Mailbox for Requests and Other Correspondence

Thanks to the assistance of a fellow music blogger, I finally figured out how easily to identify the posts to which new comments refer. Feel free to keep leaving new comments under each post now that it's no longer a chore for us to determine their whereabouts. However, I will keep this "Mailbox" in place for those who want to leave requests or other messages that don't have anything specifically to do with the posts on this blog.

The gentlemen pictured above will see to it that your correspondence is delivered to us in a timely fashion.

Country Weather (RD Records, 2005)

There are many groups in contention for the "Greatest Forgotten 1960s-era San Francisco Bay-Area Band" title, but, in my estimation, the clear-cut champion has to be Country Weather. I found about these guys back in the heady summer of 1995 when, as a newly-minted graduate from the University of Illinois, I was applying my degree in political science...working at the now-defunct Village Green Records in downtown Champaign. In addition to my employee discount, one of the perks of the job was my boss letting me borrow albums from his collection so I could record them onto cassette tapes. One of the most treasured items from his stash was the California Acid Folk two-LP bootleg set. Although it contained a lot of interesting material, the tracks that intrigued me the most were the four cuts recorded by the then-mysterious Country Weather. Despite the fact that the term is difficult to define, their songs had that "San Francisco Sound" that most psychedelic rock connoisseurs know and love when they hear it.

Man, was I stoked when Swiss reissue specialists RD Records released this beautiful two-LP set a few years ago. It was a bit of an ordeal getting this release from some Italian mail-order music store (I don't recall the name), and I had to wait for what seemed like an eternity to receive it in the mail. When it finally arrived, I placed the first record down on my turntable, cued up the stylus, and quickly found out that it was everything I had hoped it would be.

Hailing from the San Francisco suburb Walnut Creek, the band started out as The Virtues in 1966, but after establishing a permanent lineup - with Gregg Doulgass on lead guitar, Steve Derr on rhythm guitar, Dave Carter on bass, and Craig Nelson on drums - they came up with a more imaginative name at the behest of concert promoter Chet Helms, and became Country Weather in 1967. Although they had the right connections, played at all the major venues like The Avalon Ballroom and The Fillmore Auditorium, and shared bills with all of the better known Bay-area bands, they were not signed by a record label and never achieved the success they deserved, ultimately causing them to call it a day in 1973.

COUNTRY WEATHER (L TO R): STEVE DERR, DAVE CARTER,
CRAIG NELSON, & GREGG DOUGLASS

Which makes it all the more amazing that they left behind such a relatively extensive recorded legacy. As their name might suggest, these guys do have a discernible country influence on their sound, more so on certain numbers than on others, although you wouldn't necessarily mistake them for, say, The Flying Burrito Brothers. Some tracks recall Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, or The Grateful Dead, although Country Weather's overall sound was distinct enough to give them their own unique musical identity. The first four songs are from their last recording session in 1971 and are representative of the late-period Haight-Ashbury scene. "Over and Over" has some excellent yearning vocals, and "Boy without a Home" choogles along nicely. "Out on the Trail" is a decent rocker enhanced by Douglass's tasty fretwork, while the country-ish "Yes that's Right" features fine slide guitar.

The next five selections were recorded in 1969 and originally appeared on the band's demo record, which received some exposure on certain San Francisco radio stations. Most of this material also appeared on the aforementioned California Acid Folk bootleg. "Why Time is Leaving Me Behind" finds Douglass employing some interesting guitar tunings. There is also a strange section in the performance where it sounds like the record player's needle is stuck in a groove only to have the song resume when the listener least expects it. "New York City Blues" is a decent cover of The Yardbirds' white-boy blues number. The tough, blazing guitar solos are among the highlights of "Carry a Spare," a euphemism, apparently, for having more than one girlfriend. And here we come to Country Weather's masterpiece, "Fly to New York" (what was with this West Coast band's fixation on songs that make reference to The Big Apple?). Deservedly included on Rhino's Love is the Song We Sing - San Francisco Nuggets1965-1970, this one ranks up there with any other Haight-Ashbury band's epics like "Dark Magic" or "Who Do You Love." With its spacey guitar and dreamy vocals, "Fly to New York" delivers the psychedelic goods and call me crazy, but almost sounds like early Pink Floyd at certain moments. "Black Mountain Rag" is a brief minute-and-a-half version of an instrumental piece on which the band jammed when playing live, as you'll read about in a moment.

