The Oblivion Records Blog

Moving day!

2010-07-26T11:38:00.002-04:00

Thanks for being part of our stories and being in our community of blues and jazz lovers. Join us over at our new tumblr site. All our posts are there.

Sugar Blue came to blow.

2010-01-20T17:25:00.014-05:00

Sugar Blue at WKCR, New York 1974; Photographed by Fred Seibert

Small as the New York blues scene was (is), any kind of activity gathered up everyone in the community. So it was when Oblivion started the two years of recording of Charles Walker's "Blues from the Apple." Even though the sessions would often feature a quartet or quintet, the studio often had ten or twenty bluesman (and women) hanging around. I tried to shoot a lot of them with my Polaroid Big Shot portrait camera.

One day, master harpist Bill Dicey came up with a young guy with a floppy hat. Sugar Blue was a harmonica player himself who hung with Bill, and loved being part of the scene. He really wanted to play on one of our sessions, and kept returning week after week. I think we recorded him on a few dates, but they must be with our outtakes, since nothing made the record.

I didn't give it another thought until about five years later when all of a sudden, Sugar was the hottest thing around. Somehow or another he'd found his way into The Rolling Stones recording entourage and became the featured instrumentalist on one of their last classics, the 1978 dance floor rocker Miss You. No longer the tentative novice, Sugar was now a sure footed master.

It's great to be in on the ground floor of a new talent. When it's a bluesman who explodes pop, it's even more fun.

It all started...

2010-01-16T14:04:00.006-05:00

The roots of Oblivion (and Tom's musical moniker) were planted in the Huntington, New York, hippie record store Tom started in 1970 with his partner Rob Witter. Kropotkin was set up as an antidote to the suburban appliance stores that sold music to go along with their record players, department stores, and the Sam Goody's of the world. Oh, and to go with the ethos of the time, it was named after the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin. Rob and Tom wanted to offer a selection that was reflective of the expansive musical thinking taking hold in coastal youth and offered everything from the obscure to the freeform FM rock. Rob was my age (born 1951), Tom was two years older. Both of them were free spirits, Tom slightly less so only in that he was already married with a six month old baby (Travis, often in a playpen at the back of the store).

Searching for like minded community, kids from 14 to 45 would gather at Kropotkin regularly for musical conversation (de rigueur in those times) or just general BS that often degenerated into a real time Howard Stern like round of phony phone calls and rank outs.

After I'd invited the guys for an interview on my college radio show (I was completely taken by the spirit of the store) Tom and I would spend more and more time discussing the possibilities of making and recording music on our own.

One day I walked in and found this poster. Tom was taking his anarchy seriously (it was some time before I found out about Tom's years in the seminary and his lifetime adherence to rigorous philosophical thought) and decided to throw his hat in the political ring. I had a good laugh at my role in his qualitifications for office.
.....
HONEST TOM POMPOSELLO
YOUR CANDIDATE FOR RECEIVER OF TAXES

Hi there! My name is Thomas (Honest Tom) Pomposello. I’d like to cordially inform all my friends that I am the Huntington Tea Party’s candidate for Receiver of Taxes in the 1971 local elections. If things are as they seem, this year promises to be one that will be full of surprises in Our Town. So may the best man lose (why should this year be any different?), and I’ll see you all at the polls.

Yours intact,
Honest Tom Pomposello

P.S.: Here are a few of my numerous qualifications - -

• I AM INDISPUTABLY THE LARGEST PERSON TO RUN FOR THE OFFICE OF RECEIVER OF TAXES IN THE LAST 40 YEARS. At 6’0” even in boots with one-half inch heels and 267½ lbs. without those same boots, it would seem that this be more than an unfounded claim. However, in the interest of fairness, upon request I can present factual data. (Actually the closest contender I suppose would be Mrs. Rosemary Bacon who held the office from 1936 - 1938; but even though she did tend a bit toward the chub, in reality she is little competition for me.)

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO HAS THE UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORT OF MISSISSIPPI FRED McDOWELL. I’m not sure what actual value this has since Fred can’t even vote for me (being an out of state resident and all that) but you’ve got to admit, it certainly does look impressive.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO FRED SEIBERT WOULD EVEN CONSIDER PUTTING ON HIS RADIO SHOW. I’ve been of Fred’s show three times now, twice by proxy.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO IS REALLY CLEAN-CUT. My mother says so.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE MATURE ENOUGH TO REMEMBER BOTH THE “RUDY KAZODEE” AND “CRUSADER RABBIT” TV SHOWS. In fact, in college I did my Honors Thesis on this very subject.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO IS NOT ASHAMED TO ADMIT THAT WHEN I TAKE SHOWERS, I DRAW CLOSED THE BATH CURTAINS. Perfunctory.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO REALLY TAKES THIS ELECTION SERIOUSLY. I need not prove this to you further - - simply re-read my above qualifications.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO WOULD DELIBERATELY PUBLISH A FACT SHEET THAT IS IN ACTUALITY HALF LIES. Perhaps I should re-phrase that. I am the only candidate in this election who would ADMIT to deliberately publishing a fact sheet that is in actuality half lies.

Liner notes: "Live in New York"

2009-10-20T14:57:00.004-04:00

These are the liner notes and credits from the from the 1st edition release of "Mississippi Fred McDowell: Live in New York" in the spring of 1972. There's an afterword by Fred, but in the main they're written by my partner/producer/bass player Tom Pomposello. Heartfelt and authentic, the piece could only be written by a 23 year old, suburban, young father, blues fanatic of Italian extraction.

In 1959 folklorist Alan Lomax ventured into northwestern Mississippi during a recording field trip of the Southern USA. He passed through the town of Como, situated between Highways 51 and 55. Lomax explained that he was from a record company and asked whether there were any local musicians that he should hear. Among the first names given was Fred McDowell. Lomax found Fred at home that evening and proceeded to record him. Fred played well into the night for Lomax (the session lasted from 8 p.m. until about 7 a.m. as Fred recalls it). When Lomax finally departed, he left Fred with promises that these recordings would bring him world repute and a great sum of money. Lomax was at least half right. Despite the fact that the payment was nominal, the recordings were greeted with abundant enthusiasm. Even though only eleven songs were released (on two Prestige LPs: Deep South-Sacred and Sinful; and Yazoo Delta-Blues and Spirituals; and two Atlantic LPs: Sounds of the South; and Roots of the Blues), the reaction was immediate. The blues world had discovered Fred McDowell.

Subsequent to the Lomax recordings things began happening and Fred found himself in the middle of a new career. There was a whole new audience anxious to hear his brand of the blues. In 1964 both Arhoolie and Testament issued solo LPs by Fred. In July of that same year Fred was a featured artist at the Newport Folk Festival (selections from his performances were issued on three separate Vanguard albums). Then, in 1965, Fred visited Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival. He was enthusiastically received wherever he played.

In 1966 he recorded a second album for Arhoolie. This contained the song that the Rolling Stones were soon to “borrow” – “You Got to Move” (incidentally, if Fred is ever paid the royalties for this song, he should earn more than he did on any of his own albums). More releases followed on Testament, Biograph, Polydor International, and Milestone.

Then in 1969 came a second tour of Europe. In Britain he recorded his first solo album using electric guitar – Mississippi Fred McDowell in London (Volumes I and II on Sire and Transatlantic). The reaction was a mixed one. Everyone loved the music. But Delta blues on an electric guitar…? One critic commented that he thought some of the “subtlety” of the acoustic bottleneck’d high E string was lost with the electrified instrument. But the new sound was so compellingly ominous that its beauty was irresistible.

More electric albums followed. Blue Thumb’s Memphis Swamp Jam featured three cuts with Fred on electric guitar and accompanied by Johnny Woods on harmonica (later a full album by the two was issued on Revival Records). Arhoolie followed suit with Fred McDowell and his Blues Boys which featured Fred accompanied by acoustic guitar, electric bass, and drums. Then came the now legendary I Do Not Pay No Rock and Roll album on Capitol. Most reviewers of contemporary music were astounded. Blues Unlimited called it “…a perfectely fine LP, beautifully recorded in stereo and and performed with the usual McDowell power and verve. Hmmm.” Rolling Stone went so far as to say: “Well, do you have to hear any more – this is one mother of a record.” I’ll never forget one of my musically naïve friends saying: “I never thought blues music could sound like that.” Still, there were some holdouts. Bob Groom, a great fan and admirer of Fred’s and the editor of Blues World magazine wrote: “…not the best McDowell LP, but nevertheless recommended to all his fans… and for the first (and I hope lat) time Fred is accompanied by a heavily electrified rhythm group.”

I never could understand such criticisms for a variety of reasons. Perhaps, though, the best reply is by Bob Groom himself who wrote in his book, The Blues Revival: “Old and new blues cannot be compared, only contrasted…” Which brings us to this album – it’s electric, it’s heavy, and most important, it’s Fred McDowell, the way he likes it, today. Viva!

– Tom Pomposello

Now I want you all to know that Honest Tom is the boy who plays bass and 2nd guitar on “Shake ‘Em on Down” with me on this album. You know he first came to me and said, “Fred, can I come up and see you, you know where you’re staying?” Well, I wasn’t doing anything up there alone and I told him to come up. When he got there, he brought three instruments with him – a guitar, a harmonica, and a bass, and he asked me to say which one he was better at. Well, I carried him over on the harmonica. Alright, I said, let’s got to the guitar. Next the bass – I said, “hold it right there baby, that’s the one.” Tom, it’s been a real pleasure to have you play with me. Roll baby.

– Fred McDowell

.....
Credits from the original release :

MISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELL
Live in New York
Oblivion Records
OD-1

Fred McDowell: vocals and electric bottleneck guitar
Tom Pomposello: bass guitar (2nd guitar on “Shake ‘Em On Down”)

§ Recorded on November 5, 1971, at the MacDougal Street Gaslight II, in New York City.

