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DOCUMENT SOUND SAMPLES

The samples that are available on this site are taken from the massive Document Records Catalogue containing over 24,000 tracks. Samples currently available are;

George’s Spirit - Gary Atkinson and Bob Brozman
This rare recording was made at a studio in London in 1999. The instrumental, written by Gary was always played as a duet with Bob during Bob’s U.K. concerts during the 1990s. Although it became a great favourite with audiences it was never made available on CD, or vinyl for that matter. Now, it is available, in it’s entirety, for the first time, as a download from the Document Records web site.

The Bourgeois Blues - Lead Belly
Taken from Document DOCD-5226 “LeadBelly Volume 1”

Georgia Breakdown by Jimmy O’ Bryant’s Washboard Band
Taken from Document JPCD-1518-2 Jimmy O’ Bryant’s Washboard Band Volume 1

Boogie Woogie – Cleo Brown
Taken From Document DOCD-32-20-12 - Boogie Woogie Pioneers

DOCUMENT NEW RELEASES

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Blues Blues Christmas Volume 1 - (1925-1955) Various artists
Double album with full colour 20 page booklet.
DOCD-32-20-09

Blues Blues Christmas Volume 2 - (1926-1958) Various artists
Double album with full colour 24 page booklet.
DOCD-32-20-15

The idea of Christmas themed blues and gospel numbers stretches back to the very dawn of the recorded genres. “Hooray for Christmas” exclaims Bessie Smith to kick off her soon to be classic “At The Christmas Ball”, which inaugurated the Christmas blues tradition when it was recorded in November 1925 for Columbia. A year later, circa December 1926, the gospel Christmas tradition was launched when the Elkins-Payne Jubilee Singers recorded “Silent Night, Holy Night” for Paramount Records. After these recordings it was off to the races with numerous Christmas blues numbers recorded by singers of all stripes, a pace that continued as blues evolved into R&B and then rock and roll. For some reason there's far fewer gospel Christmas songs although there were plenty of Christmas sermons in the 1920's and 1930's when recorded sermons rivaled blues in popularity among black audiences.

Going hand in hand with Christmas is quite a number of New Year's songs, a good vehicle for juxtaposing the problems of the past year with the glimmer of hope that the upcoming year will bring better fortune. Whether these artists sung these numbers as part of their regular repertoire is unclear but it's almost certainly the case that many of these songs were recorded at the prompting of the record companies. Like any business they were always looking for a new angle or gimmick to sell records and advertised these boldly, often with full-page ads, in black newspapers like the Chicago Defender.

Perhaps you think this is a bit cynical but then you probably still believe in Santa Clause and good will towards men! Well, sit back, tip a glass of holiday cheer and enjoy our survey of yuletide classics spanning the 1920's through the 1950's, a simpler, more wholesome time – right!

Informative booklet notes for both volumes by Jeff Harris.
Detailed discography

Click here to visit Jeff's excellent site and and on-line radio show Big Road Blues. The show airs on Sundays 5 to 7 PM (EST) on WGMC Jazz90.1 and streams live on the web. The show is an exploration of traditional blues spanning the 1920's through the 1970's. In addition to classic artists, the show will focus an equal amount of time on those forgotten blues figures from the past; from the once popular artists who are now forgotten to the obscure artists who may have only cut a handful of 78's or 45's. This site is updated regularly with play lists, show notes, blues articles and reviews.

Memphis Blues Volume 4 (1929-1953)
Jenny Pope / James De Berry
Document DOCD-5686

Many will know James De Berry from his handful of Sun recordings made in 1953. They're here, with the wonderful accompaniment of Walter Horton on harmonica ('Easy' is an absolute "must"), Houston Stokes, drums, Mose Vinson, piano and Ratmond Jones, drums on second session. All excellent, "down-home" blues. But De Berry's recording began in the same decade that Jenny Pope's finished. In a similar vain to Charlie Burse, James De Berry's early recordings are a blend of blues vocal set with the backing of blues/jazz band. Mellow blues and up-beat, good time, swing paced pieces are abound and it interesting to hear how De-Berry developed through to the fifties.

With Pope and Berry, this album takes a little time away from the mainstream of the typical Memphis vintage blues scene and presents a fascinating alternate view which transcended from an acoustic and somewhat sophisticated style developed in the early days of blues recording through to stark, raw, powerful electric blues of the 1950's.

