Friday, January 06, 2006
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Time past is regained in two old cigar boxes
From Reuters
Perhaps because so much of music is rhythm - time cut into metric pieces - it has the power to rearrange, obliterate or reclaim time. So as we reach the part of the year when we become most attuned to the passage of days, it's worth looking back at some releases that reach into the past and pull it gloriously into the present.
Appropriately, a couple of these projects come in replicas of old cigar boxes. However, only one comes with a bottle opener. The church key is included in "Fonotone Records," a five-CD box from Atlanta's Dust-to-Digital Records devoted to the quixotic label enterprise of Joe Bussard of Frederick, Md., record collector par excellence.
Bussard contributed some of the choicest sides from his laboriously assembled collection of 25,000 priceless 78s to Dust-to-Digital's Grammy-nominated 2003 gospel box "Goodbye, Babylon." The company's new 131-track set is a monument to Bussard's other obsession - Fonotone, which from 1956 through the late '60s issued dozens of homemade 78s, long after the format had been displaced by the 45 rpm single.
Bussard's love for the old-time blues, hillbilly music and hot jazz he collected was reflected in the music he recorded. You won't hear any drums or electric instruments on Fonotone records; you will hear lots of bottleneck guitar, fiddles and, frequently, jugs (usually played by Bussard himself).
Much of the talent he employed was fine - guitarists John Fahey and Stefan Grossman cut their first sides for him -- but what's most impressive about "Fonotone Records" is the high pitch of Bussard's mania for the past. From its medium to its music, his label attempted to reanimate regional styles and sounds that had vanished into the ether by the late '30s.
A well-known record collector warned against interviewing Bussard, saying, "He's, well, a little crazy." Possibly, but it's hard not to love a man who would fight off time itself.
Several of Bussard's vintage sides found their way onto "Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows 1926-1937," a compilation from Old Hat Records. (The Raleigh, NC, label issued an album of Bussard's rarities, "Down in the Basement," in 2002.) The two-CD set is a headfirst dive into a bygone era before infomercials, when travelling patent medicine hucksters used live musical talent to rope suckers into the tent.
The Old Hat package, accompanied by a lusciously illustrated booklet annotated by label owner Marshall Wyatt, is a wonderful compilation of blues, early country and what can only be described as hokum. Listening to these antique sides, one can almost smell the Kickapoo Indian Salve and taste the Bardex Tonic. The pitches may have been the purest snake oil, but the music still delights.
The omnipresent Bussard also contributed 78s to Revenant Records' startling "American Primitive Vol. II: Pre-War Revenants (1897-1939)" and to Columbia/Legacy's "You Ain't Talkin' to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music." The latter cigar-boxed three-CD collection, which collected three Grammy nominations this month, harkens back to the days before there was even a name for country music. It surveys the brief but fruitful career of banjoist-vocalist Poole, who set the template for every string band picker that followed and for such countrified hellraisers as Hank Williams.
Some contemporary listeners may be perfectly satisfied with the machine-tooled cacophony of the present. However, as the year turns, those seeking that perfect Proustian moment may want to savor these collections, which fling one deep into another time, when American music sang in mysterious tongues.
©2005 Reuters Limit
(thanks to bob sarles, ravin films) ¶ 1/06/2006 06:48:00 PM
Time past is regained in two old cigar boxes
From Reuters
Perhaps because so much of music is rhythm - time cut into metric pieces - it has the power to rearrange, obliterate or reclaim time. So as we reach the part of the year when we become most attuned to the passage of days, it's worth looking back at some releases that reach into the past and pull it gloriously into the present.
Appropriately, a couple of these projects come in replicas of old cigar boxes. However, only one comes with a bottle opener. The church key is included in "Fonotone Records," a five-CD box from Atlanta's Dust-to-Digital Records devoted to the quixotic label enterprise of Joe Bussard of Frederick, Md., record collector par excellence.
Bussard contributed some of the choicest sides from his laboriously assembled collection of 25,000 priceless 78s to Dust-to-Digital's Grammy-nominated 2003 gospel box "Goodbye, Babylon." The company's new 131-track set is a monument to Bussard's other obsession - Fonotone, which from 1956 through the late '60s issued dozens of homemade 78s, long after the format had been displaced by the 45 rpm single.
Bussard's love for the old-time blues, hillbilly music and hot jazz he collected was reflected in the music he recorded. You won't hear any drums or electric instruments on Fonotone records; you will hear lots of bottleneck guitar, fiddles and, frequently, jugs (usually played by Bussard himself).
Much of the talent he employed was fine - guitarists John Fahey and Stefan Grossman cut their first sides for him -- but what's most impressive about "Fonotone Records" is the high pitch of Bussard's mania for the past. From its medium to its music, his label attempted to reanimate regional styles and sounds that had vanished into the ether by the late '30s.
A well-known record collector warned against interviewing Bussard, saying, "He's, well, a little crazy." Possibly, but it's hard not to love a man who would fight off time itself.
Several of Bussard's vintage sides found their way onto "Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows 1926-1937," a compilation from Old Hat Records. (The Raleigh, NC, label issued an album of Bussard's rarities, "Down in the Basement," in 2002.) The two-CD set is a headfirst dive into a bygone era before infomercials, when travelling patent medicine hucksters used live musical talent to rope suckers into the tent.
The Old Hat package, accompanied by a lusciously illustrated booklet annotated by label owner Marshall Wyatt, is a wonderful compilation of blues, early country and what can only be described as hokum. Listening to these antique sides, one can almost smell the Kickapoo Indian Salve and taste the Bardex Tonic. The pitches may have been the purest snake oil, but the music still delights.
The omnipresent Bussard also contributed 78s to Revenant Records' startling "American Primitive Vol. II: Pre-War Revenants (1897-1939)" and to Columbia/Legacy's "You Ain't Talkin' to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music." The latter cigar-boxed three-CD collection, which collected three Grammy nominations this month, harkens back to the days before there was even a name for country music. It surveys the brief but fruitful career of banjoist-vocalist Poole, who set the template for every string band picker that followed and for such countrified hellraisers as Hank Williams.
Some contemporary listeners may be perfectly satisfied with the machine-tooled cacophony of the present. However, as the year turns, those seeking that perfect Proustian moment may want to savor these collections, which fling one deep into another time, when American music sang in mysterious tongues.
©2005 Reuters Limit
(thanks to bob sarles, ravin films) ¶ 1/06/2006 06:48:00 PM