Produced by Fred Seibert
Executive Supervision by Richard H. Pennington, Jr.
Liner Photo: Valerie Wilmer
Logo Design: Lisa Lenovitz
Graphics: the Oblivionettes with Lisa Lenovitz
Typesetting: Bridget Deal and the Bridgettes
Thanks much to David Reitman, Steve Heller, Ruth Rock, Billy M. and Slim Langbord. Really.

Sidebar box:

If this disk is not available at your local superior record store, mail the tidy sume of $4.98 (foreign customers use I.M.O.) to:

Oblivion Records
P.O. Box X
Roslyn Heights, New York 11577

– Dealer inquiries invited –

Best of Oblivion?

2008-09-04T09:59:00.008-04:00

My friend and colleague, Eric Homan, is a big music fan, and one day after reading my song blog asked if I'd do a theme week on the best of Oblivion. After a little hesitance --how can an owner be objective?-- I gave it a try. So, here you go, one track from each record. Did I blow it?

Nick was key.

2008-08-12T18:07:00.012-04:00

No indie label can survive without the love and support of friends and family. In my case, that first line of sustenance came from my friend Nick Moy.

A classical music announcer at WKCR and a couple of years older than me, Nick had a razor sharp intellect, a dry martini wit, and a musical breadth that included everyone from Wolfgang Mozart to Art Blakey to Parliment. He watched at a distance while I futzed around with Oblivion's first two records and sat patiently with great advice while I prepared the third in his apartment. Things really kicked in when we became roomates in the middle of 1973.

Nick became one of the key Oblivion conseillers. From music to graphics to our stupid business 'decisions' Nick was a foil for all sorts of moments in our short history. He attended every session he could, always with words of encouragement. As a mainstream, hard bop fan he was a particularly enthusiastic champion of Joe Lee Wilson, and I've got to say we really released that session on the heels his ardor for that superior set.

We went out scouting acts together with thoughtful discussion afterward with Tom and I worrying over whether or not someone met our standards. Nick was an audiophile, and needless to say, his sonic standards influenced the ways we struggled (pretty unsuccessfully) to capture sound in a way that would satisfy his discerning ears.

And all that's to say nothing of the meals and cash he spotted me for all those years.

An independent record label recording blues and jazz wasn't as common in the 1970s as it is today. It was more expensive, technologically more primitive and complicated, and more of a passion play. And, at least the way we did, you lost money. Without a great pal like Nick Moy, Oblivion never would have gotten out of the gate. Thanks bud.

Big Shots from the Apple.

2008-06-14T15:47:00.008-04:00

Oblivion's efforts at photography were pretty pathetic. I suppose when you've got severely limited resources something's got to go. With one exception, we either used snapshots or pretended we were doing something better when we weren't.

The most unusual results came from the Polaroid Big Shots that Roy Langbord and I had a brief infatuation with in 1974, and ended up as a bunch of the studio photography for "Blues From The Apple." The Big Shot was a portrait only camera with a fixed focal length. You needed to physically move the camera back and forth a few feet from the subject to bring it into proper focus! As was always the case with Polaroid there were a number of film options, including color, black & white, and, interestingly, black & white negative film, unusual for a consumer Polaroid.

The camera itself looked pretty unusual. Take a look at it here.

Andy Warhol made the Big Shot famous (with some) when he used it for a series of silkscreens he made in the 1970s.

A blues purist in the here and now.

2008-06-13T08:17:00.014-04:00

Bulldogs photograph by iDream_in_Infrared's

Mississippi Fred McDowell & Honest Tom Pomposello > Bulldog Blues [Dance Remix]

Tom Pomposello was a blues purist, who didn't think the blues was pure. He sure believed in the purity of the men and women who made and listened to the blues. And sure, he thought the music performances he loved were pure. He trusted in the function, but he was flexible to the form. If you ever heard his defense of Fred McDowell playing the "country" blues on electric guitar you know what I mean. Blues was a living, breathing music, he figured. It didn't stay frozen before the advent of recording, and it shouldn't have after. It was a music that had constantly absorded all that was great from its contemporary settings, and whatever was relevant to the audience would stay.

So, it was no surprise --though it was a bit of a shock-- when Tom emailed me this track to see what I thought. Geez, I thought it was great. It's never been released anywhere, so heads up.

It sure is nothing like you've ever heard before. Try it, you'll see. A holy alliance of a legendary country blues musician and his student, mentor, and friend, the tracks were recorded in the winter of 1971 (they were, in fact, Fred's last recordings before he passed away in 1972), and overdubbed/remixed in 1998 by Tom (also his last project before he passed away in 1999) and Lenny Kravitz's partner, composer/producer/mixer Dave Baron. The 26 years between sessions is the secret sauce.

After recording Mississippi Fred McDowell's last album, Tom Pomposello asked Fred for some coaching at a demo session. Fred wanted to sing along with Tom's guitar, and Tom, nervous about his still forming skills thought he'd record them on two tracks, so decades in the future he could re-record his guitar when he might be good enough to stand next to a master. The tracks sat on the shelf while Tom built his talent, skills, and career to world class level.

When the time came to dust off the box of tape almost 30 years later, it occurred to Tom that to recreate a blues track would not add anything to anyone's life. He was as enamored as ever of Fred and wanted to continue his lifelong mission to introduce this great man to new generations. Alongside master producer Dave Baron he decided to deconstruct and rebuild the blues for the moment. Tom wiped his original guitar, and with Dave's keyboards and Tom's electric Dobro and harmonica, he lovingly rebuilt the classic blues lines interweaving with the beats and the sound of the dance floor. What better way to pay tribute to a music that was, after all, dance music at house parties throughout the Mississippi Delta in Fred's youth?

There's irony all the way through these five minutes. This was Fred McDowell's final recording. And, it was Tom Pomposello's final recording. Bulldog Blues [Dance Remix] is the lifetime of Fred and Tom's blues. Enjoy.
.....
Mississippi Fred McDowell: vocals
Honest Tom Pomposello: electric Dobro, harmonica
Dave Baron: keyboards

Produced by Tom Pomposello
Mixed by Dave Baron
1998

Marc Cohen, electric alto saxophone and tenor saxophone

2008-06-08T12:10:00.010-04:00

From the liner notes of Friends:

Marc Cohen is from Philadelphia home of all good saxophonists. He has played with Chico Hamilton and was with Dreams for a short time. His alto saxophone is modified by an octave divider, two wah-wah pedals, a fuzz-tone, and a tape echo box. His tenor sax is quite ordinary.
....
Friends was completely Marc Cohen's record. He put together the musicians, the compositions, and altogether functioned fully as the "leader" of the date. It was only at the last second he bowed to his instincts (and, I believe, the sentiments of the era) and made it a collective album. It was much harder for us as an independent record company to promote this kind of record, but we were above all, a label oriented towards the artists' wishes.

Marc was a legend on the Columbia University campus, being their only jazzman of the time to make it in the professional world. We lost touch after Friends; we were a pretty terrible record company and didn't really know how to properly nuture relationships with the artists we released. But it made some sense when I heard he'd dropped out for ten years and studied piano, which was musically logically, given his approach to composition and playing.

Marc's completely rebuilt his reputation as an amazing musician known as Marc Copland with a sizable discography. Buy a few. If you're as knocked out by his innovation on Friends, you'll feel the same way about these discs.

Click here to listen to "5/8 Tune," one of Marc's composition's from the album.

Frank Olinsky and The Blues.

2008-05-26T11:47:00.010-04:00

When I was four years old my parents drove up to our new house in one of the bedroom "developments" that were creating the suburbs of the 1950s and standing on a dirt hill in the backyard was the 5 years old Frank Olinsky, and a lifelong friendship began. He was already showing an awesome artistic talent and then, as teenagers, Frank was the neighborhood music freak who introduced me to records from the Monkees to the Mothers of Invention and everything in between. So Frank was an obvious choice when we needed an album cover for "Blues from the Apple."

It wasn't a particularly easy assignment. Tom Pomposello's vision of the LP was to expose what was essentially an underground music in New York, the blues. So while Charles Walker was nominally the leader of the sessions, it was actually a kind of anthology album (Charles sang on only five of the nine tracks). Frank solved the dilemma with his usual blend of grace, class, and humor, and properly represented "The Apple" of the 1970s with an eaten out apple core.

Frank went on to start a studio I hired to create the famous MTV logo and he rightfully became one of the great album cover designers. Check out his work, it's great (and his blog too, where he tells some of his best stories behind his designs).

Fred's fresh, 30 years later.

2008-05-26T11:19:00.005-04:00

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Upload a doc

I believe it would be fair to say that befriending and working with Mississippi Fred McDowell was the most important professional experience in my partner Tom's life. And from the day we broke up the company until the day he died Tom never tired of honoring that relationship. In music, or on the radio, or in the press, or even in his commercial work, he found a way to tell the world about his teacher, mentor, and friend. This article, an homage Tom wrote for Guitar Player magazine, is an example that he showed me years after its publication date in 1977, but is as fresh 30 years later as the day it was written.

"Blues from the Apple" was the "Living Blues."

2008-05-23T10:56:00.008-04:00

Blues from the Big Apple - Upload a doc

We were never all that good at "working" the press, but between the two of us, Tom was definitely my better. He was an early, avid subscriber and supporter of "Living Blues," Jim O'Neal's and Amy Van Singel's Chicago magazine homage to all that is contemporary in the blues, and he pushed them relentlessly to embrace his vision of New York as a comer in the community. This article was the result, and probably the best press we got on "Blues from the Apple."

An acoustic "John Henry"

2008-05-22T21:18:00.005-04:00

John Henry was always one of my favorites from "Live in New York," so it was great to run into this clip of Fred's acoustic performance with almost exactly the same arrangement. His exemplary bottleneck playing (some say he was the best slide player ever) is on fine display. Unfortunately it's undated, but it was sometime in the decade before 1968, when he started playing electric full time.

(via Acoustic Guitar Log)

Dead Blues Guys.

