My copy of an ancient hymnbook

The photo shows my ancient copy of the 1956 Stamps-Baxter hymnal Heavenly Highway Hymns. I switched the color photo to black and white so that it would look old. Along with everything in it. Except for my hand. My hand isn't that old.

Well, actually, my hand is only one year younger than Heavenly Highway Hymns--so, yes, I guess it is old.

Johnny Cash, talking about his mother's old copy of this old songbook: "My mother had an old book called Heavenly Highway Hymns. She used to sit and play those songs in it--old church songs, country gospel songs, dozens of them--all the way through, over and over in her lifetime."

Old. Say it after me: "Old." Olllllllllld. Not new. Old.

Interesting. Let's see--in 1956, when HHH was published, Cash was at Sun recording his big hit Folsom Prison Blues. He was all grown up and away from home, and his mom was... what age? Fascinating. Is it possible that American Recordings is playing us for fools?

American Recordings is the outfit that released the Cash CD in question, a feast for the cliche-hungry called My Mother's Hymn Book. I'm afraid to look up the reviews for the thing, because I'm afraid I'll laugh myself to death. Bev and I sat through two titles before calling it quits--just awful. And we love 19th- and early-20th-century gospel songs. As in, very much. I even have the 1926 Columbia 78 of Where We'll never Grow Old by Smith's Sacred Singers--recorded thirty years before the publication of the ancient songbook pictured above! As far as that goes, I have an 1860 William Bradbury tunebook containing the melody to Just as I Am, only with different words. So there.

The CD credits are the usual joke--Cash gets "arranger" credit for the oldest (i.e., public-domain) titles like When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder and In the Sweet Bye and Bye (which I have in 1860s sheet music form--aren't I cool?), while arranger V.O. Foccett is credited as the "writer" of I Shall Not Be Moved and Do Lord. I guess they hired NPR to do their music research.

Sure enough, this CD gets four and a half out of five stars at Amazon. I'm in the wrong business. I need to produce "American" roots music and hype it by way of moronic journalistic cliches, all the while making absolutely sure my gullible customers realize they're getting something that's very, very esoteric. And old. "Old," in packaging terms, means black and white photography, a simple musical 'production,' and a minimum of three cliches per liner-note sentence. People don't listen to music anymore--they listen to cliches. Tell them what they're hearing, why they're hearing it, and how special they are for hearing it, and they'll gladly fork out the dough.

That's how it works anymore. These days, we're supposed to believe that the "majors" are the greatest threat to the future of popular music, yet it's the small labels who are putting out stuff like this. And, scarier still, garnering rave reviews for it. (Oops. Turns out American Recordings has been part of Warner Brothers since July of last year. Thanks, Jake, for correcting me. )

Not too long ago, a flea market dealer tried to sell me his entire pile of Heavenly Highway Hymns songbooks--no one was buying. I said, sorry, I already have two. He wanted $4 each. Had the Red Barn patrons known how ancient those things were, they would have grabbed them up right off. A museum would probably have raced an agent over there before it was too late.














Oops. I forgot to switch this to b&w. Dang...

If I ever use my copy of HHH for a CD cover, I'll throw it around the yard for a while. And maybe let the cats play with it. It doesn't look nearly "old" enough.

Lee