Audio post reblogged from Doc Shoe's Music Blog with 6 notes - Played 10 times
Richard “Rabbit” Brown only had one recording session in his entire life, but it was enough to produce a masterpiece. Greil Marcus has called “James Alley Blues” the greatest record of all time. It’s pretty damn good, and there’s a curious story about how this and many other Folk records have been handed down to us. From Wikipedia:
Harry Smith was a West Coast filmmaker, bohemian, and eccentric, who, around 1940, developed a hobby of collecting old blues, jazz, country, Cajun, and gospel records, 78s being the only medium at the time. While mainstream America often considered these records to be ephemeral, he took them seriously and accumulated a collection of several thousand recordings, and over time began to develop an interest in seeing them preserved and curated.
In 1947, he met with Moses Asch, with an interest in selling or licensing the collection to Asch’s label, Folkways Records. Smith wrote that he selected recordings from between “1927, when electronic recording made possible accurate music reproduction, and 1932, when the Depression halted folk music sales.” When the Anthology was released, neither Folkways nor Smith possessed the licensing rights to these recordings, many of which had initially been issued by record companies that were still in existence, including Columbia and Paramount. The anthology thus technically qualifies as a high-profile bootleg. Folkways would later obtain some licensing rights, although the Anthology would not be completely licensed until the 1997 Smithsonian reissue.
I’ve written about the Folkways label before (click here). As far as I’m concerned, Moses Asch and Harry Smith are benefactors to the human race for preserving this music and introducing people to it—even if it meant bootlegging songs without the express written permission of the major labels. Nowadays, Smith and Asch would get their asses and thrown in jail. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Audio post reblogged from Doc Shoe's Music Blog with 6 notes - Played 10 times
Richard “Rabbit” Brown only had one recording session in his entire life, but it was enough to produce a masterpiece. Greil Marcus has called “James Alley Blues” the greatest record of all time. It’s pretty damn good, and there’s a curious story about how this and many other Folk records have been handed down to us. From Wikipedia:
Harry Smith was a West Coast filmmaker, bohemian, and eccentric, who, around 1940, developed a hobby of collecting old blues, jazz, country, Cajun, and gospel records, 78s being the only medium at the time. While mainstream America often considered these records to be ephemeral, he took them seriously and accumulated a collection of several thousand recordings, and over time began to develop an interest in seeing them preserved and curated.
In 1947, he met with Moses Asch, with an interest in selling or licensing the collection to Asch’s label, Folkways Records. Smith wrote that he selected recordings from between “1927, when electronic recording made possible accurate music reproduction, and 1932, when the Depression halted folk music sales.” When the Anthology was released, neither Folkways nor Smith possessed the licensing rights to these recordings, many of which had initially been issued by record companies that were still in existence, including Columbia and Paramount. The anthology thus technically qualifies as a high-profile bootleg. Folkways would later obtain some licensing rights, although the Anthology would not be completely licensed until the 1997 Smithsonian reissue.
I’ve written about the Folkways label before (click here). As far as I’m concerned, Moses Asch and Harry Smith are benefactors to the human race for preserving this music and introducing people to it—even if it meant bootlegging songs without the express written permission of the major labels. Nowadays, Smith and Asch would get their asses and thrown in jail. Makes you think, doesn’t it?