LEE CONKLIN POSTER FOR JUNE 20-21, 1969 COUNTRY WEATHER SHOWS AT
AN OBSCURE VENUE CALLED THE BARN LOCATED IN RIO NIDO, CA

The remaining material consists of excellent live performances recorded during two concert appearances at The Walnut Creek Civic Center on July 31 and August 1, 1970, and leads off with "I Don't Know," an infectiously catchy rocker. The full-length version of "Black Mountain Rag" featured here follows through on the potential indicated by its shorter studio counterpart. Technically, I think this is more of a breakdown than a rag, but no matter. Douglass' lightning-fast leads mesh perfectly with Derr's sympathetic rhythm guitar, and this downhome-flavored jam justifies the "Country" in the band's name. Despite its title, "Pakistan" is not an Eastern-inspired improvisation but rather another capable rural music-influenced piece. The absence of studio-imposed constraints allows the band to stretch out on "New York City Blues" and "Yes that's Right," and in the case of "Fly to New York," to stretch out even further. Finally, the closer, "Wake Me Shake Me," is a blazing 14-minute-plus epic that was probably inspired by The Blues Project's version of the same song.

You can ignore the comments of critic William Ruhlmann at All Music Guide who states, "The appearance of Country Weather after all these years does not constitute the discovery of a great lost album by a great lost San Francisco band of the '60s," because he's flat-out wrong. This set is a great lost album by a great lost San Francisco band of the '60s. It's that simple.

1. Over and Over
2. Boy without a Home
3. Out on the Trail
4. Yes that's Right
5. Why Time is Leaving Me Behind
6. New York City Blues
7. Carry a Spare
8. Fly to New York
9. Black Mountain Rag
10. I Don't Know (live)
11. Black Mountain Rag (live)
12. Pakistan (Ring Around the Moon) (live)
13. Fly to New York (live)
14. New York City Blues (live)
15. Yes that's Right (live)
16. Wake Me Shake Me (live)

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Fun on the Frets - Early Jazz Guitar (Yazoo, circa 1979)

If I had to choose one word to describe the performances on this album, it would be "elegant." In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Yazoo started branching out into other styles of music recorded before 1950, and their albums of early jazz and ethnic music were just as compelling as their prewar blues LPs. As Richard Lieberson's liner notes explain, this collection focuses on the lost art of chordal style jazz guitar which was largely abandoned in the wake of Charlie Christian's innovations with amplification and single-note choruses. If you're a fan of Django Reinhardt, I think you will absolutely love the material on this album.

CARL KRESS

The first ten tracks, which come from radio transcriptions from 1941, are some fantastic duets between Carl Kress and Tony Mottola. Although both started out as banjoists, they, like many other early jazz guitarists, made the switch from one instrument to the other as the 1920s progressed into the 1930s. Despite their backgrounds as studio musicians and accompanists to such whitebread acts like the Dorsey Brothers, Perry Como, and other similar prosaic entertainers, their performances here qualify as art of the highest order. Mottola's leads and the rhythm work of Kress perfectly complement each other just like fine wine balances a gourmet meal, with "Nobody's Idea" being my personal favorite among an excellent bunch.

TONY MOTTOLA

"Danzon" and "I've Got a Feeling You're Fooling Me" from the mid-1930s find Kress teamed up with Dick McDonough, an unheralded jazz guitar pioneer whose tragic early death at age 34 was brought on by alcoholism. These are exquisite performances, and the harmonies that their instruments sometimes produce are nothing short of amazing. Kress' two solo performances from the end of the decade ain't too shabby, either.

