Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick 58–71 (Vinyl)
Release Date: 09/08/2023
In the 1950s and 60s, the blues was the dominant form of Black vernacular music throughout Texas and the surrounding areas. In segregated neighborhoods, community members gathered in saloons, dancehalls, and each other's homes to hear their neighbors sing their stories of sorrow, heartbreak, jubilation, and triumph. Robert "Mack" McCormick, an academically untrained but fanatical devotee of the blues, stepped into this world and became one of it's most devout advocates and documentarians. By photographing Black and Latino Texans and their neighborhoods, as well as recording and interviewing musicians-many of whom never stepped foot into a proper recording studio-McCormick endeared and eventually embedded himself into these communities. By the time he died in 2015, McCormick had amassed a collection of 590 reels of sound recordings and 165 boxes of manuscripts, original interviews and research notes, thousands of photographs and negatives, playbills, and posters. Because McCormick never published or released most of these materials, his collection became a thing of legend and intense speculation among scholars, blues aficionados, and musicians alike. Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick, 1958-1971 is the first compilation of music drawn from this fabled collection, which indelibly documents a pivotal moment in African American history. It features never-before-heard performances not only from musicians who became icons in their own right-including Lightnin' Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb-but also, crucially, performers whose names may be unfamiliar to even the most devoted blues fans and scholars. Newly mastered recordings and accompanying photographs bring to life many of these forgotten figures: offering insight into their lives and illuminating in new, enlightening ways their joys and anguish, deep social connections, distinctive voices, and cultural networks. The collection spans gospels, ragtime, country blues dirges, the unclassifiable music of George "Bongo Joe" Coleman, and more, showing that no community, no matter how tight knit, is monolithic. Accompanying the music is a 128-page book, which contains breathtaking photographs by McCormick and his associates, as well as contextual essays by producers Jeff Place and John Troutman on McCormick's life, and by musicians Mark Puryear and Dom Flemons on some of the marginalized communities throughout "Greater Texas" to which McCormick devoted his life's work. This release is a partnership with the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
Track List
- Mojo Hand
- God Moves on the Water
- The Clinton
- Sugar Blues
- St. James Infirmary
- Darlin' (You Know I Love You)
- You Gonna Look Like a Monkey
- One Room Country Shack
- Groceries on My Shelf (Piggly Wiggly)
- 3 O'Clock Blues
- Anything from a Foot Race to a Resting Place
- Salty Dog Rag
- Goin' to the River
- Quills
- Ma Pa Cut the Cake
- Crazy About Oklahoma
- Little Red Rooster
- My Work Will Be Done
- Steel Guitar Rag
- Tall Angel at the Bar
- This Whole World's in a Sad Condition
- World's in a Tangle
- Someday Baby
- It's Alright
- Cryin' Won't Make Me Stay
- China Tea
- Put Your Money Where Your Mouth
- Tom Moore's Farm
- Tom Moore's Farm
- Don't Do Me No Small Favors (Help the Bear)
- Fox Chase
- Black Widow Spider Blues
- Come and Go with Me to That Land
- Rollin' and Tumblin'
- Train Roll Up
- Shorty George
- Matchbox Blues
- It's My Life Baby
- Hello Central Gimme
- Bad Lee Brown
- Tin Can Alley Blues
- Medicine Show Pitch
- So Different Blues
- I Feel So Good
- Mr. Charlie
- The Ma Grinder
- Deep Ellum Blues
- K.C. Ain't Nothing But a Rag
- Lonesome Road
- Old Judge Blues
- The Slop
- Corrine Corrina
- Talking Blues
- Good Times Here Better Times Down the Road
- Put Me in the Alley
- Auctioneer
- Runaway
- Broke and Hungry
- Big Road Blues
- Casey Jones
- Atomic Energy
- Natural Born Lover
- Swanee River Boogie
- Rock Me Baby
- Blues Jumped a Rabbit
- George Coleman for President Nobody for Vice President