2008-04-16T13:01:00.002-04:00

I don't know exactly what to make of this site, but I'm happy when anyone pays attention to Fred.

We had a hit!

2008-04-06T21:28:00.006-04:00

We were pretty clueless when it came to mechanics of the record business, and because we were roots purists, we didn't really think about hits too much. Oblivion's first release had done pretty well from our vantage point --we'd sold out the first pressing within a year-- and beyond that... who knew? Organizing distribution, promotion, reviews, the radio play...like I said, who knew?

So it was on the disgustingly hot night I got the test pressing (our only copy) for Joe Lee Wilson's Livin' High Off Nickels and Dimes. We knew we had something special, something Van J would completely dig. Van was the overnight guy at WRVR-FM, New York's only mainstream jazz station (WKCR tended towards the avant garde and classical), and he loved jazz singers. I trooped over there at midnight (getting mugged for my first time in then dangerous Manhattan) and couldn't get in the staiton. I wrote a note for Van pointing out the track "Jazz Ain't Nothing But Soul," which my friends and I thought was the perfect anthem that jazz needed. The pressing slipped between the bars outside the door, and we hoped for the best.

Within a couple of days it was clear that Van J loved the record. Loved it! Van started it off, but every DJ at the station was playing the track like crazy. OBLIVION HAD A HIT!

The only problem was that we had no records in the stores.

(More to come.)

Bonnie is a bluesman.

2008-04-06T20:43:00.005-04:00

I showed up to record Fred McDowell at the Village Gaslight on the afternoon of November 5, 1971, set up the mikes and recorder, and settled in for the first act around 9pm. A young woman with an acoustic guitar and an electric bassist started in, and my mouth dropped.

"Who is she?" I asked my partner, and Fred's bassist, Tom Pomposello. She was this rocker's perfect marriage of the blues with a pop sheen.

"Another client of Dick's," he told me. Dick Waterman, friend of the blues, had discovered Bonnie up in Cambridge, became her manager, and had signed her to Warner Bros. Wow! What a singer, what a guitarist, what an act. I couldn't wait for her records. Freebo (her bass player) and Bonnie never quite lived up to that night for me. The records were lackluster (Give It Up came closest to the magic the two of them had), and it took until Don Was to capture her perfectly (but without dependable Freebo).

Bonnie was loyal to Fred McDowell forever. She recorded his songs and never failed to mention how he taught and influenced her music. Bonnie is bluesman, then and now.

Sort of Joe.

2008-04-05T16:02:00.008-04:00

Joe Lee Wilson might just be the greatest ballad singer of his generation, evidenced by the singing on this video and on these two tracks from the fourth Oblivion release. But like the tree falling in the empty forest, mostly no one knows and it's why, 30 some odd years ago, I wanted us to be among his discoverers. It almost worked, but that's a story for another time.

I've been searching around for video of the Oblivion artists and I stumbled upon this weird artifact of Joe. Weird, because you really have to fget over the fact that you never see Joe actually singing, and just listen to his "You Are Too Beautiful." Don't ask me what was going on with the taping, but his beyond gorgeous reading of this Rogers and Hart completely wipes out the strangeness of it all.

The last release.

2008-04-05T14:54:00.007-04:00

In late 1998 Tom Pomposello called me to continue his understandable obsession with keeping "Live in New York" in print (not only was he extremely close to Fred when he passed away in the early 70s, it was Tom's first released recording as a musician). He was very excited about an arrangement with indie CD label "Live Archive" to release a remixed, remastered, and updated album. I immediately agreed.

When 2-CD set was released in 2000 it was all Tom had hoped. He did an amazing job with the sound (adding echo that we avoided in our purist and poorest days), added 16 bonus tracks, and cleaned up the sequencing. There was more annotation and a beautiful package. Unfortunately, the label was short lived --I don't think it lasted the year-- though those of you who insist on holding a manufactured package can often pick up used copies around the internets. (Or, you can get it --bonus tracks and all-- for nothing from us right here.)

This post was very painful for me to write, having nothing to do with the record. The contracts for these CDs arrived for signing at my Hollywood office the morning of January 25, 1999. Later that afternoon I got a call telling me Tom had tragically been killed in a car accident outside of Kingston, New York. So Tom, here it is for you, your favorite recording will be available for everyone always.

Unauthorized Fred.

2008-04-05T14:15:00.010-04:00

Notwithstanding that you can now get all the Oblivion releases for free (including all the credits, liner notes, bonus tracks, and extras), we understand that many people of a, uh, certain age, like to buy CDs.

DON'T BUY THESE FRED McDOWELL CDs on Tomato Records or Blue Labor Records. They're unauthorized, they're pirated, and besides, HEADS UP, you can get the whole record for free right here.

Tom Pomposello had a deeply emotional relationship with Fred McDowell and he moved heaven and earth to keep "Live in New York" in print. In the 80s we made a short term licensing deal with our "friends" jazz composer Heiner Stadler and his partner songwriter Kent Cooper from Labor Records. Heiner subsequenly had a producer relationship with shady, unscrupulous record entrepreneur Kevin Eggers of Tomato Records (neé Poppy Records). Without permission, Heiner gave Kevin the Gaslight masters, and Kevin has been releasing them for more than 15 years.

DON'T BUY THESE FRED McDOWELL CDs. You can get the whole record and bonus tracks for free right here.

Record labels.

2008-04-03T22:41:00.015-04:00

1972, 1st edition LP

1973, 2nd edition LP

1972, 45spm single

1973, LP

1974, LP

1974, LP

1975, LP

It's pretty clear that I wasn't much of designer, and I didn't know how to actually work with designers yet in the 70s (I made up for it in spades over the next 30 years). The labels I did for Oblivion are pretty much proof (except the last two pretty cool ones designed by Lisa Lenovitz Eaton for Tom's album).

Johnny sure has it.

2008-04-02T09:50:00.008-04:00

"Mississippi Harmonica" sure isn't the only place you can hear Johnny Woods' great harp playing and singing, but this video is the only place I've actually seen him perform, dueting with R.L. Burnside in 1984. R.L. picked up the Fred McDowell mantle in a lot of ways (they're from the same area) so it makes perfect sense he and Johnny teamed up.

Fred McDowell, 2nd edition.

2008-04-01T10:17:00.011-04:00

Quickly, within our first year, Oblivion sold out the first pressing of 2000 OD-1's. But we really hated the job our pressing plant did. The printing stunk, the pressings were worse. And we weren't all that crazy about the way we'd done a few things ourselves. Even though Tom thought the blues meant kind of funky quality, it was too funky for our standards. So, some changes were clearly in order.

First up, the record itself. Tom was a perfectionist (oh, yes) and for reasons beyond my pay grade decided to scrap "Goin' To The River (Carry My Rocking Chair)" (check it out in the bonus tracks) with "White Lightnin'".

Next, the liners. I've mentioned before the notes were typical and perfunctory and Tom wanted another shot. This time around they were more personal (Fred had sadly passed away between the two editions), thorough, and special. We both felt the first edition notes were ugly, so I asked Lisa for advice and tried The Oblivionettes improved layout skills (improved, but look closely and you'll see they still aren't too good). Valerie Wilmer generously donated a couple of shots from the show.

The original Viewlex pressings sounded like too many typical, cheap pressings of the 70s (that is to say, like records covered in sand); we were a miniscule, ignorant client with no clout or vocabulary for making things better. The pristine pressings of ECM Records ("The Most Beautiful Sound Next To Silence") were pressed in Europe and too expensive) The closest independent whose records sounded good was our distributor Rounder Records, who pointed us to their domestic supplier, Wakefield Manufacturing in Phoenix, who became Oblivion's superior presser and printer until we closed.

Lastly, we replaced the labels with a questionable design by yours truly.

In March 1973 we unleashed the 2nd edition of "Live in New York." It was a lot better.

Lyrics? On a blues record?

2008-03-30T11:44:00.011-04:00

Avoiding Bob Dylan's lyrics wasn't too easy for someone my age, but there was no escaping my partner Tom Pomposello. After I questioned the wisdom (and the expense) of printing the inner sleeve of Blues from the Apple Tom patiently explained how the oral history of African-Americans traveled through the lyrics of the blues. He was severely annoyed that since Sgt. Pepper's, every idiotic word of medicore rock bands merited inner sleeve treatment and blues albums were ignored. So, that was it, lyrics got printed. Hell with Dylan, now I pay attention to every blues lyric.

Fred (and Tom) by Valerie.

2008-03-28T21:23:00.014-04:00

Mississippi Fred McDowell (Tom Pomposello in the background) at the Village Gaslight, NY, 1971. Photograph by Val Wilmer

Photographer/writer Valerie Wilmer was one of the British citizens of her generation who explained a philosphy of life through American musicians and their music. It was no accident that one of her best known books, about avant garde jazz, was entitled As Serious As Your Life. In the one lengthy conversation I had with her in 1970, at drummer Rashied Ali's Soho loft, she conveyed to me the depth of her feelings about understanding humanity through the musicians she loved, like Fred McDowell.

Tom befriended her during his friendship with Fred, and unknown to me, she'd been at the week of Village Gaslight gigs where we recorded "Live in New York." So when it quickly became clear that we were going to release a 2nd edition of the album Tom asked Val for some of her shots of the gig. They captured the mood perfectly (you can see Tom's massive shape over on the upper left) and we liked both shots she sent so much that in my Warholian zeal for multiples we used them both.

A foxy poster.

2008-03-27T19:27:00.006-04:00

The photograph in this poster was in one of the first posts on this blog. The poster was for the stillborn CD release of "The Complete Oblivion..." and even though we never released the box set or printed the poster, seeing it again is going to make me frame one up for my office. (You should too, just follow this link and you'll get a file that's print worthy.)

Jeez, I love this picture.

It reminds me that Oblivion was more than just a wannabe fantasy of some suburban boys (though it sometimes felt that way at the time). It's American roots music come alive, an urban woman playing music from the country, filtered through a college radio station and an independent label that took its passions seriously. Like I said in the original post, "Is this picture the blues or what?"