Informative booklet notes by Chris Lee
Detailed discography

Charlie Burse and his Memphis Mudcats - Memphis Highway Stomp
Complete recorded titles 1939
Document DOCD-5687

If this isn't good time music then what is? Many will know Charlie Burse as being one of the central figures, alongside Will Shade, of The Memphis Jug Band. Yet, during the late 1930s at least Charlie had another musical interest, a band which he led called The Memphis Mudcats This band gave Charlie the ability to "open up" and unleash his artistic and performance eccentricities that he evidently held at bay during the MJB recoding sessions. The MJB was able to reach the level of jollity and a sound that would make the listener smile. Charlie's sense of humour and notable abilities as a musician created something more sophisticated one might even use the phrase 'surreal blues'! Put Cab Calloway at his most manic and Spike Jones and City Slickers together you have Charlie Burse and his Mudcats.

Charlie leads the way with some nifty playing on his National Tenor guitar (watch out for his solo on 'Magic Spell Blues') and behind him is the very competent, tight, Mudcats with guitar, alto sax, piano, double bass and drums. But that isn't the end of it. The humour is provided by the inappropriately timed interjections of police car sirens, duck calls, rattles (of the football rattle kind) and ridiculous drum, cymbal and cow bell rolls. Could this be the great grandfather of the Bonzo Dog Do-Da Band?
The fast pieces such as Beale Street Holiday and the excellent Scared To Death and many others are hectic enough, with Charlie occasionally throwing in an effected laugh. There first, slow piece Wee Smoking Mama doesn't arrive until the seventh track. But rather than settling down to a moment of decorum the hum our is even more effective with romantic passages being underlined with the odd rattle and duck call.

But who were The Mudcats? As it stands, they are a mystery band with every band member unidentified. It is obvious that they were of a professional standard and certainly swung and were very much in tune with both Charlie's
This is a superb album which stands out from the norm. A great collection that can be there on stand by when those blues get too heavy and things get a little too serious.

Informative booklet notes by Chris Lee
Detailed discography

Haiti - The Alan Lomax 1936-1937 Field Trip Recordings - Harte Recordings
HRT 103

10 CD Box Set with hard cover book.

Alan Lomax Visited Haiti In 1936-1937. This is the tale of his trip, the music he found. The result has been put together into a massive box set that tells the complete story.

On December 21st, 1936, Alan Lomax sent a report to Herbert Putnam at the Librarian Of Congress, about his first impressions after arriving in Haiti.  

"I have looked about enough to be sure this is the richest and most virgin field I have ever worked in. I hear fifteen or twenty different street cries from my hotel window each morning while I dress. The men sing satirical ballads as they load coffee on the docks. Among the upper-class families many of the old French ballads have been preserved. The meringue, the popular dance of polite society here, is quite unknown in America and has its roots in the intermingling of the Spanish and French folk-traditions. The orchestras of the peasants play marches, bals, blues, meringues. Then mama and papa and kata tambours officiate at as many kinds of dances; the congo, the Vodou, and the mascaron. Then there seem to be innumerable cante-fables [oral tales punctuated by songs or rhymes performed by the audience]. Each of these categories comprise, so I am informed, literally hundreds of melodies; French, Spanish, African, mixtures of the three. The radio and the sound movie and the phonograph record have made practically no cultural impression, so far as I can discover, except among the petit-bourgeois of the coastal cities. And American jazz is hardly known here except among the rich who have visited America. Composition, by which I mean folk composition, is still very active. So I think I can say that unless a piece of sky falls on my head, this trip will mean some beautiful records for the Library's collection."

Disc 1; Urban Music. Disc 2; Music Under the Arbor: Haiti's Rustic Troubadour Music. Disc 3; Marti Gras. Disc 4; Rara. Disc 5; Children's Songs; Disc 6; European Son / Romances. Disc 7; Francilia. Disc 8; Kraze Gato. Disc 9; Work Brigades and Worship. Disc 10; Zondo Ceremony / Sosyete Workbook

"Alan Lomax was capturing the human spirit in song... The music moves us... not only because the traditions it documents are disappearing, but because it lives and breathes anew each time it's heard." - David Greenberg. NPR's All Things Considered.

Special “Financial Mischief Edition”
With New Release: “Bankers Blues”

As many of our customers and subscribers know, we got quite a bashing by those HBOS banking people. It has been a life changing experience and for us. It has brought into question the world that we live in and what such organisations such as the banks and its so called trustees are prepared to do in the name of money. Beware; we are witnessing asset stripping by the banks on a grand scale. It's as if nothing else matters and to Hell to all to those that get in their way, despite the fact the world's economy, along with the livelihoods of thousands of innocent people, has been brought to its knees as the result of the finance world's fiscal mischief.

