George wanted to take Lonzie to record with Albert Macon and Robert Thomas, and the daughter was hesitant to let Lonzie get in a car with George, or with anybody, but George reassured her. So George helped him in the car, and put the car in reverse, and drove directly into a nearby ditch. Lonzie turned and said, "Man, George, you may as well let me drive!" - Fred Fussell describes George Mitchell chauffeuring the blind Lonzie Thomas to a recording session, from notes to The George Mitchell Collection
Thought this page would be of interest to some of you here. I've just found it (thanks to Big Road Blues blog) & there's some interesting 'field' recordings from the 70s available as downloadable mp3s. Of particular or passing interest would be Kip Lornell interviewing some elderly white players on their blues influences. One Spence Moore plays a couple Blind Lemon tunes he apparently learned from the records. Vaughn Webb interviews him about ordering Blind Lemon records through the Sears Roebuck (??) catalogue! I'll link to the blues recordings but there are many other styles you can search through from the home page. Once you pick a song to listen to just click the 'click here to display item' white banner at the top to access the mp3.
There's some excellent old-time country music on that site as well. Also, I'm pretty sure Spence Moore is still alive, and an album of his music just came out recently.
Anybody here familiar with this? I searched weeniepedia before posting this. http://www.aca-dla.org/
I heard Clayton Horsley on the Juke and went searching. There are a bunch of his tunes downloadable in mp3 format there, for educational purposes. It's all educational, isn't it?
I don't have time to explore it, just discovered it. Gotta run.
There's a lot of stuff to wade through here, and I can't tell yet what might be good. Trial and error I guess is the only way to know. It appears that not all is downloadable, but it may be playable through your browser.
Definitely check out the Clayton Horsley stuff. What I've listened to sounded good.
There's a fair amount of John Jackson as I recall, and it's the place I found more Rabbit Muse than the two cuts on the Virginia Traditions CD. Some of the stuff is just recorded by folks with whatever they got. College or high school girl with a tape recorder for Rabbit Muse, it sounds like, pretty bad sometimes.
It's a great archive, I wish more people would do stuff like that.
I haven't heard the Clayton Horsley stuff on the Archive, he's also on the Virginia Traditions disc (probably what you heard on the Juke). I'll check him out.
and Walter and Ethel, Thurman 'Cowboy' Burks, Marvin Foddrell, Dave Dickerson, KC Compton, James Diggs, "No Legs" Sam Fincher, Ray Wilson, Clayton Horsley, Howard Twine, Archie Edwards and don't forget Buddy Moss