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Product details
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Track Listings
| Disc: 1 | |||
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| 1. Guitar Blues - Sylvester Weaver | |||
| 2. Time Ain't Gonna Make Me Stay - Ed Andrews | |||
| 3. Sundown Blues - Daddy Stovepipe | |||
| 4. Salt Lake City Blues - Papa Charlie Jackson | |||
| 5. Whiskey And Gin Blues - South Street Trio | |||
See all 25 tracks on this disc
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| Disc: 2 | |||
| 1. Jail House Blues - Whistler & His Jug Band | |||
| 2. Blues, Just Blues, That's All - Old Southern Jug Band | |||
| 3. String Band Blues - Kansas City Blues Strummers | |||
| 4. Black Cat Blues - Old Pal Smoke Shop Four | |||
| 5. Dirty Guitar Blues - Leecan & Cooksey | |||
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See all 25 tracks on this disc
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| Disc: 3 | |||
| 1. Original Stack O'Lee Blues - Long 'Cleve' Reed | |||
| 2. Tuxedo Blues - Whistlin' Pete & Daddy Stovepipe | |||
| 3. Mean Conductor Blues - Ed Bell | |||
| 4. Back Door Blues - Emery Glen | |||
| 5. Spanish Blues - Lewis Black | |||
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See all 25 tracks on this disc
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| Disc: 4 | |||
| 1. Labor Blues - Tom Dickson | |||
| 2. Goin' Away Blues - Lottie Kimbrough | |||
| 3. No Baby - Charlie Kyle | |||
| 4. Early Mornin' Blues - William Harris | |||
| 5. Dreaming Blues - Willie Reed | |||
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See all 25 tracks on this disc
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Product Description
CD Description
The variety and originality that country blues artists brought to the studio during the early years of recording was compromised by the economies record companies applied to their business in order to weather the Depression years. There was tepid enthusiasm until the widespread success of Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues" in 1920, when it became obvious there was a potentially vast market. Then, in February 1923, Bessie Smith cut her first session and for several years it was as if floodgates had opened. Anyone with blues skills auditioned for a talent scout or made his or her way to a field recording session. While, among the men, Blind Lemon Jeffersons, Blind Blake and Robert Johnson established themselves as market leaders, the following swell encompassed the broadest spectrum of musical influence. Medicine show veterans and songsters such as Stovepipe No. 1, Pink Anderson, Papa Harvey Hull and Richard 'Rabbit' Brown, adept at blues, had repertoires that reflected black folk music. The vigour and freshness of these artist's lyrics and the power of their performance, is a reminder that theirs was music tested in public performance, not composed for the studio. This compilation shows what a significant body of music encompassing a wide variety of styles and influences was produced, almost without most Americans noticing. But for the tenacity of a few collectors even these recordings might have been lost. Here they are, though, remastered and expertly annotated - evidence of a vast reservoir of talent too often overlooked. Until now. Also available: WHEN THE LEVEEE BREAKS: MISSISSIPPI BLUES, RARE CUTS 1926-1941 (JSPCD7781).
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is a real box of delights.100 rare songs from 78rpm records recorded between 1923 and 1942.If you like your music sounding like somebodys frying their breakfast in the background this set is what you have been looking for.These tracks were recorded when production was fairly minimal and the band stood around one mic.
Just the names of the artists give an idea of whats instore,Daddy Stovepipe,Papa Charlie Jackson,Hambone willie newbern,Dixieland Jug Blowers,etc etc.Can you imagine artists with names like these gettin in the charts today,Nope.
The people who made these tracks have long gone,but because of collectors allowing JSP to remaster and release them in this value for money box set everybody can own a little piece of American musical history.This is a must have collection ,buy it now.
Just the names of the artists give an idea of whats instore,Daddy Stovepipe,Papa Charlie Jackson,Hambone willie newbern,Dixieland Jug Blowers,etc etc.Can you imagine artists with names like these gettin in the charts today,Nope.
The people who made these tracks have long gone,but because of collectors allowing JSP to remaster and release them in this value for money box set everybody can own a little piece of American musical history.This is a must have collection ,buy it now.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
It's the sound quality that makes give this set two stars. Actually I would give no stars for the sound quality, the stars are for the actual content which is excellent.
