Shake It Records is getting in on Record Store Day's national "Black Friday" promotion, which, like regular ol' Record Store Day in April, means hundreds of brick-and-mortar record shops will be stocking hundreds of unique new releases by artists and labels big and small. As both a shop and a label, Northside's Shake It will be issuing its own release, a special double-album compilation of Blues from the Cincinnati area circa 1927-1936.
Play It Like You Did Back To George Street: An Anthology of Cincinnati Blues 1927-1936 contains 29 tracks of "pre-war" Cincinnati Blues, featuring unearthed gems by the likes of Sam Jones, Cincinnati Jug Band, Kid Cole, Jesse James, Bob Coleman and Sweet Papa Tadpole. The album — a limited-run, double-vinyl release with a card to digitally download the tracks — will be available Friday at Shake It's Northside store. Author Steve Tracy, who now lives in Germany, literally wrote the book on Cincinnati Blues with 1998's Going to Cincinnati: A History of Blues in the Queen City, so it makes sense that he'd pen the extensive and insightful liner notes for the compilation.
In the liners, Tracy explains the local Blues scene of the era and makes the case that, while Cincinnati might rightfully be ignored by Blues scholars and historians, it was a scene that was "more representative of what a local Blues scene was like in most of America" at the time. In Cincinnati, he writes, "one could especially find a community of musicians whose concerns were the concerns of the anonymous black populace that shred the apartment stoops, bustling streets, fried food cafes and restaurants, earthy brothels, and storefront churches …"
The compilation is branded with a "Music From Ohio" emblem on the cover and a promising "Volume One" tag. Shake It's Darren Blase says that "Music From Ohio" will be an ongoing excavation of Cincinnati's music history.
"(Music From Ohio) will be a reissue series of Ohio Blues, Rockabilly, Garage, R&B and Soul, County Bop, Gospel and more," Blase says via email from Cambridge, Mass. (where he currently lives). "We have quite a few things in the pike. We have more stuff from Cincy, as well as Hamilton, Youngstown, Columbus and more."
Here are a few sample tracks from the compilation.
Cincinnati Jug Band - "George Street Stomp"
Sweet Papa Tadpole - "Keep Your Yes Ma'am Clean"
Walter Coleman- "I'm Going To Cincinnati"
For a look at more Record Store Day "Black Friday" exclusives, click here.
