Bluesville Records Has Been Relaunched
Classic titles by John Lee Hooker and Skip James among the first to be reissued on the long dormant imprint
Craft Recordings has relaunched the long-dormant Bluesville Records label this month with its inaugural release, a reissue of blues legend John Lee Hooker’s 1964 acoustic album, Burning Hell.
Originally released only in the U.K. by Riverside Records, this is the first time this often-overlooked entry in the massive Hooker catalog has been released stateside on vinyl. The label plans on following up with the July reissue of the classic Skip James’ Today!, originally released in 1966 by Vanguard Records, the album firmly placing the Mississippi guitarist at the center of the decade’s folk-blues revival.
Bluesville’s resurrection is being overseen by former Rounder Records Vice President of A&R, Scott Billington. A well-traveled writer, musician, and producer, Billingham made his bones with the iconic Americana imprint, where he produced Grammy™ Award-winning albums by legends like Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and New Orleans musical treasure Irma Thomas. Over the years he has produced albums by artists like Solomon Burke, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, James Booker, Bobby Rush, and many others, earning eleven Grammy™ nominations and three awards. As a graphic designer and art director, Billingham has created hundreds of album covers for Rounder Records and other labels.
As a writer, Billington’s words have appeared in The Oxford American, Yankee agazine, and The Boston Globe, among other publications, and he has written liner notes for hundreds of albums during a lengthy career that now spans six decades. Billingham’s memoir, Making Tracks: A Record Producer’s Southern Roots Music Journey was published in 2022 by the University Press of Mississippi.
Rock & Roll Globe caught up with the multi-talented Mr. Billington by email for this exclusive interview about the new Bluesville Records.
What is the historical importance of Bluesville Records?
The Bluesville label was founded as a division of the New York-based jazz label Prestige Records. New York City was a key location for the “blues revival” that accompanied the resurgence of interest in folk music in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This revival allowed regional artists like Lightnin’ Hopkins, a guitarist and singer from Houston, to perform for new audiences. Nearby venues such as the Newport Folk Festival also began booking older blues artists.
Many Bluesville artists, such as Tampa Red or Pink Anderson, had first recorded in the 1920s and 1930s and were now semi-retired, while others, such as Memphis Slim and Lonnie Johnson, had been popular with Black rhythm and blues fans, out of the orbit of the mainstream music critics and fans. And the Reverend Gary Davis had been performing on the streets of Harlem all along! So, the original Bluesville was able to bring together all these disparate threads of the blues and introduce them to a new audience—to present the blues not as a kind of disposable popular music, but as an art form. In tandem with labels such as Riverside and Folkways, it was a pioneering effort that would influence many blues labels that followed, including Vanguard and Rounder.
Many Bluesville albums had the added asset of having been recorded at engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio, during the years that artists such as John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins were making records there that have come to be regarded as a standard for recording quality.
Why bring the label back right now?
Over the past decade or so, Concord acquired some of the most significant blues labels of the 20th century, including Bluesville, Fantasy, Hightone, Ric/Ron, Riverside, Rounder, Savoy, Specialty, Stax, Telarc, Testament, Trix, Vanguard and Vee Jay. It is a catalog of perhaps tens of thousands of tracks—a treasure chest of American blues that includes hit records such as Albert King’s “I’ll Play the Blues For You” and Jimmy Reed’s “Honest I Do,” as well as obscure field recordings.
Craft Recordings, which looks after the Concord catalog, decided to revive the Bluesville label, not only as a brand for all our diverse blues holdings, but as a destination for new and old blues fans. So, the initiative includes carefully curated streaming playlists (many of which I’ve been working on myself), newly-digitized titles made available for streaming, and meticulously-produced CD, LP, and hi-res digital audio reissues. In a way, it’s a form of assuming responsibility for this legacy that we own.
How did you choose the first titles to reissue?
As you might imagine, it was not easy, but we wanted to begin with two iconic artists who had made albums that were also beautifully recorded. Plus, our intent was to create the best sounding editions of these foundational records that anyone has ever heard.
So, we tracked down the original analog tapes, brought in Matthew Lutthans of The Mastering Lab, and partnered with Acoustic Sounds/QRP.
And who could think of more iconic artists than John Lee Hooker and Skip James?
What records from the Bluesville catalog do you plan on reissuing?
We’re looking at titles from Albert King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jimmy Reed, Blind Gary Davis and many, many more.
What plans do you have for Bluesville going forward? Any thought given to exploring contemporary blues artists?
Well, given the nature of Craft Recordings as a catalog label, it’s unlikely that there will be new artist signings. However, we intend to dig deep. We’re scouring each label’s storied vaults for unreleased recordings, and reviewing several recordings that have been unavailable for many years. Some of which were released only as singles, while others never had a CD release at all.
Plus, we’ve created several regional and stylistic playlists that serve as satisfying listening experiences for blues newcomers, and longtime enthusiasts alike. We’ve done Memphis, Chicago, and many more that will be rolled out, as well as slide guitar, blues rock, finger-picking blues, and quite a few others. In the interest of completeness, these playlists include tracks from many non-affiliated labels.
We’ve just scratched the surface, and I’m very excited by all the possibilities.
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