I was listening to the jug band disc (B) the other day and I just couldn't enjoy it. The sound is shrill and has no depth. Violins become painful. It takes away 90% of the listening pleasure. I put on Gastonia Gallop (cotton mill songs & hillbilly blues, 1927-1931), Old Hat records, immediately after and what a contrast. There is plenty of hiss and crackle on this cd but the music is all there and can be enjoyed.
On a positive note the set does have an Alec Johnson track that has not been messed about with and sounds great. On the side B that I have complained about track 14 is stunning and I loved it. I am talking about content. The music on that track is so good it almost overcomes the remastering of this set and I will keep an eye out to see if I can find it on some other label. I also enjoyed a lot of the guitar work on side C, a blues side even though the sound is not great.
I haven't listened to this set exhaustively but enough to know it is badly flawed. If I had my money back I would not buy it again.
I was listening to the jug band disc (B) the other day and I just couldn't enjoy it. The sound is shrill and has no depth. Violins become painful. It takes away 90% of the listening pleasure. I put on Gastonia Gallop (cotton mill songs & hillbilly blues, 1927-1931), Old Hat records, immediately after and what a contrast. There is plenty of hiss and crackle on this cd but the music is all there and can be enjoyed.
On a positive note the set does have an Alec Johnson track that has not been messed about with and sounds great. On the side B that I have complained about track 14 is stunning and I loved it. I am talking about content. The music on that track is so good it almost overcomes the remastering of this set and I will keep an eye out to see if I can find it on some other label. I also enjoyed a lot of the guitar work on side C, a blues side even though the sound is not great.
I haven't listened to this set exhaustively but enough to know it is badly flawed. If I had my money back I would not buy it again.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Richer Tradition Indeed! Essential Collection!
10 Mar 2008
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
As a budding Paramount Records Man, I have to somewhat agree with the previous review....But that being said, you have to take 'Pre War' Recordings with a grain of salt to begin with. And if your already in that frame of mind, then John Stedman and JSP has once again given us on helluva box set at a great price to listen to! What we have here, and again, if your into the "Paramount Records" thing then you know what I'm talking about, is a bunch of "one off" or "Two Off" country and rural Blues that, unless you were in a 20 mile radius of the artist, you never heard these 78's before. No!, their NOT Charlie Patton or Blind Blake or Blind Lemmon Jefferson, these were the guys and gals that were way below that scale of success, but that's the beauty of these sides....these get even more 'real' than the more popular pre-war artists! I could imagine sitting in someones livingroom listening to these songs while they were playing them! It's THAT intimate! And once again JSP comes up with a collection that is definitely NOT boring. Again, is it Charlie Or Blind Blake...NO...But these folks are real, pretty damned good at their playing and again, this is like being invited to a down home fish fry on a Sunday afternoon in Chicago, or Indiana or any Southern small town back in the pre war days...... I suggest you compare this collection with anything on the Document label, which does a very good job at 'Documenting' Old 78 artists, but for the most part makes for a very boring 'Listen', unless your a scholar. On the other hand, these are real people like you and me who, at least were worthy enough for someone to make a record of them, and JSP deserves Kudo's for putting together a 4 cd set that is both listenable (considering the rarity of the 78's involved) and enjoyable! So, when your ready to go beyond the 'Stars' of Pre-War Blues and Country/Rural music, take the plunge on this set, both the remastering and 'coolness' of this music hopefully will bring you much pleasure!
Gerard Masters
Gerard Masters
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Hard to get out of the CD player once you put it in!
10 Dec 2008
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Picture yourself between 1915 and 1935 at a Southern Black juke house or country supper or picnic (both often juke houses at another location with the same amount of dancing, drinking,gambling, drugging, eating, signifying, sexing for free and for money, and generally good vibrations despite the expected shootings, cuttings, or raids by the law if proper payments weren't be made to the plantation owner or the sheriff. Picture yourself ready to eat, drink, and be merry, to PARTY, PARTY HARDY, and exhaust yourself with pleasure or at least the pursuit of please. Be ready to keep partying until what they used to call "broad daylight."
This is the soundtrack.
The string bands here and the solo blues artists would have been what you listened to, although their tunes would not have be confined to the three minutes 78 records limited them to. They would grind on 10 or 20 minutes or longer for dancing often slow and deliciously naughty for the dancers or anyone who wanted to watch.
