John Work III: Recording Black Culture
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Edition: Music CDCD Release Date: 2007-08-31
Music Label: Spring Fed Records
Soundtracks:
- Poor Black Sheep (Frazier and Patterson)
- Texas Traveler (Frazier and Patterson)
- Daniel Saw the Stone (Holloway High School Quartet)
- Shine on Me (unnamed quartet)
- I Am His, He Is Mine (female group, Zema Hill's church)
- Walk Around in Dry Bones (Fairfield Four)
- If I Had My Way (Heavenly Gate Quartet)
- My Captain's Angry (Al Washington)
- Egypt Land (unnamed leader and congregation)
- Since I Laid My Burden Down (unnamed leader and congregation)
- Amazing Grace (Elder Gray and the Pulaski Prayer Society)
- Ain't Gonna Drink No Mo' (Joe Holmes)
- Interview with Muddy Waters (John W. Work)
- Great God Attend (Houston County Singing Convention)
Music reviews of John Work III: Recording Black Culture
Music Review: Grammy Winner, We need to know John Work III
Rating: 5 Stars
Bruce Nemerov's accompanying booklet won the Grammy in 2008 as the "Best Album Notes of the year." They are really a contribution to serious thinking about the Black folk music tradition. Bruce opens a door into the life and work of John Work III. I hope Nemerov follows up with more substantial publication on the importance of John Work III.
As a student of Black folk music who admires John Work III, my emphasis is more on the meaning of these recordings. But I want to say this is just good music if you don't care about its cultural significance. I find it hard to get through each track without hitting the replay button on my CD player. For those not familiar with Black folk music, this recording will open the door to all kinds of good music that will stay in your ears and your life!
This recording is another step in the resurrection of the great work of John Work III, this country's leading African American folklorist, begun by Bruce Nemerov and Robert Gordon in their book Lost Delta Found. If you love these recordings, especially if you want to know the real heritage of the Blues, you need that book, not so much become it documents the demerits of Alan Lomax, but because it explains and contains the work of John Work III and his colleagues. Work viewed his collection and study of African American folk music, not as an archaic odity, not simply due to its influence on European-American music, but as part of the development of Black music and culture as a whole.
We are first introduced to the great team (brought together for folk performances and recordings by Work) of Patterson and Frasier, playing Black string-band music at a furious pace. As a banjo player and a failed fiddler, I finding it daunting to think of keeping up with this powerful band. I wish I could see how Black folk danced to Patterson and Frasier. Close your eyes during these tunes and imagine the dancing they created!
These pieces indicate the electricity, strength and power of Black string band music, once forgotton, but now being revived by folk like the Ebony HillBillies and the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
Work provides us with four recordings of Gospel Quartets. He was involved with annual contests of high school and other gospel quartets and this is just a selection from his recordings. We get a range from bluesy sounding quartet singers to quartet singers who show the clear links between gospel quartet singing and turn of the century "Barbershop" harmony, itself a form of Black folk music. The most delightful of the quartet recordings for me is "Walk around in Dry Bones," by the Fairfield Four, a Nasheville group still recording great Gospel still one of the leading Gospel Quartets. Yet, all of the recordings are rhythmic and exciting.
My personal favorite on this album are the three samples of congregational singing on this CD. Here we have a recording of the original African-based religious singing and general worship that remained in rural Black southern churches even as it was dying or being murdered by the leaders of Black Baptist and Methodist denominations in the cites. We have the free call and response of preacher and congregation, the shouts and testimony of members getting the spirit, and the spontaneous singing of church members. John Work III studied the rhythm of the preachers in such congregations and notated their sermons like music even though it was formally speech. The congregational music and worship here is thoroughly exciting, and rolls with the rhythm. When you hear this music, it will be no surprise to you that the faithful in such churches called these tunes "Church Rocks." This is the way the tunes that were adulterated and Europeanized into "Negro Spirituals" actually sounded. The "Amazing Grace" you here on this CD is nothing like any other version you will ever hear. One hopes more recordings by Work and others of congregational Black singing will reach the surface.
We are provided with a joint interview between Muddy Waters and Work III and Alan Lomax. Elsewhere, scholars have pointed out how smoothly the dialog between the Black folklorist and the Black blues musician goes until Alan Lomax injects himself into the conversation.
If you have never heard it before, nothing will prepare you for the singing of the Houston County Alabama Singing Convention, Black singers in the tradition of the Sacred Harp Singing. Rather than my explaining it, you get this CD and listen to it, listen to it again and again until you are taken away from this world to the very different one, much closer to Africa, but filled with strength, emotion and singing like you have never heard before.
This is not just a good sampler of older Black music, but a selection of music made to put forward the legacy and distinct undersandy of John Work III in folk music. Besides the enjoyability of this music, anyone who wishes a serious understanding of Black music, traditional or untraditional, and of the difference between the views of the most noted Black folklorist and European Americans who pursued the same material needs these recordings.
We hope the success of this recording will lead to the publication of more of the folk music that Work Collected and to the reissuing of his out of print books and the publication of his unpublished materials including the important lecture and speech Bruce Nemerov quotes in his Grammy-nominated booklet that accompanies the CD (which booklet is worth the price of the CD on its own).
Description of John Work III: Recording Black Culture
Grammy winner 2008 for Best Liner Notes.General CDs
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