Get "The Complete Oblivion Records." Free.

2008-03-27T15:47:00.043-04:00

Get "The Complete Oblivion Records 1971-1975" for free. by just shifting your mouse to the right hand column of this blog and clicking on the record covers.

"Free?! 55 tracks --plus outtakes-- worth more than $75 for nothing? Really?! How come?"

Well, there are a few reasons, some will make some sense to you, some not:

1. We like our catalog, and some 30 years after recording them, we'd still like people to hear it.
2. The people buying CDs are mostly over 30 years old, and it's usually young people who like to discover music.
3. A physical release would probably lose money so why not easily share the music with the entire world?

In 2004, five years after my Oblivion partner Tom Pomposello passed away, his son Travis and I talked about re-releasing the complete catalog, maybe as a box set. All the music was special, each was important in its own way in both blues and jazz genres, and though it hadn't all been successful it seemed like it all had a place in the 21st century.

Sample covers for "The Complete Oblivion Records on MP3"

A box set seemed like it would never sell since the audience for each record was often different. I thought we could create a "revoltutionary" format and put all six album on one reasonably priced CD in an all MP3 format (MP3s were at their peak of making record companies crazy). Since the most active audience for music, people under 30, weren't buying too many CDs anyway, why not go all the way and speak in a contemporary language? I even comped up a few covers and a poster. Then my day job got way busy and the whole idea was dropped.

As the music business the way we knew it continued to implode over the next few years it looked like MySpace was introducing more music to people and I set up an Oblivion site, but I wasn't the right guy to work it. Eventually, it occurred to be that the costs of finally putting out the CDs, and tallying up the work it would take to get them distributed, would probably wouldn't do anything but lose me money, and besides, not that many CDs would actually sell. So, in the end, there wouldn't actually be too many people listening to the music anyway.

But by starting this blog to chronicle my recollections of the history of the label, encoding the music as MP3s, and posting all six records on my music blog, the audience for the Oblivion catalog would be the largest it could possibly be.

So, take the music for free. Enjoy it, play it for your friends, expose it on your radio shows. It's yours.

Jazz ain't nothing but soul.

2008-03-26T12:38:00.007-04:00

Empire by Jason Mulcahy

During the summers of 1970 and 1971 I was part of the small paid staff that kept the student volunteer WKCR on the air. For reasons lost to time in '72 I worked at my parents drug store on Long Island and only traveled into New York to produce my two weekly radio shows.

Towards the end of July I started hearing the buzz. A singer called Joe Lee Wilson had come into KCR one hot, humid, night and recorded a killer set with his quartet for Sharif Abdul Salaam's (neé Ed Michael) Jazz Alternatives. I pretty much ignored it. After all, I wasn't the one who did the killer recording (Don Zimmerman did, one of our colleagues who did everything better than all of us), and I never really cared too much about jazz vocalists (my background was rock and pop which led me more towards blues singers).

But one night I was tuned into someone else's jazz show and I heard a singer who blew me away. Finally, someone who lived up to the thing that's always said about jazz vocalists, "He (she) sounds like a horn." What was this record? Who was this guy?

Lisa Lenovitz designed the logo.

2008-03-26T10:14:00.005-04:00

Detail from Lisa Lenovitz logo studies

Lisa Lenovitz (now Lisa Eaton) graduated from the prestigious Cooper Union, was a key member of Tibor Kalman's M & Co. in New York, and leads the design team for chef and restauranteur Mario Batali. She is very talented.

Lisa and I went to high school together in Huntington, New York, and she was a girlfriend of musicians in my bands, and one of a number of wonderful artists I knew. We both went to college in Manhattan, lived on the Upper West Side, and liked each other, so we had a lot of reasons to stay in touch. When we started Oblivion Lisa was artist who popped in my head to design our logo. Tom and I had no idea what a logo actually was or what made a good one. Or anything else about graphics whatsoever. We just knew a record company needed a logo, right?

Lisa Lenovitz Oblivion logos studies

So, when Lisa handed us a bunch of sketches from her notebook I'm not really sure what made us choose what we chose. Maybe it was Lisa's favorite? I don't know.

The final logo

Anyhow, we chose the chosen one and we still didn't know what to do with it. So, we took Lisa's hand inked and lettered one inch square version from a regular paper sketchbook and had photostats copy made of it. The fact that the ink spidered out on the paper, the holding lines were uneven (I cut it out with a single edge razor blade), was completely lost to our untrained eyes. So, absolutely no fault of Lisa's, that funky edged art served us as the logo for the life of the company.

Lisa continued to help us in a number of ways over the years, including the design of Tom's album.

What's "typesetting?"

2008-03-25T14:23:00.014-04:00

OK, so I bought a book at a local shop about graphic design to figure out how to make our Oblivion album covers, particularly our maiden release, "Live in New York." But the first thing the book mentioned was typography and I had no idea what it was. It seemed like "typesetting" required machines and technology outside my reach (it hadn't yet occurred to me that someone with talent was required to figure out what the type looked like), so I asked my friend David Reitman, a magazine editor at Screw Magazine, who suggested I go over the Columbia University Spectator, the campus newspaper. The editor was happy to help, they'd just put in a super expensive, computer based typesetting machine, but it could only do the "body copy" (the text) and not the "headlines" (the big titles at the top) which required a Typositor.

Back to David. He introduced me to Screw's art director Steven Heller who immediately revved up his Typositor, picked out a typeface based on my description of the album, and set M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I-F-R-E--M-C-D-O-W-E-L-L L-I-V-E-I-N-N-E-W-Y-O-R-K and handed me the strips. (It was 15 minutes for him, but his kindness --and coolness-- was unforgettable for me. 25 years later, after he'd become the most prolific author of great graphic design books, I re-introduced myself over the phone, and he became one of my favorite later life people).

Over the next few years we cadged types anywhere we could, like from our jobs (I got fired from one of Ralph Ginzburg's newspapers for setting my own type on his machines). By the end we found enough pennies to actually pay for typesetting occasionally. Where was Photoshop when we needed it?

Fred McDowell, 1st edition.

2008-03-24T21:48:00.021-04:00

Dick Pennington agreed to become our third partner and finance the first release of our independent record company when Tom played him the Fred McDowell tapes I'd recorded at the Village Gaslight.

Tom planned the 11 tracks he wanted on the record (Dick and I sure didn't know enough about the country blues) and he and I went into a 14 hour marathon editing session to put everything in shape. It was a tough session since we were trying to edit each LP side like a seamless live performance. The end results were a little funky, but we thought the effect worked. And remember, the original recording was one track, monophonic; there were no separate tracks for musicians, vocals, and audience to fudge with at all. And the WKCR engineering board was a radio console, no equalization, or any sophistication for record editing.

Tom did a lot of the hard work of figuring out the manufacturing. That meant he got the name of a one stop shop down the highway from us (Viewlex Corporation, owner of Buddah Records, in Happauge, New York) who would take care of acetate mastering, vinyl pressing, jacket and label printing, and shrink wrapping. They patiently walked us through all the preparations and we got together the elements. At the time it didn't occur to us that we'd end up with crappy printing and crappier pressings. But, then again, that's the blues, or at least, it was at Oblivion in 1972.

Tom had a color photograph of Fred performing for the cover. He wrote the fairly cliched blues liner notes you can read above (or here) that gave the listener a quick McDowell history. I bought a book about graphics, convinced a couple of people to set the type for the jacket (a difficult process requiring expensive, rare equipment), and laid out the whole thing on a breadboard on my living room couch, as you can plainly see by the unevenness of much of the text. Our friend Lisa Lenovitz designed the Oblivion logo, and we got fine print inspiration from Tom's love of roots pioneer (and a McDowell label) Arhoolie Records.

The youthful anarchic side of Tom took particular joy in the small details that flowed from naming the label Oblivion Records. He researched all the Long Island post office boxes and found that Roslyn Heights could give us "Post Office Box X." Which led perfectly to our catalog numbers which would have the prefix "OD."

Boxes of "Mississippi Fred McDowell: Live in New York" were ready to be picked up in Tom's car around April 1972. We had no idea where the whole thing would lead us, but, hey! "We're in the record business," a great place for young men in the 70s.

The perfect combo for the next steps beyond. Before "Friends."

2008-03-22T18:05:00.020-04:00

Marc Cohen played alto saxophone (he now is a pianist who performs as Marc Copeland) who graduated from Columbia in 1969 and went out with Chico Hamilton's band. He occasionally performed as a leader on the Upper West Side and would come by and do a live session on David Reitman's "Journey to the End of the Night" on WKCR. One Wednesday night in May 1972 I was asked to engineer a trio session with Marc, acoustic bassist Glenn Moore (soon to be known as part of the Oregon quartet), and Stan Getz drummer Jeff Williams, and I set up Studio A expecting a typical acoustic jazz trio.

But Marc came in with his alto, a Maestro Echoplex, a small amplifier, and plugged in.

We all were familiar with electronically modified acoustic instruments in jazz from Eddie Harris to, most interestingly, Miles Davis and The Tony Williams Lifetime. We didn't totally love Eddie's try because the electronics didn't really change the energy of the jazz, while Miles and Tony were more in the direction rock raised fans like us could relate to.

Marc wailed it like Eric Clapton in Madison Square Garden, while the rhythm section rocked along with all of the polyrhythmic finesse of Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison. The perfect combo for music that was searching for the next steps beyond.

There was no doubt we were witnessing the future being made in front of our ears. Marc was bringing melody and rhythmic excitement to help solve two ends at the same time. The energy in jazz was being focused into the atonal descendants of Coltrane, Coleman, and Taylor, not particularly attractive to a wide audience. Rock was more popular, but desperately searching for improvisations that made more sense than 20 minute drum solos. Here it was with musicians who had no rock antipathy but enjoyed the open nature of jazz.

