sweartotellthetruth

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, October 1st (10:00 to 12:00 noon)

We opened this weeks program with some R&B out of Chicago on the Miracle and Premium labels and from Aristocrat and Chess. We try to cover Rhythm & Blues from the forties and fifties as closely as we do down-home blues from the  same era. As with blues recordings there were many worthy but obscure records and many that have been forgotten since they were once current. Where R&B once ruled the African-American charts it was mostly forgotten by the 1960s when the so-called Blues Revival took place. Today, we can appreciate the quality and variety of this music and we can appreciate a bit better the way the world was in a bygone time.

Also on this weeks program, a bit of mandolin blues, a couple of what appear to have been studio bands that recorded dance and blues records in the late 1930s, Bill and Charlie Monroe, new music from Harpdog Brown and something from HowellDevine.

Last segment of the show devoted to the Gospel Spirit reissues from Columbia Legacy following our exploration of blues from the Columbia catalogue. Many of the pre-war blues recordings in Columbia’s vaults were acquired from other companies in the twenties and thirties. Columbia Legacy put together some excellent gospel reissues in the 1990s, much of it recorded by Columbia or its OKeh subsidiary.

These parts of Columbia’s vaults have been mostly neglected in recent years but you can still find most of the Columbia Legacy reissue albums of blues and gospel one way or another today, if you are so inclined. Meanwhile, we like to highlight these collections from time to time because of the resources and documentation that went into their production. We don’t have to identify the source albums on the air but you can identify the titles from each week’s playlist on the CFMU website as long as the shows remain available as podcasts, ie., eight weeks.

On the Show:

Cryin’ Jesse & his Orchestra – Ella Mae Morse – Five Blazes – Kitty Stevenson – Jimmy Nelson – Harpdog Brown – Sleepy John Estes – Harlem Hamfats – Charlie Monroe & His Kentucky Pardners – Morgan Davis – Blind Willie Johnson – Jackson Gospel Singers- Dorothy Love Coates – and others

Contact Us:

To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com.

You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.

Next week

Check this site.

cmc