Sunday, November 01, 2020

The Grace Gospelaires and The Mountain State Trio--Praising the Lord in Song (Phalanx P-1102-X; 1966)

 




The Grace Gospelaires of Doylestown, Ohio (as of 1966), are bluegrass gospel at its best.  They are given the first side, while the second is turned over to the Mountain State Trio--Sue, Mike, and Vicki Wood, the kids in the second image.  I'm not a fan of child singing (somehow, that term sounds wrong), unless we're talking a children's choral group performing Christmas carols.  The trio's sound isn't music to my ears, but I didn't want to post half an LP, as tempted as I was.  I'm sure they grew up to be much better at what they do here.

As Appalachian as anything gets, and with excellent instrumental backing throughout--and on a label (Phalanx) that's new to me.  The record, which is filled with needle nicks, cleaned up beautifully, with only a limited amount of manual click removal necessary.  An exceptional version of He Will Set Your Fields on Fire and some familiar titles make the first side a joy, and the second side equally so--if you like children's trios.  God's Gentle People was also recorded by the Chuck Wagon Gang, and I initially confused it with Lanny Wolfe's God's Wonderful People, a highly un-bluegrass number.  And so I was wondering how it would sound in this setting.  I guess I'll never find out.  For the best, maybe.

I didn't have time to dig up the writer/composer info, and neither did Phalanx, apparently.  1966, says the RITE matrix number in the dead wax.  The year is also given at this site, which I discovered yesterday and which looks like a great resource in the making.

To the bluegrass gospel.  Label and jacket images included in the folder.  The cover is a stock watercolor image and not very memorable.  Photoshopping the back cover took more work than cleaning up the surface noise...



DOWNLOAD: Grace Gospelaires, Mountain State Trio (1966)








Lee

12 comments:

Buster said...

Goodness me, you are industrious. Thanks for everything!

Ernie said...

I want to know more about the guys playing the instruments, they looks like a fun band!

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Buster,

You're welcome. Yeah, I've been a roll. Temporary insanity, I suppose.

Ernie,

Bluegrass gospel musicians--the small label type, anyway--usually look gloomy. I don't know why.

Rob said...

Hi Lee,

Thank you so much for all of your hard work, and the truly massive number of hours you've put in over the years saving all this music from being lost. I first started paying attention to your blog more than ten years ago and I'm sorry to say this may be the first time I've posted to thank you. I realized today that I hadn't visited your site for a few years, and I'm thrilled to see that you're still hard at work. It's one thing to digitize all these records, but to track down background info and give us so much detail about each collection is really stupendous. I'm sure I'm not the only one out here who is too quiet about how much we appreciate the work you do. Please know that there are many more people out here cheering you on than perhaps you realize. You're a hero!

Thank you!

I can't wait to see (and hear) what you find next!

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Thanks for you very kind words, Rob! They are deeply appreciated.

Sky Raven said...

Thanks for your latest post Lee... the bluegrass gospel was really good. I found the trio a little harder to listen to. Very enjoyable post - - thanks again. Burt

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Burt,

Glad you liked it. Thanks for checking in. I'll have to confess I had a hard time getting through the trio tracks, too--and I had to edit them! To me, young voices simply sound wrong singing this kind of stuff. Not morally wrong or anything--just musically wrong. Too grating. Bluegrass is a sing-through-your-nose type of music (no insult intended!), and that just doesn't work with children at the mike.

A man for whom Christ died said...

Lee,
Thanks for this interesting album, unzipped and ready for broadcast usage, as the LORD and time permit. You mentioned Bluegrass being a sing-through-your-nose type of music? I agree to a point, but I don't see it that much with these two groups. Maybe it's just my ears and them being accustomed to the music. I do notice here, however, the different dialects, especially between most of the adults (being more southern) and the kids (more northern). This brings up a relationship-long discussion my wife and I have had LOL! Jess was born in OH (can't help where we were born LOL) and I don't consider her speech/singing northern, but her momma was born in OH and maintains a very-much northern singing voice to the hilt LOL! I always find these Ohioan groups interesting, because a lot of them sound so southern! Reckon, it's because folk from the south, moved up north (to work in the plants) and brought their music (and everything else) with'em. One of my heroes, whom we've discussed before (the late Evangelist Billy Mitchell), got saved in Hammond, IN, in 1957, but later moved back down south, although not as far down as he had been. He was born in the Sand Mountain area (they come out pickin' and singin' there LOL), but later moved to Jamestown, TN. Anyway, I was interested in the album from the start, because of your write-up, giving your opinion of the content therein, of course. I must say however, that I disagree with your (and others) assessment of the trio's singing, and/or children singing, in general. It sounds like these kids (although from their sound, I don't believe they are that young here) have a good musical upbringing (from the sound again, I'd say from one of the families in the other group) and said family wants them to grow up and sing for the LORD, which they won't do, if they aren't brought up that-a-way. Our kids love to sing for the LORD and although they may or may not get every note/word right, we do our dead level best, to encourage them. Some of them have also expressed interest in learning different instruments and we're working to that end as well. As a side-note, the trio also runs into some of the same vocal issues as their elders, with singing the same part for more than one of them LOL, but I still like 'em. Personally, I'd rather have liked some of the songs which drew me to 'em (songs I knew from other places over the years of course) had stayed closer to the original versions, but that comes with folk learning and playing songs by ear, words, notes and cords get changed. Oh and songs, Home Sweet Home? Didn't expect that, a throwback to like, maybe eleven years earlier with Don Reno (all three of him)? LOL! Great find, thank you and keep 'em comin', love and prayin' for ya!

