Goodbye, Babylon

This is a box set of religious music from the American South in the first half of the twentieth century, and it is outrageously, abundantly good. I bought it four years ago, and every time I return to it I'm moved, scared, refreshed. It's implications are unavoidable. One can't enjoy the flights of rapture and joy without buying into the desperation and fear as well. It's the opposite of attending mass on Christmas and Easter only, or of identifying with the Jewish community instead of the Jewish religion (both of which are perfectly sensible ways to engage with a faith). Goodbye, Babylon is something more irrational, more threatening, and as a result it's some of the most penetrating, thrilling music I know. A review which appeared in Wire included the following: "This is such gorgeous, moving, vital, sensuous music, such a testament to the human spirit that it's a shame to drag God into it." I could not disagree more. I'm an atheist and all, but a good deal of the fun of listening to this is engaging with music that thinks I'm going to hell. So fine, SAVE ME! The songs I write about below are the ones that have most burrowed their way into me over time, but there really isn't a wasted track on any of the set's six CDs. Hear it post haste!

01-03 "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus)" by, Roosevelt Graves and Brother
Joyfully sympathetic guitar and tambourine playing here, but the real kicker is the way the brothers' voices harmonize on the word "standing," which happens 12 times during the song and sounds like a new faith every time. There are many songs in this set where death lends joy a tinge of desperation, but here the tears in Roosevelt's voice are there because he's been saved and he knows it.

01-06 "Satisfied" by, J. E. Mainer's Mountaineers
The fiddle that introduces this song is rich, gravelly, and modest. The gently rocking guitar has an almost narcotic effect, which is appropriate for a song aspiring to the peace of death. This one always ends too quickly for me.

01-13 "Crying Holy Unto the Lord" by, The Blue Chips
My roommate Noah reminded me that the shuffle happened when the blues crashed headlong into the polka. This is impertinently buoyant, earthbound music, and to me it's like the inverse of "Satisfied." There's a line, "For if I could, I surely would stand on the rock where Moses stood," but one gets the sense that the Chips aren't really too worried about it.

02-01 "There Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down" by, Brother Claude Ely
This crazed Pentecostal roar is like Phil Spector's wall of sound before Phil Spector knew what the wall of sound was. It's only guitar–driving, always accelerating–Ely and various harmonies and shouts, and handclaps, but it fills up the sound space like nothing else on this set. When he holds the word "Graaaaaaaaaaaaaave" and sets the recording equipment to a mad kind of buzzing, I'd like nothing more than for the house I'm in to tear itself from the foundations and come crashing to Earth.

02-06 "How About You" by, Thomas A. Dorsey
This guy also wrote "If You See My Saviour," "Peace in the Valley," AND "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" in addition to this one, so, yeah, he had things figured out. I like how the recording dampens the piano, and Dorsey's voice is just so charismatic and cool.


02-07 "Jesus is a Mighty Good Leader" by, Skip James
This is a dumb thing to write, but Skip James has the kind of voice that doesn't really seem to exist anymore. It's keening, almost crying, even childlike in some ways, and what I really can't get over is that it's not a voice that has some bedrock foundation deep down in the gut. It just sings itself, almost straight from the mouth. James lists family members who have been led away–mother, father, sister–so if his voice sounds like crying consider that he no longer has anyone to cry to. It's hopeless grief, which means its irrationally, insanely sure of its own impending deliverance.

02-07 "No More, My Lord" by, Jimpson
Vocals, with wood-chopping accompaniment. This one stays with you, and the little buzz that happens when a wood chip flies into the microphone is a horrifying moment of sonic violence.

02-24 "The Bible's True" by Uncle Dave Macon
"Evolution teaches man came from a monkey / I don't believe no such a thing / In the days of a week of Sundays / For the Bible's true oh yes, I believe it / I've seen enough, and I can prove it / What you say, what you say / Bound to be that way." Macon also has the best track on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, called "Way Down the Old Plank Road."

03-05 "I'll Fly Away" by James and Martha Carson
"I'll Fly Away" may be my favorite song–it's inclusion on Kanye's The College Dropout is just another sign that the guy is a genius–and this country gospel rendition is perfect, probably the best song on this set. Martha's guitar playing is so wonderfully sonorous, and their two voices during the verses know each other well in a way that I think has to be the product of singing with someone for hours and weeks and years. If you're only going to hear one, hear this one.

03-19 "What Are They Doing In Heaven Today" by Washington Phillips
This recording, made in 1928, is the first ever recording of this song. Phillips finds a middle ground here between speaking and singing which is very affecting, and I love that he's accompanied by something that the liner notes only identify as a "Novelty Instrument."

03-24 "Death in the Morning" by Rev. Anderson Johnson
Because it was recorded in 1953, this record's quality is better than most, but I think it would take a lot to hinder Johnson's voice, which dances, sobs, and roars furiously through his own version of the Conversation With Death. Death takes his child, of course, but before he does Johnson pleads with such a range of tone and personality that he might as well be the whole congregation.

04-05 "Found a Wonderful Savior" by Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet
Unaccompanied, chugging gospel quartet madness. When you don't worry so much about melody and put all of your stock into impossibly intricate poly-rhythms, what you have is compulsively music that will set you to shaking. The lead tenor's nasal voice is also pretty silly.

05-08 "Keep On the Firing Line" by Brown's Ferry Four
This number's conception of faith as battle scares the hell out of me. Merle Travis' guitar is so efficiently well played–he doesn't miss a single note–and the harmonies are so exact that it has something of a martial feel to go along with its country swing.

05-12 "I Got to Cross the River of Jordan" by Blind Willie McTell
McTell's guitar playing here is absolutely unhinged. It's a fairly straightforward blues, and he takes time to linger a beat here, wiggle a note here, overplay something there. His vocals make use of the blues trick of dropping the final words of a line and substituting a guitar figure instead, which is deliciously alienating for a listener. As though McTell weren't so much interested in communicating as in working some things out on his own. Like the best blues, it's bottomless.
05-15 "Amazing Grace" by Mahalia Jackson
Stops conversation in its tracks. I've seen it happen. She only sings the first verse, and it's all you'll need.
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Phew! I didn't even mention the sixth disc, which contains only SERMONS ("The Black Diamond Express Train to Hell" = My Fave). I've recently started reading Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic, in which he makes the point that people think rock is actually about three minute thrills when it's really about a runaway train. So many of the tracks on Goodbye, Babylon, particularly those made by pastors and their congregations, start at a given tempo and then just rush and rush and rush. I think you can find the seeds of rock's runaway trains in the kinds of insane headlong leaps made on these songs.


I'm going to start writing more about things going on in the present, but I've been listening to these for a while. I'm not done with them by a long shot.