Various Artists, Everybody's Tuned to the Radio: Rural Music Traditions in West Georgia, 1947-1979 (Center for Public History, 2002)
With a title that sounds like a master's dissertation, a disc like this better deliver the goods right up front, and it does. The best part -- well, second best, right after the music itself -- is the story behind it. It's one of those tales of serendipity that leaves you shaking your head at how much great folk art of all kinds must be languishing in obscurity in attics and cellars, waiting for that chance discovery.
This is the tale of radio station WLBB, in rural Carroll County in the West Georgia Piedmont, the musicians who enlivened its airwaves and the listeners who cherished it enough to record it. Disc producer James Michael Buck was doing a university oral history project when he stumbled on a cache of old tapes and acetate records that documented the local musicians who played on the station in the mid-20th century. He talked to more and more people and eventually turned up recordings from WLBB from the late '40s through the late '70s.
Some of the recordings were made by folks listening at home, using old reel-to-reel machines. Some were made by engineers at the station onto the acetate discs used for transcriptions. This CD presents more than an hour of them, strung together as though in an actual radio program, opening and closing with the theme song, from which the disc title is taken. Studio patter, song introductions, ads and public service announcements are sprinkled about between tracks. It's like entering a time machine.
Most of the performances are endearingly rough-hewn; while not generally of professional caliber, neither are they amateurish. Many of these musicians could have made a living at music, given slightly different economic and cultural circumstances.
Chief among these are the Storey Sisters, Nellie and Rhoda, who played and sang in the 1950s and '60s and who, as a duo or with a variety of performing partners, come across like a more fun-loving Carter Family. They swing on the Delmore Brothers' "Freight Train Boogie" and Tommy Duncan's "Stay All Night" (as singers in The Southern Kinfolks), yodel in harmony on their own composition, "New Depression Blues," and kick out the jams on the traditional "Bile Them Cabbage Down." They also back up Charles Cole and his Southern Kinfolks on a rag-time version of "Down Yonder," popularized by another Georgia act, the Skillet Lickers.
Another family act, the Akers clan, who played mostly under the name of the Radio Homefolks, play gospel songs, bluegrass and instrumental standards. Alton Stitcher, a folk singer with a honey-sweet vocal style, likewise sings his own compositions as well as traditional numbers and hillbilly covers. Nathan Defoor and Jim Embry form a delightful hillbilly gospel duo. Plus, there are banjo breakdowns, weepy ballads, and folksongs like "Froggie Went a Courtin'" and "John Henry." Not to mention excerpts from the Gospel Hour.
The fidelity varies, especially on the home recordings. But this whole project has been lovingly prepared, with lots of notes and photos, and it's a treasure trove for musicians and music lovers looking for some authentic homemade music. It's also an audio album from a time when radio truly was local and a vital part of local and regional music and culture.
The University of West Georgia's Center for Public History has a Web site devoted to their CD releases, including this album.
