shytone  books  music  essays  home  exploratories  new this month

 ...shy tone...

in 2000...following
the issue of the first lost domain cd,
I started to think - seriously - about just what
a truly great cdr label would look like

Sure, there were the reissues
of the tapes to sort out - but I wanted to do
more, like properly tackle a lot of (now) public
domain materials...and, maybe even try to do something
w/stuff that currently languished out of print,
or as bootlegs.

I got very ambitious:

*All Night Long
(stringband shakedowns)

*Shouting Down the House
(black religious field recordings)

*Altamont Revisited
(archaic black stringband field recordings)

Da Costa Woltz's Southern Broadcasters: Don't Forget to Swing

The Beale St. Sheiks: Paramount Chiefs/The Sheiks' first & last

Jab Jones: Two Strange Hands

Ensemble Beauties
(southern jazz at its peak)

Will Ezell, the Graves & Baby Jay: Barrelhouse R&R: 1929

Eddie Anthony: Cat Gut Tongue

Ragtime Stovepipes
(reconstruction era songsters)

and,
that was merely
to be the beginning of the pd stuff

in the works were also: complete Sid Hemphill, a radically different
approach to compiling early Ellington (only the great compositions, but every important
early version of same, and everything in chronological order), complete Bessie Tucker,
beautiful drummerless jazz combos from the late 30s/early 40s
that're pretty much unknown, except to collectors,

the very best of Mahalia Jackson's pre-Columbia work,
a Rebert Harris/Soul Stirrers collection - compiled from complete sources,
hell...the possibilities were all over the place...

Mostly, I wanted to straddle the two great divides
in reissue territory...that between "complete recordings in chronological order"
and bitty - although often great - compilations that're aimed at the less than obsessive
collectors...and between raw 78 sound & that "cleaned up" and EQ'd -
and these two divides also (roughly) align w/the labels.

The former is Document in a nutshell - a label I swear by, but many others find
off-putting in their approach...and the latter were (pretty much) all the rest,
although the EQ situation has (definitely) improved in recent years.

Anyway, I wanted to EQ without sacrificing anything in importance
to reducing surface noise on the old 78s, and to make my unit of selection that of
sessions - rather than individual cuts.  The running order within said sessions might
well be altered for listening pleasure - and usually was - but the result'd feel
much more like an album...even if I went for complete recordings,
as I did in most of those I worked up.

However, I didn't - then - finish the remastering on these,
as the original shy tone stuff - and those below - were more saleable
to most of my friends...still, three are (now) finally finished,
and I'm truly proud of my handiwork.

The other targets for reissue,
unjustly long-out-of-print albums, and
great stuff so far languishing on bootlegs alone,
were more tricky...so, I decided to chase down what I could
and make an explicit statement that royalties WOULD be paid on these,
on application by the artists...labels (should any actually have the rights
to same) could get stuffed...since - if they really knew their business,
I wouldn't have had to've put in all this work in the first place.

oh...and
any title would be deleted
as soon as a legitmiate version was made available

first round was big:

*The Fall: Black Night on Mt. Erica (live 1982)

*The Legendary Peg Leg Howell (1963)

Can: Prehistoric  Futures (live 1968/1971)

James "Peck" Curtis: Ex-Tapdancer Goes Free (1967)

Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band: Bat Chain Puller (1976)

Link Wray: Beans & Fatback (1973)

Television: Double Exposure (1974/1975)

The Reverend Robert Wilkins: Memphis Gospel Singer (1964)

Tom Waits: Cold Beer on a Warm Night (live 1979)

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: No One Knows This is Everywhere (live 1971)


...all of which were limited to 10 copies w/handmade covers...


and, again, there were plenty more
I worked on: The Howlin' Wolf: Feral (live Cambridge, Mass: 1966),
Bo Diddley's Beach Party, The Premiers: Farmer John Live...as well as complete DNA,
early live Panther Burns, The Rolling Stones: Live-R Than You'll Ever Be
and Sonny Sharrock's first album



+
on top of these

[wait, there's more!]

I also did a few (that didn't need EQ), basically just for my listening pleasure,
that I gave away free to friends...particularly those that had bought most
of the available ones off me...thus helping fund the next set of
 rarities that I was hunting down

Albert Ayler: Swing Low, Sweet Spiritual
(a re-ordered version of Ayler's neglected classic "Goin' Home")

Frank Sinatra: Frank's Melancholy Years
(the pick of Frank's most beautiful/despairing Capital-era ballads)

I Thought I Heard Albert Ayler Call My Name
(third world brass/reed musics)

now - at long last - five of these (*) are available
again...this time outside Brisbane. Thankfully also, several in the second series
 have now turned up on cd...saving me the dubious pleasure of manufacturing them for you...oh, and if you'd like to know about the sources/track
listings for the three immediately above, just email.

John Henry Calvinist

for
further shy tone information
please contact  jhenryc@hotmail.com

&

the lost domain itself may be contacted at
thelostdomain@inorbit.com