament.