Post by Bazza on Jul 13, 2006 3:52:37 GMT -5
I found this article posted on the Billy Bragg forum.
July 11, 2006
Two years ago Michael Creamer, a Boston-based artist manager, received a call from his cousin Jim Farrow. Farrow was phoning to tell Creamer about a friend of his who had unexpectedly inherited a long-dormant record label. In an act of charity worthy of a Hollywood script, Irene Harris, the widow of Stinson Records owner Bob Harris, bequeathed the label's entire catalog to her kindly neighbor -- Farrow's friend.
Among the recordings that had been sitting for decades in a Brooklyn basement were master recordings by Woody Guthrie -- between 150 and 160 of them, including at least three that have never been released as well as the first recording Guthrie made of ``This Land is Your Land."
``They didn't know where to turn, or how the industry works, so I helped her out," says Creamer, whose management roster includes Kay Hanley, Todd Thibaud, and Furvis. ``I started to dig in and find out more about Stinson.
The first thing we did was put together a history of the label and a timeline for ownership." They also did a lot of listening. Impressed with the pristine quality of the metal wire recordings -- an audio storage system that pre dates tape and was used widely during the 1940s -- Creamer played some of the songs for a friend who happened to work at WGBH. She told Creamer about Peter Frumkin, who was in the final stages of work on his documentary ``Woody Guthrie: Ain't Got No Home." The rest is serendipity.
``Everyone who hears them, their jaws drop," says Frumkin, who used six of the Stinson recordings in his film. ``The sound is so clean. People have told me that the only way to hear clearer versions of these songs would be to have been sitting there in the studio 60 years ago."
Creamer, who is managing the Stinson Records project, is coordinating a team of historians, archivists, representatives from the Woody Guthrie Foundation and the Library of Congress, and record label executives to plot the future of the Stinson catalog , which also includes recordings by Leadbelly, Burl Ives, Josh White, Sonny Terry, James P. Johnson, Art Tatum, and Cisco Houston.
A multi-album deal is in the works with Cambridge-based Rounder Records, which plans to release the first compilation in January.
``It's relevant not only to music but American culture," says Creamer. ``It's huge. Finding this stuff was like finding a piece of history."
JOAN ANDERMAN
July 11, 2006
Two years ago Michael Creamer, a Boston-based artist manager, received a call from his cousin Jim Farrow. Farrow was phoning to tell Creamer about a friend of his who had unexpectedly inherited a long-dormant record label. In an act of charity worthy of a Hollywood script, Irene Harris, the widow of Stinson Records owner Bob Harris, bequeathed the label's entire catalog to her kindly neighbor -- Farrow's friend.
Among the recordings that had been sitting for decades in a Brooklyn basement were master recordings by Woody Guthrie -- between 150 and 160 of them, including at least three that have never been released as well as the first recording Guthrie made of ``This Land is Your Land."
``They didn't know where to turn, or how the industry works, so I helped her out," says Creamer, whose management roster includes Kay Hanley, Todd Thibaud, and Furvis. ``I started to dig in and find out more about Stinson.
The first thing we did was put together a history of the label and a timeline for ownership." They also did a lot of listening. Impressed with the pristine quality of the metal wire recordings -- an audio storage system that pre dates tape and was used widely during the 1940s -- Creamer played some of the songs for a friend who happened to work at WGBH. She told Creamer about Peter Frumkin, who was in the final stages of work on his documentary ``Woody Guthrie: Ain't Got No Home." The rest is serendipity.
``Everyone who hears them, their jaws drop," says Frumkin, who used six of the Stinson recordings in his film. ``The sound is so clean. People have told me that the only way to hear clearer versions of these songs would be to have been sitting there in the studio 60 years ago."
Creamer, who is managing the Stinson Records project, is coordinating a team of historians, archivists, representatives from the Woody Guthrie Foundation and the Library of Congress, and record label executives to plot the future of the Stinson catalog , which also includes recordings by Leadbelly, Burl Ives, Josh White, Sonny Terry, James P. Johnson, Art Tatum, and Cisco Houston.
A multi-album deal is in the works with Cambridge-based Rounder Records, which plans to release the first compilation in January.
``It's relevant not only to music but American culture," says Creamer. ``It's huge. Finding this stuff was like finding a piece of history."
JOAN ANDERMAN