''Winner'' Named <b>Best Compilation Album by the Independent Music Awards for 2020</b>.

Released in August 2019 in conjunction with the 90th Anniversary celebration of the Johnson City sessions, ''Tell It To Me: Revisiting the Johnson City Sessions, 1928-1929'' is intended to demonstrate what music historian Ed Ward meant when he tweeted ''Johnson City Sessions: Lots more fun than the Bristol Sessions. Fewer stars, more insight into a vanished world.''

Intended to distill onto a single CD the groundbreaking research found on Bear Family Records' award-winning 4-CD boxed set ,The Johnson City Sessions: Can You Sing or Play Old-Time Music?' (BCD 16083), released in 2013, 'Tell It To Me' offers 25 essential highlights from Columbia Records' historically significant location recording sessions in Johnson City, Tennessee, in 1928 and 1929.

Because 'Tell It To Me' showcases the usual state-of-the-art sound engineering generally associated with releases from Bear Family, these nine-decade-old recordings sound warm and clear--as if they were made yesterday.

Featuring 25 recordings by 25 different musical acts that were active in the late 1920s, 'Tell It To Me' presents a diverse and dynamic overview of Appalachia's vernacular music at the cusp of the Great Depression. While representing a range of genres and styles and showcasing both secular and sacred material, this album is thematically unified by the fact that all of the tracks hail from commercial location recording sessions held by Columbia Records in Johnson City, Tennessee, during successive Octobers in 1928 and 1929. With precisely 25% of the released sides from those two Johnson City recording forays, 'Tell It To Me' documents timeless performances from the 1928-1929 sessions and bolsters recent assertions by discerning aficionados of 78 RPM records that those sessions generated a particularly memorable canon of historical recordings.

1-CD with 40-page booklet, 26 tracks. Total playing time approx. 77:27 minutes.

Track Listing

• Grant Brothers & Their Music - Tell It To Me
• Roane County Ramblers - Home Town Blues
• Clarence Greene - Johnson City Blues
• Proximity String Quartet - Louise
• Richard Harold - The Battleship Maine
• Charlie Bowman & His Brothers - Roll On Buddy
• Bill & Belle Reed - Old Lady And The Devil
• McVay & Johnson - I'll Be Ready When The Bridegroom Comes
• Earl Shirkey & Roy Harper - When The Roses Bloom for the Bootlegger
• George Roark - I Ain't A Bit Drunk
• Garland Brothers & Grinstead - Just Over The River
• McCartt Brothers & Patterson - Green Valley Waltz
• Blalock & Yates - Pride Of The Ball
• George Wade & Francum Braswell - When We Go A-Courtin'
• Jack Jackson - I'm Just A Black Sheep
• Wyatt & Brandon - Evalina
• Roy Harvey & Leonard Copeland - Just Pickin'
• The Spindale Quartet - God Will Take Care Of You
• Moatsville String Ticklers - Moatsville Blues
• Byrd Moore & His Hot Shots - Three Men Went A-Hunting
• Clarence Ashley - The Coo-Coo Bird
• The Bentley Boys - Down On Penny's Farm
• Bowman Sisters - Old Lonesome Blues
• Ephraim Woodie & The Henpecked Husbands - The Last Gold Dollar
• Ira & Eugene Yates - Powder And Paint
• Ellis Williams - Buttermilk Blues

Additional Details

Label: Bear Family Records

Genre: Country

Language: English

Run Time: 77:27 mins

Region: 0

Release Date: 09/13/19

UPC: 5397102175916