Since September 2022 I have been uploading shows onto the Mixcloud platform which collect a variety of songs that have been recorded on a specific day. The project was born out of inspiration from my own genealogy research, the terrific radio show Centuries of Sound, and the film Coco. The goal is to celebrate as many of those folks that got together “in a room” and created something substantial enough to be recorded and then released. It is my hope that this small annual tribute might help their street cred in the Land of the Dead.
My expectation is to draw this out for some time, with releases and updates happening on the day of celebration. The plan is to start with days that have personal importance (birthdays of family and friends, anniversaries, et cetera). As the mixes are created they will be posted to Mixcloud on their corresponding dates. Annual updates will occur as more information is brought to light. To supplement the available mixes, which I will continue to post, this site will be used to document the songs (recording date, location, and players), provide source information for each track, and links to artist information when available.
A few of the caveats include
- The music had to be in my collection, and I was able to confirm a recording date. It will skew heavily towards mid-century jazz and country, as these recording sessions are the best documented. This is particularly so for artists prolific enough to get a major collection release from companies like Mosaic, Bear Family Records, Proper Box, and Jasmine.
- From my perspective, the interweb and liner notes are trusted sources, but I cannot, in any way, validate their accuracy. For the purpose of this project, however, it really does not matter. It is the remembrance that is vital, not the accuracy of the day
- In the majority of instances, only a single song from a session will be included as a highlight, although I might not always be able to constrain myself.
- As a DeadHead, I will include songs the Grateful Dead performed live. I will not include full shows, that is being done elsewhere at places like Grateful Dead of the Day for example, but it will highlight songs that the band have officially released either as a stand-alone track (30 Days of Dead), filler in their commercial releases, or the occasional “greatest hits” type of compilations. The same will be true for live Neil Young and Bob Dylan.
- There will be a lot of great songs by great artists that will not be represented as their recording information is not available.
- In the playlists themselves, the song order will typically be chronological with a few exceptions for the sake of the flow of music.
In case you are interested, here are some of my go-to online resources
- The Jazz Discography Project at https://www.jazzdisco.org/
- PragueFrank’s Country Music Discographies at http://countrydiscography.blogspot.com/ (2009-2013) and https://countrydiscoghraphy2.blogspot.com/ (2013-Present)
- The BRIAN discographies that can be found at https://jazzdiscography.com and elsewhere
Wikipedia and dedicated sites for the bigger named artists have also provided detailed information.
A big THANK YOU goes to my own team of Interlibrary Loan librarians, Josh and Wendy, who have been an immeasurable help by locating a number of print discographies (the label discographies from Michel Ruppeli in particular), as well as the liner notes for a variety of CD box sets.
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