LATTER-DAY GEORGE VAN EPS - NOTE THE DISTINCTIVE
HEADSTOCK ON HIS SEVEN-STRING GUITAR

The legendary George Van Eps came from a musical family. His father, Fred, recorded as an early ragtime banjoist. Caught between the competing influences of his father and Carl Kress, Van Eps came up with the idea of extending a guitar's low-end range by adding another bass string. The end result was the production of the seven-string guitar by Epiphone in 1940. His four sides featured here date from 1949 (making them among the most recently recorded items to be found on a Yazoo release..."recently" being a relative term, of course) and find him accompanied by a bassist and drummer. Although the presence of this rhythm section causes Van Eps to employ the low seventh string less frequently than on subsequent recordings, it is still easy to discern his unique style, especially on the beautiful "Tea for Two."

1. Fun on the Frets - Carl Kress & Tony Mottola
2. Jazz in G - Carl Kress & Tony Mottola
3. Sarong Number - Carl Kress & Tony Mottola
4. The Camel Walks - Carl Kress & Tony Mottola
5. Blonde on the Loose - Carl Kress & Tony Mottola
6. Serenade - Carl Kress & Tony Mottola
7. Squeeze Box Swing - Carl Kress & Tony Mottola
8. Sharp as a Tack - Carl Kress & Tony Mottola
9. Nobody's Idea - Carl Kress & Tony Mottola
10. Boogie Woogie for Guitar - Carl Kress & Tony Mottola
11. Danzon - Carl Kress & Dick McDonough
12. I've Got a Feeling You're Fooling Me - Carl Kress & Dick McDonough
13. Peg Leg Shuffle - Carl Kress
14. Sutton Mutton (Taking it on the Lamb) - Carl Kress
15. I Wrote it for Jo - George Van Eps
16. Kay's Fantasy - George Van Eps
17. Tea for Two - George Van Eps
18. Once in a While - George Van Eps

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Funky Funky Chicago (Funky Delicacies, 2004)

As music writer Bill Dahl's liner notes point out, this compilation of material from 1968-1977 (1973-1977 apparently being a typo) is especially interesting because some of the featured artists are better known for their blues and southern soul credentials, not surprising considering that a large segment of The Windy City's black population has their roots in Mississippi and other states in the Deep South. As a result, Funky Funky Chicago includes a diverse group of recordings, some with a distinct downhome flavor and others that would have sounded appropriate at various South Side disco clubs back in the day.

Among the earthier performers on this collection, guitarist Jimmy Johnson (aka The Bar Room Preacher) is probably the best known (at least with blues aficionados) for his work with fellow axeman Jimmy Dawkins as well as for his own albums on Alligator and Delmark. As it turns out, Johnson had been playing a variety of styles before devoting himself pretty much exclusively to the blues in the mid-1970s. His three sides from 1968 for the Stuff label - "Get It" and both versions of "Let's Get a Line" - are essentially tough instrumental cuts with his backing band, The Lucky Hearts, providing some truly funky accompaniment. Fans of James Brown's late 1960s period will probably dig these tracks. Eddie Houston's "Away from Home" was recorded around the same time and demonstrates a strong Otis Redding influence. "43rd Street Bus Stop" may be this compilation's most interesting track in that it seems to have one foot in 1955 and the other in 1975. Nowadays, Mack Simmons is known strictly as a blues harmonica player, but his attempt to start a new dance craze (the "43rd Street Bus Stop," of course) features funky grooves as well as very dated-sounding synthesizer squiggles - and then - BOOM! - out of nowhere come some gutbucket guitar, harmonica, and sax solos. Weird but engaging.

