Ted Olson

“He Is My Story” is a magnificent, long-neglected 1928 gospel recording by Texas-born African-American Pentecostal singer and pianist Arizona Dranes, who was the first person to play piano on a gospel recording and whose prowess as a singer and performer has been acknowledged by such gospel musicians as Thomas A. Dorsey, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Mahalia Jackson.

Ironically, but inevitably, the record company that took up the difficult task of chronicling jazz—which emerged just over a century ago, among a disenfranchised culture in one city in the American South (New Orleans, of course), but which soon served as the soundtrack for the modernizing Western world—was Smithsonian Folkways, overseen by one of America’s most elite cultural institutions

1. “Just Gone,” recorded by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, in Richmond, Indiana, on April 5, 1923 (Gennett Records). This is the first recording on which Armstrong appeared. Having worked in Joe “King” Oliver’s shadow since 1919, when he replaced the older musician in Kid Ory’s New Orleans-based band, Armstrong joined Oliver’s Chicago band in 1922, playing second cornet behind Oliver for much of 1923 and appearing with Oliver on recordings for four different record labels.

At this juncture emerged Old Hat Records based in Raleigh, North Carolina, the brainchild of record collector and music historian Marshall Wyatt. In 1999, as his label’s initial release, Wyatt compiled Music from the Lost Provinces, featuring recordings from the “Golden Age” of old-time stringband music (1927-1931) by such stellar North Carolina–based acts as Grayson & Whitter, Frank Blevins & His Tar Heel Rattlers, the North Carolina Ridge Runners, the Carolina Night Hawks, and Ephraim Woodie & The Henpecked Husbands. Music from the Lost Provinces provided ample evidence of Wyatt’s gift for producing historical compilations and received glowing reviews from music scholars (Charles K. Wolfe called it “a breathtakingly beautiful album”).

As Woody at 100 makes clear, there’s much to admire about how Guthrie lived his life, however untidy or troubled it was at times. Even today, though, decades after his death, some people seem threatened by his radical reputation. Santelli suggests as much in his essay: During a visit to the Texas panhandle town of Pampa (one of the places in which Guthrie lived during his youth), Santelli gave an impromptu talk at a chamber of commerce meeting on the man whose guitar once bore a sticker proclaiming “This machine kills fascists”…only to witness some of the organization’s members walk out.