Bessie Jones and The Georgia Sea Island Singers - Get In Union (2014)

This double-disc has been pulled together from some 50 hours of tape that Alan Lomax recorded. Bessie Jones was raised in Georgia on the mainland, she moved to the islands (St. Simons Island) and soaked up the Caribbean influence inherent within that culture. The music from the Georgia Sea Islands is a confluence of African and Bahamian styles and Jones, already known, was here promoted as the leader of a loose choir of locals for a series of call and response work songs, folk music and blues ballads. There’s a gospel feel that floats over much of this music – a blurred line between field-hollers and church music, the Georgia Sea Islands housed people from two different sets of slave cultures.

TRACKLIST

Disc 1

01 Sheep Sheep Don't You Know the Road
02 You Better Mind
03 Plumb the Line
04 O Day (Yonder Come Day)
05 Moses Don't Get Lost
06 Blow Gabriel
07 Got to Lie Down (How Shall I Rise)
08 Sometimes
09 Shoo Turkey
10 Adam in the Garden
11 Daniel in the Lion's Den
12 Little David, Play on Your Harp
13 You Got to Reap Just What You Sow/Just a Little Talk with Jesus
14 O Mary Don't You Weep
15 Throw Me Overboard
16 Going to Chattanooga
17 See Aunt Dinah
18 John Henry
19 Sink 'Em Low
20 Diamond Joe
21 Live Humble
22 Get in Union
23 Elephant Fair
24 Uncle Ned
25 That Suits Me

Disc 2

01 No Hiding Place Down Here
02 O Death
03 Dead and Gone
04 Prayer
05 Sign of the Judgement
06 This Train Is a Clean Train
07 Turkle Dove
08 Beulah Land
09 Let Me Fly
10 Walk Daniel
11 I'm Gonna Lay Down My Life for My Lord
12 Way Down Yonder in the Brickyard
13 Bob Young's Song and Whoop
14 Read 'Em, John
15 Before This Time Another Year
16 Once There Was No Sun
17 There Was an Old Lady from Brewster
18 Little Johnny Brown
19 Prodigal Son
20 Take Me to the Water
21 Drinking That Wine
22 Once There Was No Sun [II]
23 One Morning Soon
24 Buzzard Lope
25 One of These Days
26 One of These Days [II]