JIMMY JOHNSON (L) & THE LUCKY HEARTS

Complete with throbbing bass, punchy horns, and scintillating wah wah guitar, The Chosen Few's "Cut Me In" and "We are the Chosen Few" sound like mid-1970s funk on the cusp of disco, as does Casey Jones' excellent "(Get Up Off Your) Rusty Dusty." Georgianna McCoy's voice is as sweet as honey on "I've Got to Space" and "I Don't Want Nobody Else" on which she is joined by capable backing vocalists and musicians, The Classetts. Released on Andre Williams' short-lived Scorpio label, "(Charlie Brother) We Got to Love One Another" is credited to a mysterious figure known as "The Rock," although it's Jo Ann Garrett's vocal chops that take center stage. In the liners, Dahl theorizes that Williams himself may contribute a line or two during the proceedings. Williams also had writing and production involvement with Artie White's seductive "A Love Like Yours (is Hard to Find)" from 1977. Finally, lines like

Funky funky Christmas,
Mama's fixin' food.
Papa's watchin' football,
Food sure smellin' good!
People comin' over,
Grandma's on the way.
Funky funky Christmas,
Sho' nuff, funky Christmas day!

help make Electric Jungle's "Funky Funky Christmas" this album's cheesiest moment. The passages where the instrumentalists quote "Little Drummer Boy" and "Deck the Halls" don't help, either. That said, you'd be thankful to hear this playing over a store's PA system instead of the usual holiday crap they pipe in during the upcoming Christmas shopping season, which is right around the corner, you know.

Get Funky Funky Houston Volume 1 - Rare and Unreleased Recordings from the Vaults of Ovide Records 1968-1969 here.

1. Cut Me In - The Chosen Few
2. I've Got to Space - Georgianna McCoy & The Classetts
3. (Charlie Brother) We Got to Love One Another - The Rock
4. A Love Like Yours (is Hard to Find) - Artie White
5. Funky Funky Christmas - Electric Jungle
6. Let's Get a Line - Jimmy Johnson & The Lucky Hearts
7. I Don't Want Nobody Else - Georgianna McCoy & The Classetts
8. (Get Up Off Your) Rusty Dusty - Casey Jones
9. We are the Chosen Few - The Chosen Few
10. Away from Home - Eddie Houston
11. Get It - Jimmy Johnson & The Lucky Hearts
12. 43rd Street Bus Stop - Mack Simmons & Jimmy Mitchell
13. Let's Get a Line - Jimmy Johnson & The Lucky Hearts

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Mike Sarkissian and his Cafe Bagdad Ensemble - Armenian Wedding (Audio Fidelity, 1958)

Mike Sarkissian is yet another Armenian-American from the Northeast's seemingly inexhaustible supply of musicians from that particular ethnic community. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he was the rare example of a band leader who was a percussionist as opposed to an oud player, which was more typical during the 1950s-1960s golden age of belly dance records. To add to his distinctiveness, he specialized in the cocktail drum, while his brother Buddy played the more traditional dumbeg, the clay Middle Eastern hand drum. After serving in the US Army Air Corps Jazz Band during World War II, Mike made the transition to club owner (the Cafe Bagdad, of course) as well as professional musician and signed with the Audio Fidelity label in the 1950s, where he proceeded to make numerous albums. John Berberian told me that during Sarkissian's heyday, he was known as "Mr. Show Business" among Armenian-Americans and was renowned for his headlining performances at the International Hotel in Las Vegas.

ORGY IN POLYRHYTHM: MIKE (L) AND BUDDY SARKISSIAN

Armenian Wedding is a superb collection of performances that is representative of the material Sarkissian and his band were playing at the time. Unfortunately, the liner notes tend to focus on the perceived exoticism of Armenians and their folkways (with an emphasis on weddings, obviously) without discussing the tracks or musicians who appear on this album. Presumably, Sarkissian is accompanied by long-time band members Freddy Elias on violin and oudist Marty Kentigian as well as brother Buddy and half-brother Sam Akashian on dumbegs. Regardless of the backing musicians' actual identities, they are a first-rate ensemble whoever they are.