The music here swings for dancers, rattles for shaking it, and grooves to ease the mind. There is nothing attempting to be anything but funky and Black.
Most of this box set documents the many string bands usually containing fiddles, guitars, tenor or six-string banjos, often including basses, jugs, percussion, mandolins, banjo-mandolins, and banjo ukes, and sometimes including a horn or two, that reflected the taste of young Black musicians and dancers. They played music that mixed Blues, Ragtime, Jazz, popular music, and the old string band repertoire and sustained dance rhythms that had come from Africa as well as new jams created by Africans in America.
The great string band tunes here throw light on the old assumption that Black string bands had died out by the 1920s or that the recording industry did not record them because of racism.
Black musical taste developed beyond the old time fiddle banjo repertoire that reached its peak in the 1890s. As the new Century neared, a wave of new music swept from the African American community through the US and beyond. This music included Ragtime, both the formal composed piano ragtime associated with the great piano composers like Joplin, and all sorts of pop music that called itself Ragtime as well as Black folk derived music that had inspired Ragtime and was in turn influenced by pop music Ragtime. This music also included the Blues and many mixtures between Ragtime and the Blues. The new music was also associated with a wave of new dances many of which went from Black rural juke joints to Broadway and Europe.
Scores of these recordings were made by commercial record companies between 1919 and the 1940s and some of the best of these recordings are on this CD.
Regardless fo this historical importance, this Box Set is sure fun and great to listen to, a bit hard to get out of the CD player once you put it in.
This is the soundtrack.
The string bands here and the solo blues artists would have been what you listened to, although their tunes would not have be confined to the three minutes 78 records limited them to. They would grind on 10 or 20 minutes or longer for dancing often slow and deliciously naughty for the dancers or anyone who wanted to watch.
The music here swings for dancers, rattles for shaking it, and grooves to ease the mind. There is nothing attempting to be anything but funky and Black.
Most of this box set documents the many string bands usually containing fiddles, guitars, tenor or six-string banjos, often including basses, jugs, percussion, mandolins, banjo-mandolins, and banjo ukes, and sometimes including a horn or two, that reflected the taste of young Black musicians and dancers. They played music that mixed Blues, Ragtime, Jazz, popular music, and the old string band repertoire and sustained dance rhythms that had come from Africa as well as new jams created by Africans in America.
The great string band tunes here throw light on the old assumption that Black string bands had died out by the 1920s or that the recording industry did not record them because of racism.
Black musical taste developed beyond the old time fiddle banjo repertoire that reached its peak in the 1890s. As the new Century neared, a wave of new music swept from the African American community through the US and beyond. This music included Ragtime, both the formal composed piano ragtime associated with the great piano composers like Joplin, and all sorts of pop music that called itself Ragtime as well as Black folk derived music that had inspired Ragtime and was in turn influenced by pop music Ragtime. This music also included the Blues and many mixtures between Ragtime and the Blues. The new music was also associated with a wave of new dances many of which went from Black rural juke joints to Broadway and Europe.
Scores of these recordings were made by commercial record companies between 1919 and the 1940s and some of the best of these recordings are on this CD.
Regardless fo this historical importance, this Box Set is sure fun and great to listen to, a bit hard to get out of the CD player once you put it in.
15 of 32 people found the following review helpful
A Richer Tradition: Country Blues and String Music 1923-1942
21 Feb 2008
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This collection is not for the weak-hearted and includes a hundred sides on 4 CDs and there are few (literally and figuratively very few) real gems among them. Undoubtedly, you will find some sweet songs among the pile, any lover of the genre will find enough to be satisfied. However, more than fifty years into the blues revival one can say that most "good" stuff from this genre had made earlier reissues and this collection, sadly, features leftovers, rejects and material nobody chose to include in the past. What's left is not always cream of the crop material, and indeed, this collection seems like they scraped the deep bottom of the barrel to find these rarities. Unless you are an ethnomusicologist or folklorist interested in historical preservation for its own sake, much of this material will sound rough hewn, if not outright unlistenable, not only from an expectedly primitive recording standpoint but from basic musical skills. It seems like they pulled together anyone and anything, regardless of fundamental quality. Even the biggest aficionados of old-time deep-roots & blues, such as me, will find the bulk of this material a stretch. If you are looking for entertainment value with that old music, stick to the mainstay of the genre.
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