'Twas the Season

Odetta: Christmas Spirituals
Vanguard, Stereolab, VSD-2079
Printed in U.S.A., 1960

The following text is from 'Tis the Season that I wrote for Berry's Top 100 in 2010. I was still in Ohio then and bought the Odetta record at the Family Store in Cleveland.

      'Tis the season for thrift stores to organize their records. Once a year the Christmas records are separated from the secular records. I enjoy this, it makes it easy, I only need to browse through a considerable smaller selection to try to find something I like than I do the rest of the year. So why did I browse through the bin with Christmas records the other day? God only knows but there she was, the embodiment of the Afro-American presence in the 60s folk scene in America: Odetta. A Christmas record indeed, the songs are all 'Negro-Spirituals' and most songs are about the Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus. The song Virgin Mary Had One Son may very well end up in the Top 100 and become the first ever Christmas song in the Top 100 history. God bless Odetta. The album is called Odetta: Christmas Spirituals and was released by Vanguard.

Country Comedy

Country Comedy: Songs & Frolic by
Ham & Scram, featuring Buzz Busby
Mount Vernon Music, MVM 176
Made in Mount Vernon, NY, USA

This one could have also been called Don't Judge a Book By its Cover, Part 2. My expectancy with this record after investigating the cover was to hear backwoods slapstick humor and I was worried that such a well loved yet ominous folk ballad as Pretty Polly is, would be totally butchered by such irreverent looking characters on the cover (and I didn't even show the back side!) And I was wrong, totally wrong, their Pretty Polly is in fact one of the most intriguing versions I've heard, and the  record as a whole easily falls into the A category of American traditional music. Ham & Scram is the musical duo of Pete Pike and Buzz Busby from Washington, DC. Guitar player Pete Pike from Virginia is mainly known for his association with the mandolin player Buzz Busby, who is an established name in the history of Bluegrass music. Bernarr Busbice was born in 1933 in Louisiana and among his credits is the formation of the popular group The Country Gentleman in 1957. But after the successful decade of the 1950s, Busby's career went downhill due to his "growing fondness of alcohol and drugs". After a term in jail he only occasionally performed and recorded. He died of heart failure in 2003. You can listen to Pretty Polly below.

Teresa Trull

Teresa Trull – The Ways a Woman Can Be
Olivia Records, LF 910B
Los Angeles, CA, 1977

The best thing about shopping for records in thrift stores is when you come upon a specific mini collection from a specific individual. These mini collections are often quite intriguing and when I'm intrigued enough about a previous owner I like to buy all the records that were dumped at this thrift store. I live for the days that I find records from an unusual (in terms of rarity of record finds) country all together in one store. Once I bought a whole box filled up with Latvian records and another time I bought 15 Philippine records in one haul. Sometimes you'll find records of a certain topic or genre, and another time the type of labeling will give away that the records once belonged to one collection. The collections are most interesting to me if it concerns somewhat obscure records, a different set of records than those that anyone could have. I didn't think anything of it when I came upon two Chris Williamson records yesterday (one I already had—I only like it so-so), but when more women-only records from the 1970s showed up my mind became focused. It's not the first time I've encountered a feminist thrift-store record dumping but this was yet more specific. Studying the sleeves of records by Teresa Trull and Jade & Sarsaparilla it became clear that I was dealing with a collection that once belonged to a lesbian woman (or couple). I went back through the rows of records I had already been through to find all those LPs that probably came from this anonymous collector. I ended up with 7 records, including two by Edith Piaf that I suspect belonged to the same owner. Next week I'll post something about this Parisian cultural icon nicknamed The Little Sparrow but today I'll forward a song by Teresa Trull. I had never heard of her but that is not a surprise given that liner notes state that the record is intended for a female audience only (I'm a male by the way). Everything to do with the record is feminine, from the name of the record company to the production, and all music, lyrics, and musicians as well. That I had never heard of her does not mean she's completely unknown mind you, she's not. She has her own Wikipedia page and has recorded several albums. Maybe she's not a mainstream name but obscure she isn't either. Listen to the song Woman-Loving Women from her first album The Ways a Woman Can Be from 1977.

Appalachia

Instrumental Music of the 
Southern Appalachians
Tradition Records, TLP 1007
Recorded in 1956

I do not like the sleeve, and it's not quite of the same caliber as some other field recording collections from the region (say Mountain Music of Kentucky, recorded by John Cohen), but it is still a great find, especially on a red tag 50% day at the Goodwill with a red price tag of 99 cents on it. You can't even buy a candy bar for 50 cents anymore, and the vinyl is in great condition. Finding field recording records in itself makes for a good day at thrift store. The field work on this record wasn't too extensive, everything was recorded in a few days and only two or three families were involved. It was all recorded in the summer of 1956 in Virginia and North Carolina by Diane Hamilton, Liam Clancy, and Paul Clayton. They're all instrumental versions of well known traditional ballads. In the liner notes the story for each song is outlined. The recordings are of good quality and the musicianship is of good quality as well. Below you can find a small sampling of the tunes on the record. Cripple Creek is performed on a fiddle by Hobart Smith, Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad on guitar by Etta Baker, and Sally Goodin on dulcimer by Mrs. Edd Presnell. Two of the three tunes are typically played on a different instrument than you can hear here. Sally Goodin is really a fiddle tune while the fidle tune Cripple Creek is mostly played on a banjo.