MIKE SARKISSIAN (FRONT ROW, THIRD FROM LEFT) WITH FRIENDS
AND FAMILY: SAM AKASHIAN (FRONT ROW, FAR LEFT), AUDIO
FIDELITY OWNER SID FREY (FRONT ROW, SECOND FROM LEFT),
BUDDY SARKISSIAN (FRONT ROW, FAR RIGHT), FREDDY ELIAS
(SECOND ROW, FAR RIGHT), AND MARTY KENTIGIAN
(THIRD ROW, SECOND FROM RIGHT)

Given that this LP includes several typically propulsive performances intended for dancing, it is not out of the question that this is indeed authentic Armenian wedding music. Then again, the album title may have just been an excuse to have an attractive female model pose in somewhat provocative traditional attire. From the opening track, "Hye Gagan Bar," the listener can easily discern the numerous percussion instruments and the resultant polyrhythms that appear throughout this album. There is an exquisite violin solo on "Shilvani," while some impassioned vocals grace "Dari Lo Lo," "Agvor Aghchig," "Gamavor Zing Vor" (a song about the volunteer soldiers who fought the Turks during the genocide of 1915), "Lazbar," "Goghba Elam Selera," and "Hasagat Partzer." The instrumental "Tamara" is my favorite performance on this album, due in large part to the excellent oud, clarinet, and violin work by the musicians. "Halleh," "Tamzara," and "Jazayer" are bristling with so much energy that I would certainly enjoy seeing the lovely maiden on the album cover perform a belly dance routine to them. I guess I'm just easily entertained.

CARTOONIST'S RENDITION OF MIKE SARKISSIAN

1. Hye Gagan Bar
2. Shilvani
3. Dari Lo Lo
4. Tamara
5. Agvor Aghchig
6. Halleh
7. Jazayer
8. Tamzara
9. Gamavor Zing Vor
10. Lazbar
11. Goghba Elam Selera
12. Hasagat Partzer

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78 Quarterly Volume 1 - No. 3 (1990)

By popular demand, here is the third issue of the world's greatest old-time music periodical, 78 Quarterly. I'm very flattered by how many of you left enthusiastic comments for my previous upload of issues No. 1 and No. 2. If it weren't such a bitch to scan these magazines, I'd post them more often. Be that as it may...

After a 22-year hiatus, editor Pete Whelan finally resumed publication of 78 Quarterly in 1990. It was worth the wait. A great deal of newly obtained information about prewar blues and jazz musicians had been gathered since 1968, and the magazine's editor brought back many of the same music researchers whose scholarship graced the pages of the first two issues. Stephen Calt begins his exhaustive history of the legendary Paramount label in "The Anatomy of a 'Race' Label - Part One." Including information about the company's origin as a furniture manufacturer, its executives, and the factors that contributed to its fateful decision to start recording blues, jazz, and black gospel material, this is everything you wanted to know about Paramount but were afraid to ask.


Perhaps the finest of many fine articles, Doug Seroff's "Polk Miller and The Old South Quartette" (whose recordings are available here), tells the story of one of the most important but forgotten artists in the history of American music. You can forget about everyone from Dock Boggs to Elvis Presley who is mentioned as the first significant white performer to be influenced by black musicians. As far as recorded music goes, that history starts with Polk Miller. A well-to-do pharmacist and Confederate Civil War veteran, Miller grew up on a Virginia plantation where he fell under the spell of his father's slaves. Not only did he learn to play banjo from them, but he also prided himself in being able to speak and sing in a perceived authentic black dialect. His passion for African-American culture and the antebellum South eventually led him to become a professional musician and entertainer and to recruit four black harmony singers, dubbed The Old South Quartette, as his backup group. Miller was especially remarkable in that he did not perform any of his material in blackface. Touring from 1893 until Miller's death in 1913, his "Old Times in the South" show was a success throughout the country. Billed as "An Evening of Old Plantation and War Time Stories and Songs," a typical performance included Miller's anecdotes told in "darkey" dialect as well as solo and group renditions of black spirituals, white hymns, folk material, and popular songs done a cappella or with banjo or guitar accompaniment. No less a distinguished figure than Mark Twain heaped praise upon "Old Times in the South," describing selections from the entertainers' repertory as "musical earthquakes" and referring to the production as "the only thing the country can furnish that is originally and utterly American."


