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

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 at the Village Gaslight in New York City. (Tom, a young bluesman in training, had ventured into New York to introduce himself to Fred, and ask for lessons. One thing led to another, and before you know it, Tom was playing bass for Fred when he was playing Manhattan concerts.) 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 show. Months later we decided we needed to start a record label to release Tom’s solo recordings (which hadn’t even been recorded yet) and that Fred’s tape would be the perfect maiden voyage to introduce it. Little did we know that Fred was months away from dying of cancer and that “Live in New York” would be his final recording.

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.