Romans 11:33-36 KJB

Josh
Podcast: http://www.jeremiah616.sermon.net
Callcast: (563) 999-3967
Blog: http://www.brojoshowens.wordpress.com
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/preacher-friends

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Josh--Great to hear from you, and maybe my description was off, when I think about it. Singing through the nose is not exactly it. Even as a musician myself, I guess I don't quite know how to describe it. Mainly, there's a very trebly sound to everything. That's the closest I can come!

Central Ohio has a lot of Appalachian folks, and I've gotten used to calling them "hilljacks," since that's what they call themselves! I don't intend it as a slur--I've just gotten used to hearing it. And I guess the Bluegrass sound is more an Appalachian sound, to whatever extend that can be distinguished from a southern sound. All of the gospel categories are fluid--musicians don't worry about labels when they're performing, of course! And what we consider southern gospel, or the southern quartet sound, was very different in the 1920s than when the Blackwood Brothers became known. Actually, the Stamps Quartet was already singing in a more or less modern style in 1926, so there was already a stylistic split happening in quartet singing. I don't know the split could be characterized as urban vs. rural, or what. I just hope I didn't offend anywhere in my essay--I was just letting my thoughts flow. One very unhelpful category that some journalists use in gospel is "sacred harp." Smith's Sacred Singers are sometimes described as having sung in a Sacred Harp (or shape note) style, though technically any and all sacred music can be noted in shape-note fashion. It's a style of notation derived from solfege, as you likely know--most shape-note systems doubled symbols for do re me fa to combine two tetrachords (tone, tone, semi-tone) to complete the scale. Of course, we double the "do" when we sing the Major scale--it actually ends on ti, except that our ears want ti to resolve to the tonic. Anyway, I regard Smith's Sacred Singers, with their "shouting" style, to be singing school products and not so much from the Sacred Harp tradition, which of course involves a choir singing from (usually) 19th century tunebooks. Again, we have two related things--Sacred Harp and singing schools, but I think each branched out in separate directions. I'm babbling here, so I'd better move on, but glad you enjoyed. And I certainly didn't mean to discourage music education! I took piano lessons as a kid, after all. It's probably simply my inability to be more open-minded (or open-eared) when it comes to children singing. Thanks for signing in. It's always great to hear from you!

Lee Hartsfeld said...

I meant, "notated in shape note fashion." I should proofread my entries before posting them!

And I should have used hyphens for "do-re-mi-fa," since it doesn't read right, otherwise. I meant, of course, that most shape-note systems (the ones I've encountered, anyway) use the same four notehead shapes twice in the vertical plane, since the Major scale consists of two consecutive tetrachords. Minor mode does not, of course, but shape-note tunebooks simply notate minor keys in relative-minor fashion. For instance, the key of A minor would start on the "la" of C.

But I'm rambling...

A man for whom Christ died said...

Lee,
I appreciate your commentary on your post and my subsequent comment therein. I have to agree with both your assessments of Smith's Sacred Singers. They do have a shouting style of singing and they are a singing school product, their style I mean. Oh and never heard the term Hilljacks, but I like it LOL! Something I meant to do in my comment (but I got to rambling and forgot), was include a video of our church's Youth Choir, can't remember if our kids are in this one or not, here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBmdw9lQQNo

Yeah, the age range in the choir is maybe more than your average choir, but they are a blessing, folk love 'em and the kids love singing in it! They usually sing every Sunday night and Wednesday night, so tune the services in live or check 'em out later (as we used to say in radio), you'
ll be glad ya did! Oh and another difference in the Sacred Harp and Shape Note styles is (I believe), Sacred Harp tune books just have the words. Is that correct and if so, how can they be called tune books? LOL! Also, their tunes sound more morbid to me, IMHO. I was talking with an Old Regular Baptist preacher up in eastern KY a while back and I mentioned that some of their singing (not from his association BTW) had that morbid sound and he said it had to do with whether the song leader was gifted or not in singing, I dunno. Anyway, thanks, love and prayin' for ya! P.S., Jess and I, are both musicians. She is a great Piano player (sight-reading and by ear) and I enjoy trying to play at the Dobro, do more of a rhythm guitar style, just fits me better than pickin'.

Romans 11:33-36 KJB

Josh
Podcast: http://www.jeremiah616.sermon.net
Callcast: (563) 999-3967
Blog: http://www.brojoshowens.wordpress.com
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/preacher-friends

A man for whom Christ died said...

Roger on non-proofreading and rambling, guilty as charged as well LOL!