Before the group had packed up I asked Marc whether we could edit the sessions (each jam was over 15 minutes long) and release them on Oblivion. When he called me back a few days later he was excited to having his music released but felt like the playing could have been better on the composed parts of the tunes. Could he come back for more sessions that could be master takes?

Sure thing. WKCR's Studio A was due for a complete overhaul, including brand new stereo machines and better soundproofing. Marc would be back in town right after the construction. We were set to go.

Sam painted the "Friends" cover, Part 3.

2008-03-22T17:07:00.015-04:00

Part 3 (0f 4) [Part 1, Part 2]
Almost everyone hated the "Friends" cover.

Marc, our non-Columbia friends, critics, everyone. No one thought it was appropriate for such a serious album. Distributors said we'd never sell albums with covers like this one, and, in the end, they were kind of right. Even though it was reviewed as the "electronic jazz record of the year" (no one called it "fusion" yet, thank goodness), there was a sense that putting a "cartoon" on the cover didn't do the music justice.

Tom and I felt we were being as pioneering in the cover design as the music deserved. Art critic Peter Frank called Sam part of Jean Dubuffet's art brut movement (it's called "outsider art" today) and we agreed, it was groundbreaking.

We were sorry for Sam, as well as Marc. Our judgment wasn't in sync with the market.

Ah well, as someone once said, "Pioneers are the ones with arrows in their backs."

(More in Parts 1 & 2)

Sam painted the "Friends" cover, Part 2.

2008-03-22T15:15:00.029-04:00

Sam Steinberg at Ferris Booth Hall, 1973
(From the back cover of "Friends")

Part 2 (of 3) [Part 1 & Part 3]
Once we'd worked out payment I tried to explain to Sam what an album cover is and that I needed a square painting from him, rather than his customary rectangles; he understood when I drew a pencil square on his illustration board.

When he came back with the painting in a few days it was with Sam's typical joy and generosity. "I didn't want to waste the space so I made an extra cat!" And sure enough, he'd painted (actually he sketched in pencil, and his sister Pauline did the coloring with Magic Markers) a circular "album" in orange on a square, solid, black field. Then, tucked in on the left was a yellow regtangle with one of his signature "catz," his favorite subject.

Sam's original painting.

We loved the whole thing. Not just the "album" portion, but the yellow & purple cat too. Could we save everything? I spent an awful lot of time on the phone with the printer at the pressing plant in Phoenix trying to suss out whether he could rearrange the elements so we could use all three catz, 20 years before Photoshop, when everything had to be done by hand with cameras and negative film.

At the last minute Marc decided the record shouldn't be the first "Marc Cohen" album; everyone had contributed too much. He came up the distressingly banal "Friends," and arguments to the contrary, that was it. Sam didn't really write or read so I tried my best to simulate his signature from the lower left corner of his paintings. We asked Columbia grad, art critic, and future museum curator Peter Frank to write Sam's blurb* for the back cover, and I then did my typically bad job on writing and laying out the back liner (as The Oblivionettes) and the cover was finished.

From the back liner:

About the cover artist: By Peter Frank
Sam Steinberg is the unofficial artist-in-residence at Columbia University and the Brox’s contribution to the Art Brut quasi-movement of Jean Dubuffet. The 70 year old former ice cream vendor (he still sells candy bars) work prolifically in magic-marker-on-cardboard, with occasional forays into magic-marker-on-cloth, and is popular with the Columbia community for his boids, snakes, moimaids and low prices. His sister Pauline colors them in.

(More in Parts 1 & 3)

Sam Steinberg painted the "Friends" cover, Part 1.

2008-03-22T13:53:00.014-04:00

The original Sam Steinberg painting for "Friends"

Part 1 (of 3) [Part 2 & Part 3]
"Hey mistah, I got paintings here! Or maybe you want a Hoishey bar."

Anyone who was on the Columbia University campus between 1967 and 1982 would hear Sam Steinberg touting his wares every weekday (thanks to Flo Grant for quoting Craig Bunch's Folk Art article). Sam was a street peddler turned "outsider", urban artist, and he was adopted by generations of Columbia students who bought up to 20 paintings each week from this man with a genuine vision. So, since leader Marc Cohen had been a Columbia student, and we were recording his first solo album at Columbia's radio station, it seemed appropriate to use one of Sam's paintings for the cover.

Oblivion was perennially broke and we'd never "commissioned" a cover before but Tom and I thought in this case it was justified. But how to price it? Sam was selling his work for $2.50 a piece (!) and it would be wrong to just pick one up and appropriate it. So, one winter day I approached Sam and offered him $10, plus something he really needed in life. "Shoes. I need a new pair of shoes." We walked across Broadway into a shoe store and I shelled out my last $40 for a new pair of perfectly fitted, ankle high, warm shoes.

Sam seemed so happy in his new shoes. Imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks later he was back to his old pair (too large, with newspaper tucked in to make the fit). "They were too slippery on the ice."

(More in Parts 2 & 3)

Design in Oblivion.

2008-03-21T22:38:00.015-04:00

A Lisa Lenovitz sketchbook page

If you've been reading these posts it's probably clear we barely had any idea what we were doing. Tom, Dick, and I were just passionate music fans, slightly more motivated than some, caught up in the pop cultural fevers of our times. The passion and motivation motored us through the details of the things we were totally ignorant of, including graphic design.

Of all of us I was most interested so effectively I was Oblivion's art director. (In bands during high school and college I was the one who was obsessed with our logo, how our name would look on the bass drum head, and fantasizing about our eventual album cover.) And Tom? Once I asked Tom why the original "Living Blues" Magazine looked so raw, so amateurish. He got a funny look on his face, and with no trace of irony said, "If it looked good it wouldn't be the blues." (He was probably right.)

For our first release Tom chose the photograph and the pressing plant helped us design the LP labels and pick the colors (remember, I already said we knew nothing). I bought a how-to book on print design from the college bookstore and did the (terrible) layout on a breadboard on my lap (as "The Oblivionettes"). I got a little smarter soon and enlisted artist friends to help out from then on (a couple of whom became stunningly world class designers).

If you click on the GRAPHIC DESIGN label on the lower right of this blog you'll be able to read my occasional updates on the individual release graphics.

We had a business, so, we needed business cards, right?

2008-03-21T22:27:00.016-04:00

I can't really remember what exactly prompted us to need business cards, maybe it was only that my girlfriend was silkscreening like crazy and we thought it would be cool. Susan DeLaney (now Sue Morgan) was an art major at Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York, and she'd already designed and screened a poster for a rock band I was working with one summer. Like a lot of others graphically minded in the early 70s we were both under the sway of Andy Warhol (I still am) and we came up with the idea of oversize cards (if you folded them in half they kind of resemble a standard business card). Then it was a matter of screening as many of one color as we could stand on different shades of card stock. We didn't really worry about the cleanliness of the screen lines, somehow it was cooler if the edges bled a little.

After having dozens of business cards for almost 40 years these are probably the best ones I've ever had; I think Tom would feel the same way.

A very brief history of Oblivon Records.

2008-03-10T23:48:00.016-04:00

In late 1971 my new friend Tom Pomposello and I decided to start a record company to record his music, and so I could become a record producer. He was 21, married with a small child, and owned a local hippie record store in Huntington, New York. I was 19, single, a college student in New York City.

Tom loved the blues. I loved jazz, especially the avant garde variety. We both wanted to do more to promote artists we believed in.

And it was the early 70s, the height of don't trust anyone over 30 and the man can't bust our music, and indie record culture was starting to flourish again.

It seemed like a smart move not to start with the unknown Tom's record --especially since we hadn't figured out exactly what it would be yet-- but we had a viable commercial tape we'd recorded of college concert star Mississippi Fred McDowell (with Tom on bass guitar) at the Village Gaslight in Greenwich Village. With the sales of this sure fire hit, we'd be on our way to the big time of indie labels. Our agreement was to make blues records for Tom and jazz records for me. We had a passion for underexposed American music and we were certain we'd be the two to bring unknown artists to prominence.

The only question that lingered was where we would get the outrageous sum of $1800 to press the first 2000 copies? Tom came to rescue by bringing in our third partner Richard (Dick) Pennington, a friend of his from, uh, somewhere (I never actually found out). Dick stepped right up with enthusiasm and verve and stayed until our fourth album when he and Tom fell explosively out over something neither of them ever revealed.

Tom chose the name "Oblivion" off of the back of a Leo Kottke LP and we released Obivion OD-1 --'Mississippi Fred McDowell: Live in New York'-- in 1972; altogether we put out six records in four years (it still feels like 100 records in 1000 years) before we flamed out with musical dignity intact. Tom's album was our last, so we had fulfilled our mission.

You can listen to the complete Oblivion Records library (and bonus tracks) by clicking the on the album covers in the right hand column of this blog>>>>>>

A very brief history of 'Mississippi Fred McDowell > Live in New York'

2008-03-10T23:46:00.003-04:00

Oblivion Records #OD-1

In late 1971, Tom Pomposello, co-proprietor of Kropotkin Records, asked me to record a gig he had playing bass with the country blues Mississippi Fred McDowell. I didn't really have any idea who Fred was, but I believed my friend when he assured me the recording would be of an authentic bluesman (a rare commodity in the existence of suburbanites) and great for my college radio show.

We did the gig and I played the tape on my radio show. Months later we decided we needed to start a record label and that Fred's tape would be the perfect maiden voyage.

But first.

We had to:

find a partner who could finance the pressing and jackets for 2000 albums;
locate a pressing plant;
learn about how to do graphics for the cover. And write the liner notes;
figure out what independent record distributors were. And convince them to take our record; and
learn everything else about the record business we didn't know.

36 years later, 'Live in New York' is probably the only record we released that still has active interest.

Click here to listen to the entire album (and bonus tracks), and read the liner notes and credits.

