John Work III: Recording Black Culture

Nathan Frazier (Artist), Frank Patterson (Artist), Fairfield Four (Artist), Heavenly Gate Quartet (Artist), Al Washington (Artist), Joe Holmes (Artist), Muddy Waters (Artist), John Wesley Work (Artist)

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 31, 2007)
• Original Release Date: March 18, 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Spring Fed Records
• ASIN: B000VPB6Q6
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #171,946 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Track Listings

1. Poor Black Sheep (Frazier and Patterson)

2. Texas Traveler (Frazier and Patterson)

3. Daniel Saw the Stone (Holloway High School Quartet)

4. Shine on Me (unnamed quartet)

5. I Am His, He Is Mine (female group, Zema Hill's church)

6. Walk Around in Dry Bones (Fairfield Four)

7. If I Had My Way (Heavenly Gate Quartet)

8. My Captain's Angry (Al Washington)

9. Egypt Land (unnamed leader and congregation)

10. Since I Laid My Burden Down (unnamed leader and congregation)

11. Amazing Grace (Elder Gray and the Pulaski Prayer Society)

12. Ain't Gonna Drink No Mo' (Joe Holmes)

13. Interview with Muddy Waters (John W. Work)

14. Great God Attend (Houston County Singing Convention)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Adding notes to a Folklorist's tunes:

[Work] argued that our appreciation of the black roots music of the era would have been greatly enriched had the writings of the researchers reached a wider audience. With the release of Recording Black Culture, an album consisting largely of newly unearthed acetates made by one of the collectors, John Work III, we now have the music itself to buttress this claim.

Mr. Work, the most eminent of the black folklorists, was not merely an acolyte of Mr. Lomax but clearly had ideas of his own. Where Mr. Lomax tended to treat black vernacular music as an artifact in need of preservation, Mr. Work sought to document it as it was unfolding. Thus on Recording Black Culture, instead of spirituals harking back to the 19th century, we hear febrile gospel shouting set to the cadences of what soon would become rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll.

Robert Gordon, who edited Lost Delta Found with Bruce Nemerov, cites the hot, driving piano on Mr. Work's recording of a group of Primitive Baptist women singing a song called I Am His, He Is Mine, as an example.

'There is nascent boogie-woogie in that music', said Mr. Gordon, who has also written a biography of the blues singer Muddy Waters, whom Mr. Work and Mr. Lomax recorded on their trip to Coahoma County, Miss., in 1941. That piano would have made many loyal churchgoers angry: a harbinger of the response to R&B and rock 'n' roll.

The pressing harmonic and rhythmic interplay of the Heavenly Gate Quartet singing If I Had My Way offers further evidence of this evolution. The heavy syncopation heard there and in Mr. Work's recording of the Fairfield Four's Walk Around in Dry Bones presage doo-wop a good decade before vocal groups like the Clovers and the Coasters would establish it as the soundtrack for young black America in the 1950s.

This isn't to claim Dead Sea Scrolls-like significance for the music on the new CD. Black Americans, though, were making the transition from rural to urban life. Spirituals were being supplanted by music that was more agreeable to black communities in which congregations were buying pianos so they could play the songs of contemporary gospel composers like the Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey during worship. Mr. Work was committed to capturing these changes as they were happening rather than after the fact.

Issued by Spring Fed Records, a label based in Woodbury, Tenn., Recording Black Culture demonstrates not only Mr. Work's understanding of the dynamic way vernacular music functioned in black culture but also his omnivorous musical appetite. In addition to dramatic examples of gospel singers anticipating rock 'n' roll, the selections include rare recordings ranging from black Sacred Harp singing to the virtuoso banjo playing of Nathan Frazier, performing as half of the banjo-and-fiddle duo Frazier & Patterson.

Why Mr. Work did not publicize the acetates that have been meticulously remastered on Recording Black Culture remains unclear. When Mr. Nemerov found the discs in the attic of the Work home near the Fisk campus a few years ago, they appeared to have been played frequently, suggesting that they were dear to Mr. Work.

Some of the recordings that he had made with Mr. Lomax, largely the work songs and spirituals favored by Mr. Lomax, had been deposited in the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress. The rest of the performances, which have gone unheard by the public for the better part of seven decades, give a more expansive view of the black vernacular music of the time.

'Professor Work had big ears', Mr. Nemerov said. The overarching theme here is just how much music there was in the black community before World War II. It just seemed to be everywhere, and in every layer of black culture. --Bill Friskics Warren December 2 2007 New York Times

Product Description

Grammy winner 2008 for Best Liner Notes.

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great package of music, graphics, and notes, December 18, 2007

By	Marie - See all my reviews

First the music: gospel, blues, fiddle & banjo, work chant, sacred harp---all in good sound quality, especially considering they were originally recorded on acetate (non-commercial) discs...a wonderful sampling of African-American music as it existed in black communities before World War II.
The graphics are stunning: old photographs, maps, show posters, etc. in a beautiful design and layout by Sharisse Steber.
The notes in the 28 page booklet are the best account of John Work's efforts in collecting Black folklore. The notes have been nominated for a Grammy.
(disclaimer: my Dad co-produced the album, but, really, it's good anyway!)

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grammy Winner, We need to know John Work III, January 8, 2008

By	Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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).