Various Artists
Baby, How Can It Be?: Songs of Love, Lust and Contempt from the 1920s and 1930s
Dust-to-Digital
5 stars (out of 5)
By Aaron Keith Harris
I’ve been listening to this one in the car for the last several weeks, struggling to decide what to say about it. With 66 tracks spread over three CDs and more than three hours, there’s a lot of material here, and all of it is simply engrossing.
And it all comes from the 78 RPM record collection of John Heneghan, one of those valuable souls whose gentle madness perpetuates these essential nuggets of recorded culture. The package s beautifully illustrated and presented in a fold-out box, with a centerfold illustration by (thankfully, not of) R. Crumb and liner notes by Nick Tosches.
The selections themselves are varied and inspired, with styles such as blues, jazz, pop, Hawaiian and what we now call old-time country. Some of it sounds like it could be one of those manic soundtracks to Tom and Jerry cartoons (The Broadway Bellhops with “Wimmin-Aaah!), some sounds like it could have been recorded in an old barn with just a fiddle and guitar or banjo (Fiddlin’ John Carson with “It’s a Shame to Whip Your Wife on Sunday).
In spite of all their differences, a few things emerge from this collection: the emphasis on musicianship serving the song rather than the ego of the performer, and the concept of the song as something that, even with just about three minutes to spare, should be given time to develop and grow, as evidenced by the fact that many of the instrumental introductions approach one minute or so.
There are some well-known names here like Bill Carlisle, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Cab Calloway, Mississippi John Hurt, the Mississippi Sheiks and the Memphis Jug Band. But you’ve also got some racy fare in the form of Harry Roy and His Bat Club Boys with “Pussy” and Hartman’s Heartbreakers with “Let Me Play With It.”
And you’ve got the Callahan Brothers with the haunting “I Want to Ask the Stars,” Laura Smith with the arresting “I’m Gonna Kill Myself” and Mississippi Matilda with an amazingly powerful falsetto vocal on “Hard Working Woman.”
There’s plenty more that will grab your ear if you take the plunge on a truly satisfying collection of rare and beautiful time pieces.