A very brief history of 'Johnny Woods > Mississippi Harmonica'

2008-03-10T23:44:00.003-04:00

Oblivion Records O#2

After my partner Tom Pomposello had been bitten by the Mississippi Fred McDowell bug he took a vacation to study with Fred in Como, Mississippi between April 17 and 30, 1972. During the trip he asked Fred to meet his friend and collaborator harpist Johnny Woods, who was working as a farmer/sharecropper. Johnny didn't even own a harp and hadn't played in quite a while, so Tom gave him a harmonica, whipped out his Panasonic cassette recorder and recorded two songs right there on Johnny's porch. A couple of Instamatic photos later, Oblivion had the makings of it's first (and only) 45rpm, a real country blues classic.

Click here to listen to the record, and read the liner notes and credits.

A very brief history of 'Friends'

2008-03-10T23:43:00.007-04:00

Oblivion Records #OD-3

I was the go-to guy for engineering live music sessions at Columbia University's WKCR between 1970 and 1973. So when David Reitman made the call for a May 1972 trio session featuring Chico Hamilton sideman (and Columbia graduate) Marc Cohen (with Glenn Moore on bass and Jeff Williams on drums) I was there. The shocker is that Marc had electricfied his saxophone and the result sounded less like Paul Desmond and more like Eric Clapton. In the aftermath of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and The Tony Williams Lifetime the fusion (no one was calling it that yet, thank goodness) of rock and jazz was being invented in front of our ears.

I was immediately enthralled and approached Marc to allow us to release the results on Oblivion Records. Intrigued, Marc asked to come back with another group for a session he could think about a little more; the trio was more of an experiment and he was dissatisfied with his playing. When he came back in December it was with a quartet, with John Abercrombie on guitar (not yet a star, his first solo album would come out in 1974) and Clint Houston on bass. The sessions didn't have the manic energy I so enjoyed with the trio, but it had richness, harmony and structure lacking in the original date.

Marc was uncomfortable being named the leader given the collective nature of the improvisations even though he composed three quarters of the date and put the group together. He named the record and the group "Friends."

The reviews were ecstatic: "A promising indication of things to come [in] New Electronic Music," said Crawdaddy! Magazine.

Click here to listen to the entire album in CD quality MP3s, and read the liner notes and credits.

A very brief history of 'Charles Walker & The New York City Blues Band > Blues from the Apple'

2008-03-10T23:42:00.003-04:00

Oblivion Records #OD-4

When I look back on the 13 months of recording sessions (it seemed like five years) and 10 musicians (they seemed like 100) I realize that no "brief history" would ever do this record justice, but here goes.

Charles Walker was part of the New York City blues scene that was encouraged and nurtured by pioneering Harlem record entrepreneur Bobby Robinson, and he'd scuffled around (like the few other bluesman in New York blues) without much going on for years when we met him in 1974. Oblivion co-founder Tom Pomposello sensed an opportunity to record one of the few underexposed authentic scenes in America and insisted we jump on it (famous last words: "Fred, in our business you can never move to quickly!"). Every week Charles would show up (at our makeshift studio, WKCR Radio at Columbia University) with another group of folks in tow, some who could play, some not, and insist we record him "Right now!" Of course, he never had a guitar (once I loaned him a friend's, which I eventually got out of a South Bronx pawn shop with my last $50) and the sessions were often a complete mess due to lack of preparation and sidemen's inebration. But there was always something there, a sound that could only come from the hearts of men (and women) who were living the life.

It took Tom and I months of all night editing sessions on our home tape decks to make some of the takes work (and to satisfy Tom's insistence we put the musicians' best feet forward) and we released the record with all the fanfare we could muster (a press announcement to the blues specialty magazines, and copies to a few radio stations). But Blues from the Apple suffered the neglect of not too many people caring about New York blues or liking the album all that much. It was the worst selling Oblivion record. We didn't care though, we loved it. In the end, Tom was right; we documented a dying scene of America's authentic folk music. (And, in fact, it has my favorite track in the whole Oblivion discography.)

Click here to listen to the entire record, and read the liner notes and credits.

A very brief history of 'Joe Lee Wilson > Livin' High Off Nickels and Dimes'

2008-03-10T23:41:00.002-04:00

Oblivion Records #OD-5

I wasn't at WCKR too much during the summer of 1972, so even though I'd recorded almost every jazz performance of signifigance there for the past three years I had no idea why everyone was so excited by a session one hot July night my friend Don Zimmerman had engineered. Weeks of "Wow!" finally became clear when someone racked up the tape and I knew vocalist Joe Lee Wilson needed to be the second jazz musician on Oblivion Records. Tom Pomposello agreed since we were dedicated to great musicians who hadn't grabbed a break. Joe certainly fit the bill.

He was a great guy who immediately agreed to be an Oblivion Records artist. Things went pretty smoothly from there with editing, photography, graphics and manufacturing. Until I made the fatal error of the independent record business.

My excitement for this album couldn't be contained and on the sweltering August 1974 night the test pressing came in I rushed over to leave it for the influential midnight DJ at New York's WRVR. It was the dead of night and the door was locked so it was slipped in the mail slot. The next morning I was woken up by phone calls telling me the station had played "Jazz Ain't Nothin' But Soul" all night and we had a hit. Great! Wrong! Because we had no actual records pressed, and frankly, we didn't really have the money to get them manufactured. I quickly persuaded my best friend to "loan" me the money (I still haven't paid him back; no worries though, he became my creative and business partner for 20 years) and we phoned in the order to the pressing plant in Arizona. The station kept playing the track while we patiently waited. And waited. They kept spinning the disc. We finally got the platters, sent them out to our distributors, and... The momentum was dead.

In many ways, we fell into the indie record trap. Our hit might have been the beginning of the end.

Click here to listen to the entire album, and read the liner notes and credits.

A very brief history of 'Honest Tom Pomposello'

2008-03-10T23:40:00.002-04:00

Oblivion Records #OD-6

Tom Pomposello and I started Oblivion Records because of his ambitions as a modern bluesman and we started making his album almost right away.

Finally, it was four years from first track to last, recording sessions in at least seven locations, from a two track in a living room on Long Island, to a professional eight track studio in New York's Soho, and sidemen ranging from Mississippi Fred McDowell to our hometown, world class, musician friends. The album had a lot of blues, but folk, gospel, and rock too. Tom was an authentic American roots musician, and his first album showed off all his good sides.

We released the album in 1975 (the legend on the back said File under: Suburban Blues) and it was our last record. The air had leaked out of the tire. Tom and I went on to a relationship of the greatest friends and colleagues for the rest of his life.

Click here to listen to the entire album, and read the liner notes and credits.

Tom's photo studio.

2008-03-06T22:14:00.024-05:00

Tom's photography studio for the Johnny Woods single was at least as sophisticated as his recording studio. When it came time to get some shots Tom posed Johnny in front of Fred's prized Pontiac, snapped a couple with his Kodak Flashcube Instamatic (with 126 cartridge film) and called it a day. We took the film to the drugstore for processing, cropped it, and made the original cover.

When Travis Pomposello and I started thinking about reissuing the Oblivion catalog in 2005 I went to the files stored in my parents' basement for the last 30 years and the only photo artifact that turned up for the o#2 single was this negative strip:

A quick, cheap scan, and a Photoshop conversion showed this result:

Not good.

I immediately reached out to the best black & white master photography printer I knew, New York's Chuck Kelton, proprietor of Kelton Labs, and begged for saving. He took the beat up, scratch, heat challenged negative and performed transformative surgery. Tom original amateur photography now preserved Johnny Woods for the ages. Amazing!

(Give a click on each of the images to see just what kind of shape they're really in.)

"Locating Mr. Woods was not the easiest task."

2008-03-04T11:26:00.014-05:00

Johnny Woods' 45rpm single Mississippi Harmonica was Tom's project from start to to finish, he was the only one who could tell the story in the liner notes:

During the spring of 1972, I spent some time in Mississippi visiting with my friend and teacher Fred McDowell. Now Fred had promised to show me around and introduce me to a few of his musical cronies, and I told Fred that I’d especially like to meet his old harmonica playing sidekick, Johnny Woods. I had know about Johnny first form the way Fred, whenever the subject turned to harp players, would say, “back home we got a boy named Little Johnny Woodsman, that boy is a harmonica playin’ fool, sure as you’re born.” I had also known about him from the appearance he made with Fred at the 1969 Memphis Blues Festival (subsequent to which studio material was released), and also from some field recordings made by George Mitchell. A lot of people might remember Johnny solely for an Ann arbor Blues Festival “appearance-fiasco” in which he kind of screwed up the McDowell-Woods set. Johnny doesn’t have the best reputation for holding his liquor. After that he sort of drifted in oblivion (yeah).

Locating Mr. Woods was not the easiest task. Johnny used to live in the town Senatobia, which is about ten miles north of Como, Fred’s hometown. But Johnny is a farmer, and as such he must go where the work is. Word had reached us that he had re-located in the town of Olive Branch, just south of Memphis. Try as we might we just couldn’t find him that April morning. Whenever we got to the place where he was supposed to be for sure, for sure he wasn’t there. Until finally acting upon a tip from a person who was acquainted with Johnny’s employer, we tracked him down to a farm on the proverbial outskirts of town.

It was about noon when we pulled up into the dirt driveway and headed up the long path towards an old shack. There on the porch I could make our the figure of a small gray-haired man peering primly at our approaching vehicle. Fred smiled, “That’s him, Tom.” Then I watched as Johnny’s face lit up when he realized it was Fred. The two hadn’t seen each other in months. Johnny called inside to his wife. “look who’s here. It’s Fred. Freddy McDowell!"

