Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick 58–71 (Vinyl)

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

1. Mojo Hand
2. God Moves on the Water
3. The Clinton
4. Sugar Blues
5. St. James Infirmary
6. Darlin' (You Know I Love You)
7. You Gonna Look Like a Monkey
8. One Room Country Shack
9. Groceries on My Shelf (Piggly Wiggly)
10. 3 O'Clock Blues
11. Anything from a Foot Race to a Resting Place
12. Salty Dog Rag
13. Goin' to the River
14. Quills
15. Ma Pa Cut the Cake
16. Crazy About Oklahoma
17. Little Red Rooster
18. My Work Will Be Done
19. Steel Guitar Rag
20. Tall Angel at the Bar
21. This Whole World's in a Sad Condition
22. World's in a Tangle
23. Someday Baby
24. It's Alright
25. Cryin' Won't Make Me Stay
26. China Tea
27. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth
28. Tom Moore's Farm
29. Tom Moore's Farm
30. Don't Do Me No Small Favors (Help the Bear)
31. Fox Chase
32. Black Widow Spider Blues
33. Come and Go with Me to That Land
34. Rollin' and Tumblin'
35. Train Roll Up
36. Shorty George
37. Matchbox Blues
38. It's My Life Baby
39. Hello Central Gimme
40. Bad Lee Brown
41. Tin Can Alley Blues
42. Medicine Show Pitch
43. So Different Blues
44. I Feel So Good
45. Mr. Charlie
46. The Ma Grinder
47. Deep Ellum Blues
48. K.C. Ain't Nothing But a Rag
49. Lonesome Road
50. Old Judge Blues
51. The Slop
52. Corrine Corrina
53. Talking Blues
54. Good Times Here Better Times Down the Road
55. Put Me in the Alley
56. Auctioneer
57. Runaway
58. Broke and Hungry
59. Big Road Blues
60. Casey Jones
61. Atomic Energy
62. Natural Born Lover
63. Swanee River Boogie
64. Rock Me Baby
65. Blues Jumped a Rabbit
66. George Coleman for President Nobody for Vice President