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horace sprott - ain't this a mean world - death is not the end - tapes

Genre: Wave / Pop / Rock - Folk

1. Smoked Like Lightning
2. Ain't This a Mean World
3. Dives and Lazarus - Dip Your Finger Down in the Water and Cool My Parcherin Tongue
4. Say You Don't Know Honey
5. Oh Glad Oh Free
6. When the Saints Go Marching Home
7. Luke and Mullen
8. One Dollar Bill, Two Dollar Bill
9. Mama Don't Treat Your Daughter Mean / Interview
10. Early One Morning the Blues Come Falling Down
11. My Hoe Leadin My Row
12. Jesus Going to Make up My Dying Bed

Horace Sprott performed on Volumes 2, 3, and 4 of folklorist Frederic Ramsey, Jr's Music of the South series of field recordings released in 1955 on Folkways. 'Ain't This a Mean World' pulls together tracks from all three of these volumes. Limited to 100 copies.

Ramsey Jr. met Sprott in Marion, Alabama in 1954 and subsequently recorded seven sessions with him in April and May of that year. Born some time between 1886 and 1890 in Talladega Forest, Alabama, Sprott learnt the old religious songs of the bush arbor and the plantation from his mother and grandmother, and from his father, the "worldly songs" that religious people refused to sing. These are the songs that are preformed by Sprott, mostly unaccompanied and at times combined with short discussion, on these rough and ready field recordings.