Last weekend I put on David Holmes’ fantastic Come Get It I Got It mix for the first time in ages.
One track on that mix has always stood out for me, a great track called Sweet Songs which features some wild 70s style African American spoken word over jazz funk. So I figured it might be worth trying to track down some more by The Jujus (as they are credited in the liner notes). After a bit of Google action and some false starts I discovered that the track comes from an album called Alchemy Of The Blues by Sarah Webster Fabio. So on to Gemm to see if it was available . . .
A little more digging and I found that the whole album was available on the Smithsonian’s Global Sound music project! Better still, her other albums were also available.
The Smithsonian Global Sound archive is a pretty amazing resource as it has some incredible recordings from the beginning of last century through to current times, and from every corner of the world. These are all available online in a variety of formats from MP3 to FLAC (lossless) at pretty reasonable prices (certainly cheaper than paying the exorbitant 2nd hand prices for obscure vinyl). And no DRM protection.
The FLAC files I got must have been taken from the original master tapes as they are fantastic sounding. Amusingly the download comes with a PDF of accompanying artwork which is a high resolution scan of a copy of the album held in the University of Alberta library (you can see the call number and library barcode in the scan!) along with all the liner notes.
This is the ‘celestial jukebox’ at its best.