Additionally, this issue features shorter articles such as Richard Spottswood's piece on ethnic records from the 1920s and 1930s, a summary of the only known biographical details about Mississippi bluesman William Harris by Gayle Dean Wardlow, and the first part of Tom Tsotsi's history of Gennett Records.


And finally, 78 Quarterly No. 3 includes a reminiscence of pioneering collector James McKune by Henry Renard, a list of the rarest 78s A to B, a fascinating transcription of Skip James' thoughts on race relations (parts of which were incorporated into the book I'd Rather be the Devil) courtesy of Stephen Calt, and an obituary for Yazoo Records founder Nick Pearls.


Dig in.

Note: Since I was multitasking while preparing this, I accidentally scanned pages 11 and 18 twice. Well, better to have two pages too many instead of two pages too few, right? Anyway, excuse the redundancy.

PDF scan
79 pages

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The Earliest Negro Vocal Quartets Vol. 1 1894-1928 (Document, 1991)

Although it would be impossible, the ultimate dream come true for a researcher of culture in the United States would be to discover the "Big Bang" of American music - that is, the exact moment in time when British Isles ballads and religious songs collided with African rhythms and improvisational sensibilities. This probably occurred in an 18th or 19th-century tobacco or cotton field on a Southern plantation when a slave of African origin combined those two musical influences and belted out the first field holler. From that, of course, emerged African-American gospel music, blues, jazz, and, eventually, rock 'n' roll, R&B, soul, funk, etc., etc.

Since we don't have recordings of any such field hollers from the 1700s or 1800s at our disposal, we must focus our attention on examples of subsequent developments in the evolution of uniquely American music. With the importance that sanctified music has held throughout black American history, it should not be surprising that some of the first African-American musicians to enjoy popularity with both whites and blacks were vocal quartets. Often referred to as "Negro Quartets" or "Colored Quartets," these groups from the late 1800s and early 1900s featured four-part harmony singing and usually performed unaccompanied religious material, although there were notable exceptions to this rule. The material typically performed by such quartets was often much more dignified than the repertories of other popular contemporary black entertainers who specialized in "coon shouts" and other degrading forms of music that emphasized negative stereotypes of the race. But again, this was not always the case.

The Earliest Negro Vocal Quartets Vol. 1 offers a fascinating glimpse of the ultimate in proto-blues, some of the earliest recorded examples of not just African-American music, but American music as well. Although it is difficult to hear much beneath the surface noise, the Standard Quartette's "Keep Movin'" is especially significant for its early recording date (1894!) and the occasional bursts of vocal exquisiteness that seep through the static like the wailing of a lost ghost in the mists of time. A popular touring act in their day, this quartet recorded a total of 22 cylinders, but only this recording has survived. The Dinwiddie Colored Quartet, formed at the John A. Dix Industrial School in Dinwiddie, Virginia, waxed six one-sided records in 1902, five of which - "Down on the Old Camp Ground," "Poor Mourner," "Steal Away," "Gabriel's Trumpet," and "We'll Anchor Bye-and-Bye" - have been discovered and are presented here. These are all powerful a cappella gospel performances marred only slightly by the recurring introduction "(Song title) by the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet" uttered by what sounds like some white guy (their manager perhaps?) before each song. Nothing is known about the Male Quartette or the Apollo Male Quartette who recorded their sanctified material respectively in circa 1910 and 1912.


