The Complete Friends of Old Time Music concert
(Music CD)

Title from disc label

Analog recording

Songs, blues and spirituals from the African American Gullah Geechee community, St. Simons Island, Georgia

Biographial and historical notes in English by Eric S. Crawford, Nathan Salsburg and Peter K. Siegel (47 pages : portraits) inserted in container.

Bessie Jones, John Davis, and the Georgia Sea Island Singers gained wide renown during the 1960s and '70s for their powerful performances of traditional songs from the African American Gullah Geechee community on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Most in the group were born and raised on St. Simons, and could trace their ancestry to the enslaved West and Central Africans who worked on the island's cotton plantations. Throughout the '60s, the Georgia Sea Island Singers were prominent voices in the civil rights movement, bringing hundreds of years of Black musical tradition to bear on a pivotal time in American history. This previously unheard recording captures their complete Friends of Old Time Music concert of April 1965, at which they were joined by legendary bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell, cane fife player Ed Young, and folklorist Alan Lomax, who acted as emcee. The album showcases a variety of traditional music from the Island and beyond, including stirring work songs, emotionally charged spirituals, jubilant songs for children, and revelatory renditions of Mississippi blues.

Bessie Jones, John David & the Georgia Sea Island Singers ; with Mississippi Fred McDowell and Ed Young

Recorded by Peter K. Siegel at a concert presented by the Friends of Old Time Music and the Newport Folk Foundation,April 9, 1965,New School, New York City

Sung in English and in the Gullah language (Sea Islands Creole dialect)

CD