{"product_id":"various-playing-for-the-man-at-the-door-field-recordings-from-the-collection-of-mack-mccormick-58-71-cd","title":"Various - Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick 58–71 (CD)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDetails: \u003c\/strong\u003eIn the 1950s and 60s, the blues was the dominant form of Black vernacular music throughout Texas and\r\nthe surrounding areas. In segregated neighborhoods, community members gathered in saloons,\r\ndancehalls, and each other's homes to hear their neighbors sing their stories of sorrow, heartbreak,\r\njubilation, and triumph. Robert \"Mack\" McCormick, an academically untrained but fanatical devotee of\r\nthe blues, stepped into this world and became one of it's most devout advocates and documentarians.\r\nBy photographing Black and Latino Texans and their neighborhoods, as well as recording and\r\ninterviewing musicians-many of whom never stepped foot into a proper recording studio-McCormick\r\nendeared and eventually embedded himself into these communities. By the time he died in 2015,\r\nMcCormick had amassed a collection of 590 reels of sound recordings and 165 boxes of manuscripts,\r\noriginal interviews and research notes, thousands of photographs and negatives, playbills, and posters.\r\nBecause McCormick never published or released most of these materials, his collection became a thing\r\nof legend and intense speculation among scholars, blues aficionados, and musicians alike.\r\n\r\nPlaying for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick, 1958-1971 is\r\nthe first compilation of music drawn from this fabled collection, which indelibly documents a pivotal\r\nmoment in African American history. It features never-before-heard performances not only from\r\nmusicians who became icons in their own right-including Lightnin' Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb-but\r\nalso, crucially, performers whose names may be unfamiliar to even the most devoted blues fans and\r\nscholars. Newly mastered recordings and accompanying photographs bring to life many of these\r\nforgotten figures: offering insight into their lives and illuminating in new, enlightening ways their joys\r\nand anguish, deep social connections, distinctive voices, and cultural networks. The collection spans\r\ngospels, ragtime, country blues dirges, the unclassifiable music of George \"Bongo Joe\" Coleman, and\r\nmore, showing that no community, no matter how tight knit, is monolithic.\r\n\r\nAccompanying the music is a 128-page book, which contains breathtaking photographs by McCormick\r\nand his associates, as well as contextual essays by producers Jeff Place and John Troutman on\r\nMcCormick's life, and by musicians Mark Puryear and Dom Flemons on some of the marginalized\r\ncommunities throughout \"Greater Texas\" to which McCormick devoted his life's work. This release is a\r\npartnership with the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Alliance Entertainment","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49641867641132,"sku":"093074026021","price":75.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0863\/2257\/7708\/files\/4178749-2940566.jpg?v=1724312852","url":"https:\/\/joseyrecords.com\/products\/various-playing-for-the-man-at-the-door-field-recordings-from-the-collection-of-mack-mccormick-58-71-cd","provider":"Josey Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}