We got out of the car. Fred made the introductions and Johnny invited us inside. We were fortunate to have caught Johnny during his lunch break. While we talked, Fred told me to play the tapes of the session that he and I had done in New York. And as the subject shifted to music, Johnny confided that he hadn’t been playing much lately and besides he’s had to pawn his last harp when things got tough. Luckily Fred had anticipated that this might be the case and before we started out he had told me to bring along a couple of my harmonicas. Well Johnny, I guess it’s time for us to hear some of your stuff,” Fred smiled again at me as if to say ‘wait’ll you hear this,’ then he looked at Johnny, chuckled, and said, “Go on boy.” And Johnny blew, tapped his foot in rhythm and sang, “Well, gonna see my long haired do-o-ney…” I don’t exaggerate when I tell you that I was overwhelmed. When he finished, and I had expressed my enthusiasm to him Johnny grinned as he said, “You know, it don’t sound like much to me.” Fred and I grinned too and I asked for an encore. Johnny came outside and I snapped a few pictures while he posed in front of Fred’s new Pontiac. An interesting contrast indeed. We shook hands and make our good-byes for it was about time for Johnny to get back up on his tractor (note hard hat in cover photo).

Here then are the two harmonica solos exactly as Johnny Woods played them that day during his lunch break complete and unedited from the time I turned on the tape recorder.

-- Tom Pomposello

Tom's recording studio.

2008-03-04T10:41:00.008-05:00

Tom came back from a 1972 Mississippi visit with Fred McDowell all charged up and threw down his beat up Panasonic cassette recorder on the table.

"What's this?" Dick Pennington (our third partner) asked.

"My new recording studio," says Tom, who proceeded to play us the transcript of the 20 minutes he spent on the porch of Johnny Woods' shack. It was funky, echo-y, and truly compelling.

"How are we going to get Johnny into a real studio when he's a farmer in Mississippi?" says me.

"We'll release it as is."

Dick and I were dumbfounded.

Free Johnny MP3s.

2008-03-03T14:50:00.003-05:00

Check it out. The Johnny Woods single is posted. Free MP3s, for your blues pleasure.

Really the blues.

2008-03-02T22:10:00.008-05:00

This flyer for Johnny Wood's single is probably my favorite piece of Oblivion Records ephemera. In every way it typifies everything we were about: the blues, independence, authenticity, attitude, humor, and DIY. Way DIY.

There isn't too much I remember about it's origins, other than Tom did it himself, in every way. He conceived it and he wrote it. And then he hand lettered, he typed, he illustrated, he designed. (I sure couldn't have done anything like this thing. Could you?) And it was totally cool. Click on it to read the whole thing.

After we printed the flyer (at the local xerox shop), Tom was a little embarrassed about the home spun quality and insisted we do a slicker version. We did (that's it below) but it never felt quite the same.

Honest Tom Pomposello

2008-03-02T20:58:00.007-05:00

Flyer art by Travis Pomposello

Tom Pomposello was not only my best friend and partner in Oblivion Records, he was the whole reason we started Oblivion to begin with.

In 1970, Tom and Rob Witter opened Kropotkin Records in Huntington, New York, my hometown. It was the first hippie record store on Long Island, the beginning of a trend that was spreading around America and the world. What made it "hippie" wasn't that they sold drug parephenalia like some of the others, but that the owners were hippies and they had the hippest records for sale within 100 miles. None of the other retailers had really grokked the fact that the customers were changing; we weren't buying Top 40 singles much anymore, we'd grown up along with the artists, and we were looking for more "sophisticated" fare (you know, like Grand Funk).

I heard about the store after I'd read about the phenomenon in the then new Rolling Stone Magazine (the patron saint of rock) and I walked in, introduced myself, and boldly asked them to appear for an interview on my college radio show (I'd never done an interview, but that's another story for another time). Rob and Tom made the drive into New York and we had a great time and became fast friends.

Over time I found out Rob was my age, Tom a couple years older. Rob was single, Tom married (with a baby!) and a musician. Months later, maybe a year, after I'd recorded Tom and Mississippi Fred McDowell (a true star!) for my show, Tom asked whether I thought he could get a record contract. With a startling and undeserved confidence (based on another article from Rolling Stone) I boldly suggested he should just release a record on his own. That arrogance changed both our lives forever.

(Much more to come.)

Coming soon.

2008-02-26T20:21:00.009-05:00

A harmonica fan called Jason just wrote asking where to get the Oblivion Johnny Woods solo harp recordings from 1972. We're at work making a good transfer for encoding to MP3. In the meantime, you can take at look at the rare 45rpm jacket and the labels. Full liner notes transcribed here. A cool, original, sales sheet will be posted soon.

The complete "Friends" LP. Again.

2008-02-03T23:07:00.005-05:00

'Anonymous' commented on the first 'complete "Friends"' post: "...my god this should be rereleased on cd, it's simply incredible!"

So, I decided to re-post the tracks in "Total O! (for Oblivion) Quality" --CD quality-- sound with the highest MP3 rip rate, 320kbps. Effectively, you'd have to take the post as the actual "Friends" LP reissue. Enjoy, and at some point I'll go into why I've done it this way rather than a traditional release.

The complete "Friends" LP.

2008-01-08T22:06:00.003-05:00

I finally got a chance to post the complete original "Friends" LP, one of the first albums to mash up jazz improvisation with a rock sensibility. With the rise of The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever the music unfortunately became known as "fusion."

"Friends" was actually alto saxophonist's Marc Cohen's project*, but at the last minute he added in his friend, guitarist John Abercrombie, to the mix and insisted it be credited as a collective album.

Check out session photos, album graphics, and reviews. Bonus tracks and outtakes coming soon.

*Marc now performs on piano as Marc Copeland.

Prepping "Live in New York" for LP.

2008-01-01T17:54:00.001-05:00

Right after the recording of Fred McDowell at the Village Gaslight I just put the mono tape on the machine at WKCR and played it straight through right on the air. No edits, no nothing, I probably hadn't even listened to it, since I knew nothing of the country blues anyway. It was more than half a year later when Tom and I cooked up the idea of starting Oblivion Records and making "Live in New York" our first release.

One session I'd engineered for avant-gardist Gunter Hampel had made it to album, but, other than handing the tapes over, I had nothing to do with it. So when we arranged for manufacturing Oblivion's first LP with the Viewlex Corporation in Happaugue, New York (then owner of Buddah Records) down expressway from our Long Island homes, I had no idea what was needed. It turned out to be OK since Viewlex pressings we reso crummy it didn't particular matter (the whole package of 2000 LPs, color covers and all, came to $1800).

I wasn't so great as an engineer, but with practice I'd become a killer audio tape editor. Back in the day that meant actually cutting 1/4" magnetic tape with a razor blade and putting it together with some specialized sticky tape. Tom had reviewed the tapes with his usual incredible attention to detail and we settled into Studio A at WKCR to make a master tape of the LP.

I don't think we were so stupid not to make a dub of the master and edit from there (my memory's too hazy, and the original tapes are lost somewhere in the possession of Tom's widow). But we started in on the first track, determined to make each side of the LP sound like a continuous live performance. In a fourteen hour marathon I think we partially succeeded. Some of the edits are a bit iffy, but all in all I think we pulled it off.

Later, Tom decided our first track, "Shake 'Em On Down," wasn't strong enough, and insisted we edit in a two guitar version we recorded at the radio station. I wasn't astute enough yet about the music to argue, and cut it in. I'm not sure it sounds live, but we never got a complaint. Here's the original live track, you be the judge.

Bonus Fred.

2007-12-31T18:11:00.001-05:00

The original Fred McDowell sets we recorded at the Village Gaslight in November 1971 probably ended up being a couple of hours long altogether. Back in the day, it was barely conceivable to us that we could even get it together to release a single LP abrigement.

But in late 1998, right before he passed away, Tom Pomposello went back to the original session tapes and pulled out a dozen bonus tracks for a CD reissue. That record company went out of business within about a week, so we're happy to present the tracks here for the first time.

"Hit it Tom."

1. Goin' To The River (Carry My Rocking Chair)
2. Shake 'Em On Down
3. 61 Highway
4. John Henry
5. My Babe
6. I'm Crazy 'Bout You Baby
7. Red Cross Store
8. Levee Camp Blues
9. Good Mornin' Little Schoolgirl
10. Don't Mistreat Nobody (Cause You Got A Few Dimes)
11. Get Right
12. Good Night (Spoken Outro)

WKCR and Oblivion.

2007-12-31T17:54:00.002-05:00

Between 1972 and 1976, during and after my years attending Columbia University in New York, WKCR-FM ("89.9 on your FM dial"), the university radio station was the unofficial home of Oblivion Records.

The station was enduring the same radical transformations as the University at large (and the culture, for that matter). When I arrived in 1969 the station was justly proud of it's traditions of classical and folk music, news gathering (they'd received a ton of awards and attention after the campus riots of 1968), and a smattering of jazz and rock. My generation came in and tossed the place upside down, with jazz replacing classical as the station's raison d'etre (my classmate Phil Schaap, one of the world's great jazz scholars and crumudgeons, is still on the air there), and a rigid heirarchy of stuffy student management in turmoil.

I was determined to serve the greater and high minded cultural aspirations of the station (I produced several jazz, blues, and progressive music shows) and, at the same time, to use it to my own high minded ends. That meant using the equipment in every way possible to further my ambitions to produce records.

Whether it was absconding with remote equipment I had no access to, or pushing the studios beyond their limits to make live music broadcasts (all the stuff had been idealized for news gathering), I commandeered the place in service to the upper classmen who needed recording help (thanks, David Reitman). When a particularly well done recording (if I do say so myself) for David's radio program of the avant-garde composer/performer Gunter Hampel, showed up as an independent LP with my engineering credit, I was completely hooked and determined to get onto more LPs as an engineer or, better yet, as a producer.

Starting in 1971, with the recording of 'Mississippi Fred McDowell: Live in New York' (Oblivion OD-1) and continuing through our release of a WKCR live broadcast on the Sharif Abdul Salaam (neé Ed Michael) show of vocalist Joe Lee Wilson (Oblivion OD-5) we made most of our records in Studio 3 in the front of the station. Whenever possible I cajoled the station into improving our technical lot (we replaced all the mono equipment with new stereo decks in late 1972). And I locked anyone and everyone out of the place whenever we needed to make a release deadline.

During these years, I made a few enemies (they felt I had no right to use university facilities for my own stuff), but more lifelong friends, and made a lot of enduring recordings. I daresay, we probably recorded some valuable cultural history. Thanks Columbia. Thanks WKCR.

