FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 14, 2005
BLIND ARVELLA GRAY PLAYED CHICAGO’S STREETS AND BOB DYLAN
WAS A FAN
GRAY’S ONLY LP TO BE REISSUED ON CD WITH BONUS
TRACKS, UNSEEN PHOTOS AND DELUXE PACKAGING,
WILL KICK OFF NEW CONJUROO RECORDINGS LABEL
Dobro-Playing Street Singer Was Urban Link to Field
Hollers and Folk Blues
SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. — The only album by Blind Arvella Gray,
a nearly forgotten street singer who spent the latter part of his
life performing folk, blues and gospel music at Chicago’s
Maxwell Street flea market and at rapid-transit depots, will receive
a deluxe reissue on August 2, 2005. The album, The Singing Drifter,
was originally released in 1972 on vinyl and fewer than 1,000 copies
were sold. Unavailable for more than 30 years, the album will be
released as a CD with full liner notes, extensive photography and
three bonus tracks.
The reissue kicks off the new Conjuroo Recordings label, an indie
record company headed by Cary Baker, president of the music publicity
company called conqueroo based in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Conjuroo
is marketed by Emergent Music Marketing and distributed through
RED Distribution.
As a teenager in Chicago in the ’70s, Baker made several forays
to Maxwell Street to watch Gray, and was even responsible for connecting
the artist with label that released Drifter, the Wilmette, Ill.-based
Birch Records. Until it recorded Gray, Birch had specialized in
traditional country artists of the WLS Barndance lineage including
Doc Hopkins and Patsy Montana.
Birch Records only released a handful of vinyl LPs, and had gone
dormant by the inception of the CD. The Blind Arvella Gray album
became a hot item, on collectors’ want lists for years. Finally,
in 2004, Baker developed a strong desire to reissue the recording.
It was not easy to find Birch Records founder David Wylie, who maintained
no web site, nor even an email address.
To reissue the album, Baker set upon launching Conjuroo Records
and enlisted the services of Grammy Award-winning art director Susan
Archie of w0rld of aNarchie, who oversaw innovative packages for
Revenant reissues by Charley Patton and Albert Ayler. Additionally,
Wylie found three unreleased tracks, which have been added to the
release.
Arvella Gray (real name James Dixon) was born in Texas in 1906 and
was blinded in the ‘30s, possibly while holding up a bank,
possibly in Peoria (he never told the story the same way twice).
Arriving in Chicago in the ‘40s, he brought the music of the
cotton fields and chain gangs to the industrial North, proving an
unheralded missing link to the origins of American folk music, blues
and gospel. His repertoire included many standards, such as the
chain gang standard “John Henry” and the traditional
country song “More Pretty Girls Than One,” while touching
on the gospel tradition with songs like “Take Your Burden
to the Lord and Leave it There.” He accompanied himself on
slide National Dobro — an instrument that was later sold on
eBay. His fans included Bob Dylan, whose 1961 song “He Was
a Friend of Mine” was said to have been borrowed from Gray.
Arvella
Gray died in Chicago in 1981. “My father took me to the Maxwell
Street flea market to show me where his Eastern European immigrant
parents had shopped in the ‘30s and ‘40s,” says
Baker. “In the ensuing years, it had become a hotbed for blues
artists including Muddy Waters and Big Walter Horton, whose music
was heard under the din of CTA buses and flea market hawkers on
bullhorns augmented by the aroma of Polish sausages and onions grilling
nearby. By the time I visited, Gray was among a handful of surviving
buskers who continued to hold forth on Sunday mornings. I was taken
by the unique sound and authenticity of his music. In historical
perspective, Gray’s wailing slide Dobro stands in a category
with Hound Dog Taylor, R.L. Burnside or Junior Kimborough —
wild, unruly and imperfect. This album quietly slipped between the
cracks and it is my privilege and honor to turn a new generation
on to this unforgettable street singer.”
The album will be available at fine retail stores through Emergent/RED.
Copies will be available from http://www.conjuroo.com or by mail
($16 in U.S., $18 internationally in U.S. funds) from Conjuroo Recordings,
Conjuroo Recordings 11271 Ventura Blvd. #522
Studio City, CA 91604
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