Topic: Living Country Blues USA

[uncle bud]

I was reading Jeff Harris's comments about the Living Country Blues USA series of field recordings made in 1980 by Axel K?stner and Siegfried Christmann on his always interesting blog, http://sundayblues.org/. The 12 LPs that resulted are now available in complete form on CDs, not just the 3-CD anthology on Evidence. They include recordings by Cephas and Wiggins, Archie Edwards, Lonnie Pitchford, Frank Hovington, Flora Molton, Guitar Slim, Boyd Rivers and many more. Being in the middle of revelling in the George Mitchell boxed set, news of these recordings is certainly intriguing.

Fortunately so far for my wallet, I cannot find a place that sells these CDs. I was wondering though, just out of curiosity, who is actually selling them. I found download links at emusic, but am interested (hypothetically) in CDs with notes.

Part 1 of Jeff's discussion of this series is at http://sundayblues.org/archives/207. Part 2 is currently on the front/home page.

[jpeters609]

I contacted Tony at Red Lick Records, and while he doesn't carry those CDs, he definitely wants to. (He hadn't heard about them yet, but feels his customers would be interested. I'm sure he's right.) Oddly, no one seems to have these CDs yet, except for one German website, which, alas, is all in German (of course). It is:

http://www.zweitausendeins.de/suche/?ArticleFocus=1&ord=-1&alpha=1&cat=20&q=living%20country%20blues

[jharris]

These CD's are not available in the US which I guess I should have mentioned in the article. I have a friend who spends half his time in Zurich and half in Manhattan and he got the CD's for me. I actually had a number of the original LP's and just got the CD's I needed to complete the set. I was a bit disappointed that no unissued tracks were included considering that hundreds of hours of recordings were made. Also there's no additional info given regarding the artists - just a straight reproduction of the original notes. The Evidence set provided some info on what happened to these artists after the recordings were made.

Apparently these are available as digital downloads although it seems the 2-CD introduction volume is not for some reason. My main problem with downloading from these websites is that you get no notes which is important for this kind of release. In contrast I have downloaded albums from the Smithsonian Folkways website which makes a PDF available that is an exact reproduction of the original LP.

Stephan has a page devoted to L+R Records (http://www.wirz.de/music/lippfrm.htm) which lists all the Living Country Blues LP's and you can even read the notes for most of them.

-Jeff

[Parlor Picker]

The German website says "Leider ausverkauft." - which basically means "Sorry, sold out".

[oddenda]

It never rains, but it pours! The recordings that Axel and Siggi did in 1980 are marvelous, probably the last major field-recording expedition to bear still-ripened fruit. Their efforts are marvelous and I cannot recommend the stuff too highly in spite of the damage it will do to your wallets! They sort of picked up where I left off, at least in the SE.

yrs,
     Peter B.

[uncle bud]

They certainly do appear to be the CDs from the series, as you say SpikeDriver. Good news if they actually are released (sometimes I wonder if it's just amazon bots screwing with us).

[Lignite]

I hate to gloat, Uncle Bud, but Axel Kustner himself gifted me with the whole set of CDs when I was visiting Germany last April for bringing him a pair of Carhartt blue jeans for him over from the States. What a nice guy! I wish he'd visit over here more often but he's presently unemployed and is getting more into gypsy music back in his home turf. (He's still getting the occasional blues 78 from American auctions). I'll ask him about sources for getting the series next time I talk to him and keep you posted.

[dj]

The November 8 "Latest Additions" list at Roots & Rhythm lists 8 of these.
 

[uncle bud]

The Latest Additions listing on the Roots and Rhythm website now lists 12 of the Living Country Blues USA releases, so looks like lots of the series has just become available. They're going for $14.98 a pop. Rather short on tracks per CD, but lots of interesting stuff. See here:

http://www.rootsandrhythm.com/roots/New_Releases/latest_110808.htm

Lignite, bringing jeans to Germany eh? Sounds so Cold War!  Good to see you here.

[jharris]

I notice the 2-CD Introduction set is not listed . A shame if this one is not available:

[Pan]

For once I got lucky and purchased this 12-CD collection second hand for a good price, along with the George Mitchell Collection. 

I also wanted the 2CD introduction records, which were not included in the deal. You can find most if not all of the set on Amazon, but it took me a while to find the actual introduction CD's as well (downloads are easier to find, but I wanted the CD with the liner notes as well).

Following the Bellafon / L+R site: http://www.bellaphon.de/artikel.php5?ean=4003099711921 i found out that Amazon.de (German Amazon) had a few copies for sale (if their site is up to date?). I bought one, so there's one new and one used left, if I'm not mistaken. At the moment the Amazon page still lists the new ? 8,79 copy from Bellaama as available, but that's the one I bought. Go figure.
http://www.amazon.de/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&tag=bellaphorecor-21&index=music-de&field-ean=4003099711921&link_code=qs

Cheers

Pan

[blueshome]

Couldn't see it on Amazon but ordered a number of the cd's here: www.grooves-inc.co.uk

[Pan]

FWIW I received my copy from Bellaama swiftly.

Cheers

Pan

[RobBob]

I have a three CD set by this title, that fits the description.  Are there many tracks on these additional CDs that I don't have?

[Pan]

Hi all.

I just wanted to add, that the Living Country Blues collection can now be heard on Spotify.

http://open.spotify.com/user/goldilox3/playlist/15jP0Nfsu8CyCgpGDmZjzo

Cheers

Pan