Archivist Jonathan Ward offers a guided tour of the early world of music you've never heard with his new Excavated Shellac collection.
Here's the scoop...
Dust-to-Digital is making available Jonathan Ward's mammoth 100-track survey of rare early regional music from 89 countries in six continents drawn from his vast personal stash of 78s. The new collection Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World's Music – following Ward's two prior Excavated Shellac sets "Strings" and "Reeds" – highlights music that is often invisible in today’s world — the incredible world of global recordings that aren’t jazz, blues, country, rock ‘n roll, R&B, or “classical.”
Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World’s Music includes 100 recordings and 100 stories in an extensive, well-illustrated PDF with detailed, contextual mini-histories about both musical origins and the beginnings of the recording industry, touching on the complexities of colonialism, economic agendas, and cultural tourism.
With almost all of the tracks never before reissued, this collection expands upon and acts as a companion to Jonathan Ward’s Excavated Shellac website (https://excavatedshellac.com), a unique repository of music, history, and data on 78 rpm recordings from around the world, rarely heard and seldom seen.
You can order Excavated Shellac as 100 MP3 files + a 186-page PDF with essays and annotations by Jonathan Ward via Dust-to-Digital right here or from Bandcamp over there.
Check out the preview clip and Du Feu Prix en Tête Man Nordé by Martinique's Orchestre Créole Delvi below followed by the complete track listing. You can also read Dust-to-Digital fan Joe Boyd's recent think piece about the Excavated Shellac set right here.
Dust-to-Digital's excellent Voices Of Mississippi 3 CD + DVD set took Historical Album and Liner Notes awards.
Ever since he was a young boy on a farm in Vicksburg, Mississippi, William Ferris was drawn to music. When he was 12 years old, he started to document the music he loved after he received a camera for Christmas. Documenting songs, storytellers and other artists all around him soon quickly become a new hobby. And that hobby eventually became a profession that ultimately led Ferris to Chapel Hill, where he is the Joel R. Williamson eminent professor emeritus of history at University of North Carolina.
That profession also led to Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris, a compilation of songs, stories and films that Ferris has recorded over the years. The box set released by Dust-to-Digital back in June (available here) was nominated for two Grammy Awards this year for best historical album and best album notes and took them both tonight! That's right, Voices of Mississippi compiler/producer William Ferris along with liner notes writer David Evans need to make room on their mantles for some shiny new hardware.
On the Well Said podcast Songs of the American South, Ferris discusses his life’s work as a folklorist and how these Grammy nominations make good on promises he gave to his subjects many years ago. Listen below.
Patti Smith interviewed Sheltering Sky author Paul Bowles in Tangier back in 1997. Photo by Tim Richmond
"I was first introduced to Bowles in a serendipitous way. In the summer of 1967, shortly after I left home and went to New York City, I passed a large box of overturned books spilling out into the street. Several were scattered across the sidewalk, and a dated copy of Who’s Who in America lay open before my feet. I bent down to look, as a photograph caught my eye above an entry for Paul Frederic Bowles. I had never heard of him but I noticed we shared the same birthday, the thirtieth of December. Believing it to be a sign, I tore out the page and later searched out his books, the first being The Sheltering Sky. I read everything he wrote as well as his translations, introducing me to the work of Mohammed Mrabet and Isabelle Eberhardt.
"Three decades later, in 1997, I was asked by German Vogue to interview him in Tangier. I had mixed feelings about my assignment, for they mentioned he was ill. But I was assured that he had readily agreed and that I would not be disturbing him. Bowles lived in a three-room apartment on a quiet street in a straightforward fifties-modern building in a residential section. A high stack of well-traveled trunks and suitcases formed a column in the entranceway. There were books lining the walls and halls, books that I knew and books I wished to know. He sat propped up in bed, wearing a soft plaid robe, and appeared to brighten when I entered the room.
"I crouched down trying to find a graceful position in the awkward air. We spoke of his late wife, Jane, whose spirit seemed to be everywhere. I sat there twisting my braids, speaking about love. I wondered if he was really listening."
'Are you writing?' I asked. 'No, I am no longer writing.' 'How do you feel now?' I asked. 'Empty,' he answered.
"I left him to his thoughts and went upstairs to the patio on the roof."
Folklorist Henry Glassie's 1966 recordings of Ola Belle Reed are the main draw of the new 2-CD + book set.
The first in-depth look at the life of trailblazing North Carolina-born singer/songwriter Ola Belle Reed, Dust-to-Digital's deluxe package Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line presents some of her earliest solo recordings along with a companion disc of modern-day field recordings documenting her descendants and members of the Appalachian community she inspired. This thoughtfully assembled 256 page cloth-bound book and 2 CD set (out August 21) highlights Ola Belle’s deep repertoire – folk ballads, minstrel songs, country standards, and originals – and traces the impact her music made and is still making today.
Although Ola Belle Campbell Reed – best known to bluegrass fans today for penning High On A Mountain (recorded by Del McCoury, Marty Stuart, Tim O'Brien and others) – made two albums for Starday/King in the early 60s as Alex Campbell and Olabelle & The New River Boys along with a couple for New River Records, Essgee, Cabin Creek, Ken-del, then cut two more: Ola Belle Reed (1973), Ola Belle Reed & Family (1977) for Rounder and another informative solo document: My Epitaph (1976) for Smithsonian/Folkways,Dust-to-Digital's new compendium manages to avoid all of that crucial work to focus instead on the solo recordings that folklorist Henry Glassie made in the mid-60s to document Ola Belle Reed's deep repertoire of mountain ballads and hymns passed down from prior generations and her own revealing compositions like "I've Endured" (listen below).
