Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. I Want Jesus to Talk with Me - Homer Quincy Smith
2. Deal Rag - Walter Taylor
3. Motherless Child Blues - Elvie Thomas
4. Big Bed Bug (Bed Bug Blues) - Tommy Settlers,
5. I Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape - Nugrape Twins
6. Molly Man - Mose "Red Hot / Ole Mose" Mason
7. Black Dog Blues - Bayless Rose
8. Workhouse Blues - Mattie May Thomas
9. Bo-Lita - Kid Brown & His Blues Band
10. My Mama Always Talked to Me - John Hammond, Jr.
11. Ballin' the Jack - Salty Dog Four
12. Friday Moan Blues - Alfred Lewis
13. Pick Poor Robin Clean - Geeshie Wiley
14. It's Cold in China Blues - The Mississippi Moaner
15. Black Sheep Blues - Pigmeat Terry
16. Old Hen Cackle - 2 Poor Boys
17. Frisco Blues - Bayless Rose
18. Hot Time Blues - William Harris
19. Take a Look at That Baby - 2 Poor Boys
20. Skinny Leg Blues - Geeshie Wiley
21. Little Birdie - John Hammond, Jr.
22. Little Girl in Rome - Otto Virgial
23. Dangerous Blues - Mattie May Thomas
24. Mean Low Blues - Blues Birdhead
25. Be My Kid Blues - Elizabeth Johnson

Disc 2:

1. Last Kind Words Blues - Geeshie Wiley
2. Poor Mourner - The Cousins, Virginia DeMoss
3. Jamestown Exhibition - Bayless Rose
4. There's a City Built of Mansions - Nugrape Twins
5. Cairo Blues - Henry Spaulding
6. Two White Horses in a Line - 2 Poor Boys
7. Shrimp Man - Mose "Red Hot / Ole Mose" Mason
8. Don't Mistreat Your Good Boyfriend - Bubbling Over Five
9. Bull Frog Blues - William Harris
10. Purty Polly - John Hammond, Jr.
11. Go Down Moses - Homer Quincy Smith
12. Over to My House - Elvie Thomas, Geeshie Wiley
13. Shaking Weed Blues - Tommy Settlers,
14. Big Mac from Macamere - Mattie May Thomas
15. Moaning the Blues - Pigmeat Terry
16. Original Blues - Bayless Rose
17. John Henry Blues [Take 3] - 2 Poor Boys
18. Sobbin' Woman Blues - Elizabeth Johnson
19. Bad Notion Blues - Otto Virgil
20. Eagles on a Half - Geeshie Wiley
21. Mississippi Swamp Moan - Alfred Lewis
22. Red Cross the Disciple of Christ Today - Rev. Moses Mason
23. Kansas City Blues - William Harris
24. As Free a Little Bird as Can Be - John Hammond, Jr.
25. No Mo' Freedom - Mattie May Thomas

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #103979 in Music
• Released on: 2005-10-10
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

CD Description
The late eccentric genius guitarist John Fahey's Revenant record label continues its excavation through the substrata of little-heard and undiscovered American folk and jazz musicwith this collection of pre-war (in some cases pre-Spanish War) recordings. The eccentricities and technical necessities of early-20th century music-making are riveting listening,whether the mouth-trumpet of "Big Bed Bug" or the sublime old-world harmonies of "I Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape". Over the course of these 50 extraordinary sides an antique, bygone world is slowly revealed.

Customer Reviews

Buy this
I absolutely love this compilation. First as with all Revenant releases the quality of the packaging and the attention to detail is beyond criticism. Hand made sleeve and great sleeve notes - informative, irreverent, and full of the love of music.

The music ranges from blues, to string band, religious, and the plain bizarre. Personal favourites are Moses Mason who sings and whoops (literally) about hot tamales and shrimps, Homer Quincy Smith who sings along to a church organ and sounds like he's already reached heaven (such is the eery sound), Geeshie Wiley who is a revelation of a blues artist, and the amazing harmonicas of the Bubbling Over Five/Blues Birdhead.

If you love Harry Smith complations, and Americana this compilation will reward you on every listen. If you don't know what I am on about, but are still reading, give it a try (on used and new). It will change your life.

Pigmeat Terry? The Bubbling Over Five?
This American Primitive series from John Fahey's Revenant label is great stuff, but be warned, all the music is from 78 rpm records from the 1925-1940 period, and therefore come with plenty of crackly surface noise. Imagine someone is frying sausages right next to your speakers. Sometimes it's fairly faint, other times you have to fight through the pops and hisses. In this age of chilly digital audio perfection, listening to this stuff might seem ridiculously eccentric, but you can't hear Charley Patton banging and howling or Robert Johnson wailing about the Devil eating his brains in any other context, and you don't want to miss that. It must be like climbing a mountain, something I've never wanted to do. You have to suffer a little bit, but the views are tremendous and it's very healthy. So surface noise, here we come.
The first American Primitive release focussed on wild religious maniacs, and was great. This one has only one mission - to locate 50 of the most obscure, overlooked blues and country from the same golden decade and amaze your ears with the beautiful guitar fingerpicking of Geeshie Wiley, Bayless Rose and The Two Poor Boys and the otherworldly vocalisings of Pigmeat Terry, Homer Quincey Smith and Mattie Mae Thomas, and the joyful racket made by string bands like The Salty Dog Four and The Bubbling Over Five. So there are no well-known names here at all. These people made one or two records, then vanished like snow on the water. Was it because they weren't any good? No sir - more likely they'd died or were in prison before the record company thought to ask them back for another session. Or they'd had to change their name and leave the state for reasons of a personal nature. Or they were street singers and hoboes - as Woody Guthrie wrote "On the edge of the city you'll see us and then We come with the dust and we go with the wind". But they left us a few indelible records, which themselves would have been lost in a landfill if it wasn't for the fanatical collecting manias of such music fans as John Fahey and his pal Joe Bussard. So this is great American music which was very nearly lost forever, and now you can buy it from Amazon and be amazed.

Special. In a good way.
This one's special. If you're digging into the roots of American music for the pleasure of hearing a more raw set of emotions than you'll hear in latter days, I suspect you'll get more out of this double cd than the six cds of Harry Smith's anthology. Homer Quincy Smith's two tracks from 1897 alone are worth the price of admission. Seriously spine-tingling music and singing that bring tears to my jaded, atheist eyes. Tracks by Elvie Thomas and Mattie May Thomas also stand out for me, but the diversity of music, and the caring and thoughtful selection by Revenant make this one a gem. I also reccomend, for similar reasons, Dust-To-Digital's "Goodbye, Babylon".