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Bessie Jones with The Georgia Sea Island Singers—Get In

Union—Alan Lomax Archive, Association for Cultural Equity

What a phenomenal presence Alan Lomax was. For most of his life
he scoured the world for a wide spectrum of musical

performances, recorded, as early as 1948 on audio tape. There are
more than 17,400 digital audio files in that personal collection,
which is not to be confused with the Library Of Congress (LoC)
recordings—made on acetate and metal disk between 1933 and
1942—which added thousands more recordings to the archives. The
LoC recordings include the memorable Jelly Roll Morton, Woody
Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Muddy Waters sessions.

This album is a, sometimes outstanding, example of the breadth and depth of his recordings. Alan
Lomax first visited the Georgia Sea Island of St. Simons in June of 1935 with colleagues. There they
met the remarkable Spiritual Singers Society of Coastal Georgia, as the group was then called, and

recorded several hours of their songs and dances for the Library of Congress. Twenty—five years
later, Lomax found that the Singers were still active, and had been enriched by the addition of
Bessie Jones, a South Georgia native with a massive repertoire of songs going back to slavery times.

Despite the hint at politicality in the title, ‘Get In Union’ is not a political collection. By and large it

is a collection of old spirituals from way before the music became known as gospel, play songs,
children's songs and even a bit of flat-foot dancing on the catchy ‘Elephant Fair’. Most have Bessie
Jones’ magnificent contralto voice to the fore, such as in the sensational acapella version of ‘John
Henry’, slow and with a hammer ringing on a piece of metal as the sole accompaniment. Elsewhere
there are magnificent harmonies from the vocal group, and polyrhythmic hand clapping on ‘Got On

My Travelling Shoes’ reminds me of some of the west African indigenous music recorded by Paul
Oliver. There are 60 tracks on this album and each should be played and played again. Just
wonderful!

Ian K. McKenzie
Mary Coughlan—Life Stories—Hail Mary Records

Wow! What a wonderful surprise this one is. The cover pic of Mary
makes her look a bit ‘fraught’, but there’s nothing fraught about
the music. She has had her problems (check her autobiography,
Bloody Mary: My Story is published by Hatchette Books and look
here) but as all the best do, has incorporated the lessons of life
into her singing.

This is her sixteenth record and it is a wonderful example of a jazz
based album. Sometimes called a new Billie Holliday, the label is
misleading. She is better than that. She seems to be able to turn
her stunning voice to anything, from the angst of ‘Elbow Deep’, through the stomping jazz vocal and
keys of ‘Twelve Steps Forward and Ten Steps Back’ to the exuberance of ‘High Heal Boots’, there is
not a duff track here. Mary has a huge audience in Ireland and in Australia, but she is not so well
known in the UK. She’s on tour in the UK in September (shows here), let’s try to make sure she gets
better known.

Ian K. McKenzie