Since those recordings have been heard by few people outside of Professor Glassie's lectures at Indiana University in Bloomington where the tapes currently reside in the Archives of Traditional Music, Dust-to-Digital have done a great service by making them available to wider audience.
However, instead of filling a second disc with even more amazing material Ola Belle Reed wrote and performed during the 25-year period from her final Rounder release in 1977 until her death in 2002, the label has somewhat oddly chosen instead to devote the entire second disc to the lesser-known players from Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania she inspired. So while it's nice to hear Burl Kirby's interpretation of High On A Mountain, I think most people who would consider purchasing an Ola Belle Reed archival package would much prefer hearing her best-loved song sung by the composer herself – even if it's a amateur live recording from a bluegrass festival.
Just off hand, I could think of a couple of better ways of filling a second disc – why not fill it with the 28 songs from the two albums Ola Belle cut with Alex Campbell and the New River Boys for Starday – they've been out-of-print for at least four decades and it doesn't seem like Ace UK has any burning desire to reissue them. Alternatively, they could've made the second disc a DVD containing rare Ola Belle Reed performance footage along with perhaps a better resolution version of this television documentary clip from 1985.
In any case, while you're waiting for Dust-to-Digital to drop their fancy book-bound package next week, grab a copy of Smithsonian Folkways' excellent Rising Sun Melodies retrospective from 2010 which compiles the best of Ola Belle's Folkways sessions (1976-78) and adds eight great live recordings from the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife 1972 and 1976 you won't hear anywhere else.
Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line (Dust-to-Digital) Disc One
1. Ola Belle Reed – Uncloudy Day
2. Ola Belle Reed, Alex Campbell and John Miller – My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountain
3. Alex Campbell, Ola Belle Reed and Burl Kilby - Bringing in the Georgia Mail
4. Ola Belle Reed – Train 45
5. Ola Belle Reed – The Worried Man Blues
6. Ola Belle Reed and Burl Kilby – The Worried Man Blues
7. Ola Belle Reed, Burl Kilby and John Miller – The Ranger’s Command
8. Ola Belle Reed, John Miller and Burl Kilby – Big Kid’s Barroom
9. Ola Belle Reed and Burl Kilby - The Miller’s Will
10. Ola Belle Reed and Burl Kilby - Black Jack Davy
11. Ola Belle Reed, Alex Campbell and John Miller – John Hardy
12. Ola Belle Reed, Burl Kilby and John Miller – Single Girl
13. Ola Belle Reed and Burl Kilby - Kitty Wells
14. Ola Belle Reed, John Miller and Burl Kilby - The Orphan Girl
15. Ola Belle Reed and Burl Kilby – I’ve Always Been a Rambler
16. Ola Belle Reed - Undone in Sorrow
17. Ola Belle Reed, Burl Kilby and John Miller – You Led Me to the Wrong
18. Ola Belle Reed – Absalom My Son, My Son
19. Ola Belle Reed and John Miller - Amazing Grace
20. Ola Belle Reed, Burl Kilby and John Miller – Six Feet of Earth
21. Ola Belle Reed – All the Dark Places
22. Ola Belle Reed, Burl Kilby and John Miller – I’m Going Through
23. Ola Belle Reed, Burl Kilby and John Miller – I’ve Endured
24. Ola Belle Reed, Burl Kilby and John Miller – I’ve Endured
Disc Two
1. Hugh Campbell – Undone in Sorrow
2. Dave Reed – Plucking the Strings
3. T.J. Lundy, Danny Paisley, Ryan Paisley – Cherokee Shuffle
4. Danny Paisley, Ryan Paisley, T.J. Lundy – I’m Longing for a Love I’ll Never Know
5. Burl Kilby – Sally Goodin
6. Hugh Campbell – Story of Tom Moore, the Gravedigger
7. Hugh Campbell – Footprints Left Below
8. DeBusk-Weaver Family – Leave It There
9. DeBusk-Weaver Family with Dave Reed – Six Hours on the Cross
10. Dave Reed – John Hardy
11. Zane Campbell – Cherokee Eyes
12. Burl Kilby – High on a Mountain
13. Hugh Campbell – Fiddle on the Wall
14. T.J. Lundy, Ryan Paisley, Danny Paisley – Rachel
15. Danny Paisley, Ryan Paisley, T.J. Lundy – The Old Swinging Bridge
16. Dave Reed – John Hardy/John Henry
17. Zane and Hugh Campbell – Stolen Love
18. Burton DeBusk – The Buzzard and the Monkey
19. Burton DeBusk – The Pussycat and the Bulldog
20. Dave Reed – Preacher and the Bear
21. Burl Kilby – Turkey in the Straw
22. T.J. Lundy, Danny Paisley, Ryan Paisley – Ryestraw
23. Hugh Campbell, Dave Reed – The Butcher Boy
24. Dave Reed – Simple Man
25. Dave Reed – 1,000 Light Years Away
26. DeBusk-Weaver Family with Hugh Campbell – I Feel Like Traveling On
27. Danny Paisley, T.J. Lundy, Ryan Paisley – New River Train
28. Ryan Paisley, T.J. Lundy, Danny Paisley – Salt Creek
29. Burl Kilby – Cumberland Gap
30. Hugh Campbell – Boxes Full of Memories
31. Hugh Campbell – Father, Listen
32. Danny Paisley, Ryan Paisley, T.J. Lundy – My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains
33. Zane Campbell – Family Graveyard
34. Zane and Hugh Campbell, Dave Reed, the DeBusk-Weaver Family – Over in the Gloryland
