Finally.

Johnny Woods’ Mississippi Harmonica, digital MP3 transfers, from the original masters: 
1. Long Haired Doney
2. Three O’clock in the Morning

Finally, after several years of only having vinyl to digital transfers of our Johnny Woods single, I’ve been able to locate the original master and make clean digital files for you. 

Here’s a bit of the backstory. Tom Pomposello was the careful keeper of the Oblivion masters in the decades after we closed the company in the mid-1970s. Unfortunately, after his untimely passing in 1999, his tape library was quickly moved into a netherworld of some family disagreements. When I started this blog about five years ago the only option for posting Johnny’s record was taking one of the original vinyl 45rpm singles and making as clear a digital copy as possible; luckily, they were Dick Wakefield pressings, the cleanest in America at the time. There were some clicks and pops, of course, but the “master” tape was a pretty crummy cassette recording, so it wasn’t a completely horrible option.  

Recently though, his son Travis was able to locate the original 5” tape reel we used to master the single in the first place. In short order we dialed up a great waveform audio file (WAV), and then an MP3.

If you’re a comparing type of person, these are the vinyl transfers to compare:

1. Long Haired Doney (MP3 from the vinyl single)
2. Three O’Clock in the Morning (MP3 from the vinyl single) 

Here you go then. Sure, it’s a funky recording. But, now it’s a really clean, really clear, funky recording. Better yet, it’s a truly funky record. 

The Oblivion recorders.

Recording the music at Oblivion was not exactly a high tech affair, like at many start-up labels. Back in the day, there was nothing like no Garage Band. In fact, until Tom Pomposello’s album, our last, the most tracks we’d ever utilized —the most I’d ever recorded on— totaled exactly two. Even for the early 1970s, when 16 tracks had become the state of the art, that was pretty retrograde. 

I was the company’s primary engineer. A joke, given that as of the taping of “Live in New York” I’d spend maybe a total of 20 hours recording, and my entire experience in a commercial studio was one half hour, and that was as an 16 year old amateur rocker being recorded. But, recording music was one of the cooler aspirations I had (never a good enough musician to even impress myself), and the minute I hit college radio I started teaching myself every trick my head could figure out. Starting out with an avant-garde jazz quintet in the announcer’s booth (maybe 10’x10’) I pushed the limited resources (old 1- and 2-track Ampex recorders, a few microphones, and a portable six input stereo mixer) to their limits, and then some. But, once one of my sessions was pressed into an obscure, artist owned record in Germany, there were some folks who thought I knew what I was doing.

Our first album was recorded and on one monaural, Nagra track, and edited on an Ampex. On the second release on we went retrograde, lo-fi/DIY with a Panasonic cassette machine. On the next three we graduated to Ampex and Scully stereo 2-tracks (through a custom designed radio board for WKCR), editing them on a couple of Teac prosumer 2-tracks Tom Pomposello wanted us to buy. By the end, we’d actually made a couple of sessions on Ampex four and eight tracks. Progress.

Record labels.

1972, 1st edition LP

1973, 2nd edition LP

1972, 45spm single

1973, LP

1974, LP

1974, LP

1975, LP

Like a lot of other folks in the baby boomer generation, we felt that the actual printed, paper labels affixed to the vinyl albums were part of the mystical magic of the music we loved. So, we tried to put so pizzazz into Oblivion’s.

“Tried” is the operative word. It’s pretty clear that I wasn’t much of designer, and I really didn’t know how to work with designers yet in the 70s (I tried to make 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.

“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.

Get “The Complete Oblivion Records.” Free.

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.

A very brief history of ‘Johnny Woods > Mississippi Harmonica’

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, Tom asked to meet Fred’s 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 a Panasonic cassette recorder and recorded two songs right there on Johnny’s porch. A couple of Instamatic photos later, Oblivion had the makings of its first (and only) 45rpm, a real country blues classic.

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

Tom’s photo studio.

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.”

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

Johnny Woods > Mississippi Harmonica

Johnny Woods
Mississippi Harmonica

Produced by Tom Pomposello and Fred Seibert

WAV digital transfers from original analog monophonic masters.*

…..
Oblivion Records
O#2 (1972) [45 rpm single]

Click here to read some of the stories behind this record.

And click here for covers, photographs, and other printed ephemera.
……
Original credits

Johnny Woods: harmonica

Recorded Thursday, April 27, 1972, Olive Branch, Mississippi, by Tom Pomposello

Remastered by Fred Seibert

Graphics by the Oblivionettes featuring Susan DeLaney

Cover photo by Tom Pomposello

This recording was made possible by a special grant from the Dick Pennington Blues Foundation

Addition copies of this disc can be had by sending $1.00 (plus 25 cents for postage and handling) to:

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

©(P) 1972
……
Original 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 harminica playing sidekick, Johnny WOoods. I had know about Johnny first form the way Fred, whenever the subject turned to harp players, would say, “backhome we got a boy named Little Johnny Wooodsman, 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 Festical (subsequent to which studio material was released), and also from some field recordings made by George Mitchell. A lot of people might remember Jojhnny solely for an Ann arbor Blues Festical “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. Jojhnny 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 micht 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 acquatied 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 proch 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 Jojhnny invited us inside. We were fortunate to have caught Johnny during his lunch b reak. 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, Joohnny confided that he hadn’t been playing much lately and besides he’s had to payn 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 fuess it’s time for us to hear some of your sutff,” 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 haried do-o-ney…” I don’t exaggerate when I tell you that I was overwhelmed. When he finished, and I had expressed my entusiasm 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 Ponitac. An interesting contrast indeed. We shook hands and make our good-byes for it was about time fot 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
…..
I’m posting many of my out-of-print record productions from the 1970s. Travis Pomposello and I are the owners of these master recordings.

…..
* Update, September 2010: After a long wait, I’ve finally been able to digitally transfer the original quarter inch master tapes, and replace the cruder transfers we’ve had that were made from a clean copy of the vinyl 45rpm single. The digital transfers are up at the top of this post, but for comparison, you can listen to the vinyl MP3’s here:

1. Long Haired Doney (MP3 from the vinyl single)
2. Three O’Clock in the Morning (MP3 from the vinyl single)