sweartotellthetruth

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, February 11, 2014 (1:00-2:30 pm)

This week, we devote the entire 90 minutes to Bob Geddins‘ Oakland-based record labels and the artists Geddins recorded. Since the “blues revival” of the sixties there has been great interest in records that very few people heard when they were first issued, records issued by operators like Bob Geddins that never had wide circulation. Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records befriended Geddins and issued an Oakland Blues LP on Blues Classics that first made us aware of the Oakland blues scene of the forties and fifties over forty years ago.

It’s not that Geddins never produced hits but, over the years he was in the record business, for all the effort he put into his businesses and the outside jobs he held to support his family and sustain his companies, he was rarely in a position to take advantage of a hit record and reap the benefit either personally or for his companies. Artists used his labels as a stepping stone to better-run and -financed companies.

Somehow Bob Geddins outlasted many others in the business and, if he did not achieve the financial comfort he sought, he did leave an important  legacy of recorded blues, gospel and R&B and there can be little doubt that he advanced the careers of a great many artists, even if they found their greatest success with other labels.

We’ll look at recordings made for Bob Geddins over a sixteen year period, 1945-1961.

On the Show:

Rising Star Gospel Singers – Pilgrim Travelers – Lowell Fulson – Bob Geddins’ Cavaliers – Jimmy McCracklin – Roy Hawkins – Jimmy Wilson – Big Mama Thornton – Sugar Pie De Santo – King Solomon

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until March 10th.