As good as this CD's first nine tracks are, the remaining material by Polk Miller and/or His/The Old South Quartette is what's really the most compelling. No need to adjust your computer's monitor; you are seeing the above photograph correctly. Miller was a banjo and guitar-playing white pharmacist from Virginia who enjoyed a successful second career as an entertainer and leader of the "Old Times in the South" touring show. This nostalgic production featured Miller reciting stories spoken in an "authentic" black dialect as well as musical material of Southern white and African-American origin performed with the accompaniment of His Old South Quartette (which included James Stamper and Randall Graves as well as two other singers whose names are unfortunately lost to us). Such was the popularity of what was arguably America's first biracial musical group that they recorded seven cylinders for the Edison Amberol and Standard labels circa 1909-1910, and what variety these recordings demonstrate. "The Bonnie Blue Flag" was a Confederate war anthem from 1861, although not as well known as the more familiar "Dixie." One cannot help but note the irony of a group of black men singing the chorus, "Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern rights hurrah! Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star" as Miller strums his banjo and handles the lead vocals which detail how Southern states


left the Union one by one during the 1860-1861 secession crisis. "Laughing Song" is a truly bizarre novelty tune that features some exquisite vocal harmonies and details the pleasures of having "oysters and wine at 2:00 a.m." On this recording and subsequent numbers, one might assume these to be the work of an all black group, so convincing are Miller's singing mannerisms. Perhaps Miller and the Quartette's finest number, "What a Time" is a powerful gospel performance with a driving one-two beat that will get even the most ardent atheist in the spirit. "The Watermelon Party" is a "coon shout" that would certainly be considered distasteful in this politically correct age, but it is still a fascinating historical document nonetheless. On the next set of cylinders - "Rise and Shine," "The 'Old Time' Religion," and "Jerusalem Mornin'" - Miller puts aside his banjo and guitar and performs a cappella with the group on sanctified material that is nearly the equal of "What a Time."

Miller's death in 1913 did not prevent The Old South Quartette from continuing to perform and record in the 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, they waxed seven sides for the QRS label in 1928, their style essentially unchanged since the 1890s. "Oh What He's Done for Me" and "No Hiding Place Down Here" are two more top-notch gospel performances, while remakes of "Watermelon Party" and "Laughing Song" (retitled as "Oysters and Wine at 2 A.M.") are nods to their recorded past. "Bohunkus and Josephus" is another strange novelty piece with rather oddball words sung to music of "Auld Lang Syne." "Pussy Cat Rag" seems to be a bawdy song with double entendre lyrics, while "When De Corn Pone's Hot" is similar to "Watermelon Party" but much more respectful in tone and subject matter. In the words of early black music scholar Doug Seroff, the song is "a musical arrangement of a Paul Laurence Dunbar dialect poem, full of the most gorgeous folk imagery." Be sure to read his fascinating article on Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette in the accompanying post of 78 Quarterly No. 3.


1. Keep Movin' - Standard Quartette
2. Down on the Old Camp Ground - Dinwiddie Colored Quartet
3. Poor Mourner - Dinwiddie Colored Quartet
4. Steal Away - Dinwiddie Colored Quartet
5. Gabriel's Trumpet - Dinwiddie Colored Quartet
6. We'll Anchor Bye-and-Bye - Dinwiddie Colored Quartet
7. The Camp Meeting Jubilee - Male Quartette
8. Swing Low Sweet Chariot - Apollo Male Quartette
9. Shout All Over God's Heaven - Apollo Male Quartette
10. The Bonnie Blue Flag - Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette
11. Laughing Song - Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette
12. What a Time - Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette
13. The Watermelon Party - Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette
14. Rise and Shine - Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette
15. The "Old Time" Religion - Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette
16. Jerusalem Mornin' - Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette
17. Oh What He's Done for Me - Old South Quartette
18. Watermelon Party - Old South Quartette
19. Bohunkus and Josephus - Old South Quartette
20. Oysters and Wine at 2 A.M. - Old South Quartette
21. Pussy Cat Rag - Old South Quartette
22. When De Corn Pone's Hot - Old South Quartette
23. No Hiding Place Down Here - Old South Quartette

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