“Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard” released November 6, 2012
I’m tickled to say that November 6, 2012, marks the release of Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard: Hard Time, Good Time & End Time Music, 1923–1936, a box-set drawn […]
Category Archives: Music
Alan Lomax’s “List of American Folk Songs on Commercial Records” (1940)
Jazz collector Kenneth Hulsizer wrote that when he met Jelly Roll Morton in his role as the impresario/bouncer/bartender at D.C.’s Jungle Inn, circa 1936–1937, and asked him if he still had […]
The Don Wahle Collection
One evening late in March 2010, my friend Joe called. He told me that his friend Chris had been on a dumpster job that day, helping clean out the house […]
For the Folks At Home: CBS at Churchill Downs, 1939
“We’ve been walking over to a group of boys who seem to be taking their duties pretty lightly at the moment.” The renowned sportscaster Ted Husing is in Louisville to […]
The 1931 Louisville Sessions
On the afternoon of June 12, 1931, the two biggest acts in country music, Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, magically visited each other in their respective homes of Kerrville, […]
Alan Lomax’s Southern Journey at 50 (and 51)
In October I will have worked for the Alan Lomax Archive for ten years. (I remark to friends with some regularity about this being my only job as an adult, […]
Goddamn, hell, it’s Hamper McBee.
There are no words to describe my excitement about the third release on our Twos & Fews recording imprint, out June 29. Recorded by the late, peerless country music scholar […]
Topical Songs: celebrating the world’s oldest independent label
England’s Topic Records turned seventy in 2009, making it, according to most expert accountings, the world’s oldest independent record label. Founded in 1939 by an offshoot of the British Marxist […]
Parental Advisory: Explicitly Austrian Content
I write somewhere around here that I’m disinclined to use this forum for the reviewing of records, as it seems like the internet is comprised solely of pornography and record […]
R.I.P. Phyllis Workman Boyens Liptak
Phyllis Workman Boyens Liptak, daughter of Nimrod and Molly Workman, and a fine singer and composer died Wednesday, December 9, at the age of 62. She appeared with Nimrod on […]
