Various Artists – Goodbye, Babylon
The facts: six CDs containing 135 songs thematically united by a focus on the sacred and 25 sermons, all culled with astounding clarity and resonance from 78s dating back to 1902. It’s accompanied by a fully annotated 192-page book, and all housed in a specially fabricated cedar box. Dating from the so-called Golden Age of American roots music, the recordings showcase string bands, gospel quartets, jug-band reveries, guitar evangelists and sacred harp choirs.
The packaging honors, evokes and celebrates the known and unknown performers with subtle invention and quiet dazzle. Sliding back the wooden box’s lid reveals compartments containing the individually sleeved CDs, the book, and a couple small handfuls of cotton — not the pharmaceutical variety, but the real raw deal, plucked from the fields and infused with seeds. As the book so aptly stated, “This set is dedicated to all the artists who wanted their message to be heard. The cotton is a reminder of the struggle, strife, and sorrow that so many of them endured.”
The discs themselves are distinguished from one another graphically with simple icons derived from the cotton plants. While the album title and label name are included on the disc face, no sequential numbers differentiate the six discs — just those tiny images. I was at first perturbed by this choice, as it forced me to find a way around my dependence on reading words and numbers. Then it struck me how this element also paid respect to the circumstances of many of the people who played and sang on these recordings: illiteracy.
The sheer volume of riveting material here means that different songs will find their way into one’s personal spotlight at different times. In fact, to truly mirror the era in which these were first created and offered up for public consumption, it’d be best to play a handful for a week, then add a few more as the months roll by. But we don’t live in those times, so in spinning this bounty for the past week, a hefty load of marvels have stunned me repeatedly.
Arizona Dranes and Choir sang “He Is My Story” — a blind singer performing the composition of a largely forgotten blind composer, Fanny Crosby (and mistitled because Dranes no longer remembered Crosby’s proper title, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine”). Blind Willie Johnson, who’s represented by a couple entries, sings “Take Your Burden To The Lord And Leave It There” with a verve that fearlessly embraces showmanship. The North Carolina Boys (“Daniel In The Den Of Lions”) sound like the blueprint for the Holy Modal Rounders. The Trumpeteers formed in 1946 after Joseph Johnson left the Golden Gate Quartet; their 1947 recording of “Milky White Way” was an enormous hit (outselling both Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s then current releases, combined) and it oozes the same quiet flair and confidence that informed soul ballads two decades hence.
It can’t be overstated just how perfectly realized this set is, from song selection to mastering, writing and design. There’s not a wasted moment or page.