Recording Fred.

2007-12-31T17:41:00.003-05:00

The recording of "Live in New York" was a simple and, for the times, as primitive as you could imagine.

My experience was that of a completely self taught engineer, and Tom Pomposello's was less. We'd been in high school rock bands, so we'd used microphones and cheap mixers for our live gigs. Between 1969 and November 197, I'd observed one professional recording, and recorded as much as I could in my college radio station (WKCR-FM, Columbia University in New York City) using equipment meant mainly for playback or recording of news interviews. Most of the sessions were small jazz groups, maybe three to five musicians, and a few rock or folk sessions. Everything was monophonic or 2-track stereo, so there was virtually no ability for the kind of overdubbing and multi-tracking we'd read about in Rolling Stone. And I'd never done a "live" recording.

The "Live in New York" recorder

When Tom told me about his bass gig with Fred at the Village Gaslight I'd never heard of Mississippi Fred McDowell and I knew nothing about the country blues. He convinced me it would be a great, exclusive for my Saturday blues show. I went along, even though I knew I was not of sufficient stature at the radio station to warrant a key to the recording closet where the recording equipment was stored. None of the management would think I was senior enough to use their precious one track, monophonic Nagra recorder meant only for the most important news assignments (Columbia was still in the throes of the 1968 campus riots, and WKCR had been lauded for it's coverage. Some subsequent funding had bought the recorder to convey a semi-professional status on the news department). Somehow or other my pal Roy Langbord and I quietly weaseled our way into the cabinet, quickly pulled out a few mikes, an OK Shure M68 mixer, and the Nagra. We ran out, grabbed a cab (Roy and I split the more than we could afford taxi) and sprinted down to the Village.

We set up while Bonnie Raitt was doing her sound check (her last gig before her first album; she and Fred shared Dick Waterman as a manager). Both Fred and Tom had tiny amps (I would say about four foot square), and I taped a second mike (an Electro-Voice 655, like Freddy King uses on the cover of "My Feeling For The Blues") to Fred's vocal PA mike, did a very short level check and we were off to the races.

Why Oblivion?

2007-12-29T16:53:00.003-05:00

Why did we name the company Oblivion Records? We weren't particularly alienated suburban youths, probably just the opposite.

Tom Pomposello was the ultimate musical hipster of the age, particularly when it came to blues and folk music. And one of the hippest indie labels of the age was John Fahey's Takoma Records (eventually sold to Chrysalis) and in early 1971 he released what we thought was Leo Kottke's first tour-de-force solo album, 6- and 12-String Guitar. In the liner notes Leo referred to his actual first album on the local Minnesota label Oblivion Records. It was so weird we thought he was kidding, and when, in early '72, we decided to start our label we absconded with the name.

We gleefully went on our way. When we got a letter from the Minnesotans a couple of years later asking us to cease and desist we panicked, and kids that we were, then promptly ignored it. We never heard anything from them again.

Two of my favorites.

2007-12-28T19:12:00.002-05:00

Charles Walker

Both of these tracks were recorded by virturally unknown artists in a spare studio at my college radio station, WKCR-FM, at Columbia University in New York City. It's the classic story of the indie, a small crappy room, shitty equipment (two track, when the standard was 16; a humming board held together by spit and rubber bands; OK, the mikes were top notch because they were stolen by one of my classmates from a good studio), and unbelievable talent to spare. The Charles Walker track was the result of months of mishaps, good planning gone awry, and a throwaway magic moment.
Joe Lee Wilson, on the other hand, was a quick one-off, a live performance of a college radio show, never meant for anything other than a low visability (great) artist looking for a little promotion. Joe Lee's album did pretty well by Oblivion standards. Charles' stiffed, no matter which way you look at it.

It's Changin' Time was written by Ann and harp player Bill Dicey. It's got a classic blues instrumental rockin' groove, arranged by my partner and Charles Walker blues instigator, Tom Pomposello (if he hadn't, it would've been as big a mess as every other session this band ever had). Ann and Bill are on fire, but the thing that catches me every time is the rhythm section: our buddy, recruited at the last minute, David Lee Reitman on bass, but particularly Ola Mae Dixon on drums. Ola was short, broad, and totally solid. She'd show up at the studio straight from the subway, with her kit on her back, everything packed into the bass drum (!). Her eight bar solo rocks the whole record for me.

It's You or No One was among my earliest experience with a jazz singer tackling a standard. Written by the irrepressible Sammy Cahn and his partner Jule Styne, Joe sings the hell out of this song. There's not too much more to say. He walked into this crummy college radio studio with his band on a humid, July night, set up, and just hit it. Perfectly. Beautiful melody, a lyric completely believed, high notes and low notes sung clear as a bell. Sexy.

OK, enough. Tom Pomposello, Dick Pennington, and I started Oblivion Records because we thought there were too many artists in oblivion, all puns intended. We wanted to bring them out into the light. As a company, we pretty much flopped. But artisically, we couldn't have succeeded more.

Charles Walker >Scratch My Back
Joe Lee Wilson >It's You or No One

Is this picture the blues or what?

2005-02-27T22:48:00.013-05:00

Foxy Ann Yancey, at WKCR, 1974 Photographed by Roy Langbord

Foxy Ann Yancey is the guitarist on one of my favorite tracks from our time in oblivion. Looking at this picture --contrasty, scratches and all-- taken by my great friend, Roy Langbord reminds me of why the whole experience of having this label was worth it.

You can't tell everything from the cropping in the picture. The session was in the middle of the day', but that didn't stop Ann with dressing up in a then unfashionable evening dress, black with silver spangles, and those rhinestone earrings.

I can't tell you much about Ann. Google doesn't turn up a thing, and at the time we just stayed out of her way. She seemed too tough for kids from the suburbs like us.

It's Changin' Time > featuring Foxy Ann Yancy on guitar

Basic discography.

2005-02-07T11:18:00.007-05:00

Our friend Mike, the fabulous guitarist on Tom's debut album, asked for an Oblivion discography. I'll lay out the basics here, and details will be following in future posts.

Mississippi Fred McDowell
Live in New York
Fred McDowell: guitar & vocals
Tom Pomposello: bass guitar & 2nd guitar
Released 1972
Oblivion Records OD1 (LP)
Here's an outtake from Fred's second set at the Village Gaslight in New York.

Johnny Woods
Mississippi Harmonica
Johnny Woods: harmonica & vocals
Released 1972
Oblivion Records O#2 (45 rpm single)

Friends
Marc Cohen (aka Marc Copeland): electric saxophone
John Abercrombie: electric guitar
Clint Houston: electric bass
Jeff Williams: drums
Released 1973
Oblivion Records OD3 (LP)
Here's a track from the original LP.

Charles Walker & the New York City Blues Band
Blues from the Apple
Various personnel.
Released 1974
Oblivion Records OD4 (LP)
Here's an instrumental from the original LP.

Joe Lee Wilson
Livin' High Off Nickels & Dimes
Joe Lee Wilson: vocals
Ray McKinley: Piano
Bob Ralston: Tenor saxophone
Stafford James: Bass
Napoleon Revels: Drums
Released 1974
Oblivion Records OD5 (LP)
Here's a track from the original LP.

Honest Tom Pomposello
Various personnel.
Released 1975
Oblivion Records OD6 (LP)

So that's the story in actual music released. Of course, there's more to it all than that. Details to follow.

Our first recording.

2005-01-28T22:16:00.003-05:00

In 1971, Tom Pomposello was a guitar playing, married 21 year old father of a two year old boy, hippie co-owner of a suburban New York "liberation record store" in my hometown, who wanted to be a bluesman.

I was a 19 year old Columbia University student with a college radio show, who was dropping out of pharmacy school because I liked the Beatles better than chemistry.

Tom, who I'd interviewed excitedly, but badly, interviewed on my WKCR-FM show, told me he was the "New York bass player" for legendary country blues guitarist Mississippi Fred McDowell. Maybe I could record their upcoming set at the Village Gaslight for my radio show?

Let's forget that the only blues I knew was from English rock bands (I did know that old black men had started it all, and they did it better) and I didn't really play blues on my show. Or that I no absolutely no idea was Mississippi Fred McDowell was. Or how to record anything. Or that I was low man on the totem pole at the radio station, and there was no way the powers-that-be would ever allow me to take the expensive tape recorder out of the station. Somehow I ended up in the kitchen of the Gaslight with our only professional one-track Nagra recorder, a Shure mike mixer, some microphones, and my new buddy Roy Langbord roaring to go.

A still unrecorded Bonnie Raitt opened the show (Bonnie and Fred shared Dick Waterman as their manager). Roy and I recorded Fred and Tom's sets. I took the 7" tape reels up to the station and dutifully played them on my show.

Mississippi Fred McDowell >John Henry

Oblivion Records never should have existed.

2005-01-26T01:02:00.001-05:00

Oblivion Records never should have existed.

It was the vision of two people, Fred Seibert and Tom Pomposello, who didn’t realize that a couple of kids from the suburbs with no experience whatsoever couldn’t start a record company from scratch.

Literally everything was a product of their vision.

-Roy Langbord
(from a complete Oblivion catalog reissue that was never reissued)

The beginning and the end.

2005-01-25T23:34:00.001-05:00

In 1971, my friend Tom Pomposello and I were talking in his record store about the best way for him to get a solo album. I suggested he start his own label, indies being the rage of the early 70s.

Tom had played bass with Mississippi Fred McDowell at the Village Gaslight in New York, and I had recorded it for my radio show on WKCR-FM at Columbia University, and those tapes became our first Oblivion Records release in 1972.

Over the next 4 years we produced and released six blues and jazz records. We had a local hit on NY radio, had a hoot, and lost a lot of money and sleep. The company sputtered out of business in 1976.

Now, Tom's son Travis Pomposello and I are re-releasing the entire catalog after 30 years of prophetic out-of-print oblivion.