We have been very fortunate to have survived the battering that we have had and to pull the Document through, intact. If you have not been affected by Fiscal Mischief then you have done well and long may that be the case. If you have, then our thoughts are with you and we hope that the effects are not too deep or that they will not be long lasting.

It was as if we could not avoid bringing Bankers Blues out. Not Banker's Blues but Blues about the Bankers. As we worked on other things, including the time consuming effort of fighting off HBOS along with its parasites, including and in particular its appointed trustees and many others on the high finance band wagon, titles kept popping up at us; Mortgage Blues, No Money, We Sure Got Hard Times Now, Money Kills Love, Trying To Make A Living, Poor Millionaire, Save That Money and many more.

The appalling fact was that people have been here before and before that and despite cries, warnings, documentation and history itself, greed and the insatiable thirst for money, money, money, money at all costs, has not been suppressed or cured. Lil Son Jackson, Hop Wilson, One String Sam, Blind Alfred Reed and many others have known what it is like to have their livelihoods threatened if not decimated in the name of “market forces”.

The words of caution from the first hand accounts of past victims are all here on our latest, special production, ‘Bankers Blues- A Study In Fiscal Mischief'. Has anything, will anything be learned?

Those that have lost everything will not be heard because, conveniently for the perpetrators, it takes money to fight ones way through the court and that money was siphoned off into the fat wallets of the perpetrators themselves. A sophisticated, legal, mugging.

So, it is hoped that this album, this CD, will remain as a reminder, a cautionary tale. Listen to it, enjoy the music but more importantly regard it as a tiny, tiny thorn in the financier's side. Better still, buy it as an ideal gift for your “favourite” bank manager or financial adviser and tell them that, next time, when they consider being party towards anything as outrageous as, let's say “sub prime” which actually means “less than good”, they give a few tracks of ‘Bankers Blues' a listen.

DOCD-32-20-16 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Document Series 1000

Some of the greatest names in Vintage Jazz, Boogie-woogie and Blues, including, Pete Johnson, Jimmy Yancey, Albert Ammons, Alberta Hunter, Kid Ory, Leadbelly and many more.

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Document Jazz Perspective 1500 Series

Vintage recordings from some of the historic masters of Jazz including Bunk Johnson, Clifford Hayes, Teddy Bunn, Johnny Dunn, Porter Grainger and many more.

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Document Series 32-20

Rags, Breakdowns, Stomps and Blues. Vintage Mandolin Music 1927 ~ 1946

A rapidly increasing collection of fascinating special projects, themes and documentaries blues, gospel, featured artists. Includes projects commissioned by Paul Oliver, Bill Wyman and Jeff Harris with many more to follow.

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Document Series 5000

The BIG one. At 679 CDs and growing this is one of the biggest slices of Afro-American music history that you will find anywhere. The complete recorded works of hundreds of blues, gospel, spiritual, boogie-woogie, songster artist; from the late 1800s onwards. Many, many recordings not available elsewhere these are the roots of soul, modern gospel, R&B, rap, black urban vocal music and rock.

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Document Series 6000

The original ninyl Blues Document Series preserved on CD. Includes classic recordings such as Blind Willie McTell Library of Congress session of 1940, classic post war recordings by memphis Minnie, by Jessie Thomas (brother of Ramblin' Thomas), Carolina Slim, Cripple Clarence Lofton and many more...

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Document Series 8000

This ever popular series spotlights the many masters of the early Country Music genre known to many as Old Timey music. Here you will find rare, historic recordings by The Skillet Lickers, Dixon Brothers, Fiddlin John Carson, Sam McGee, Fiddlin Doc Roberts, Walter Smith and many more.

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Classic Blues CBL 20000 Series

Licensed from Document to Allegro music these double CD sets at a budget price highlight some of the best known artists to be found in the Document catalogue.

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CTY Series

Country at its best.

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JAZ Series

..JAZ, I think the name speaks for itself ^_^

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Matchbox 2000 Series

Five CDs rescued from the impressive groundbreaking Matchbox Blues Series which first made its appearance back in the 1980s. Covers the Complete pre-war recorded works of Texas Alexander, Peg Leg Howell and Eddie Anthony.

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Document 9000 Shortcut Series

Tthese, sampler CDs at a low budget price are a an ideal way to not only dip in and discover the delights of Document but are also a great introduction into the blues, jazz, gospel, swing and country music. No expertise required, just sit back and enjoy.

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