one artist, Alexis Zoumbas, proffered something in his music that was subtly distinct from many of the others. I noticed that while I got deeper into this harmonious language. it is more like a profound tonic or salve for our wilted spiritual wounds.
In fact, it is so unpretentious and stark that I doubt that many would even regard it as music. This (un)naturally lead to an obsession with many of the artists from this region that played this style of music which is frankly more powerful, unvarnished, and "heavy" than any other music I've yet to encounter. I developed an idée fixe with Albanian and Epirote music after junking some old 78s of this music in Istanbul a few years ago while on vacation with my wife and daughter. Tell me about your latest compilation, which features the music of Alexis Zoumbas. Occasionally I'll refer to some of Rilke's pastry recipes. I mainly depend up recipes that are found in the book of Revelations with ingredients sourced from the book of Leviticus. Will you mention two or three favorite go-to cookbooks? I love the cookbook from The Grit, in Athens, GA. You are my favorite cook who does not work in a restaurant. My job is to midwife their voice, stitch them up in a new suit of flesh and offer it as nourishment. I listen to old 78s that were recorded before our parents were born, and these old records speak to me sometimes. I'm an auricular raconteur and sonic archeologist. I don’t think I would be able to find any meaning to anything. If I was not able to both collect and make material available to others, I don’t think I would be able to find the universe coherent. Why records, then? You have more than 5,000 of them. So I had that natural proclivity to surround myself with objects. He collected everything - phonographs and film and antiques and art. Why did you begin collecting old records? I know John has probably pulled up a lot more information about them, but in my mind, I see an extraordinarily strong, independent woman. For me, having listened to “Last Kind Word Blues” and “Skinny Legs Blues” - in my mind I picture this cold, hardened, glaring, gray-eyed woman a femme fatale who would slash your throat just as soon as she would make love to you the next instant.
When I sit in my studio and play this record, it has so much vibrancy and life to it, that when I drop the needle on it, I half expect for blood to flow from the grooves or a tear to drop from the turntable.Īfter I heard that record long ago, I said to myself, “I will do whatever it takes to acquire it.”īefore reading John Sullivan’s story, did you know anything about Geeshie Wiley?īecause the slate is so blank when it comes to these two women, collectors, just like anybody else, have this urge to mythologize. Have you ever heard the record? This record is the tip-top, pinnacle of that genre of records that shouldn’t exist because they are so unearthly. Why were you willing to give so much for this one record? This time I approached him with a nice stack of money, a stack of records and that rare record, and he accepted because he didn’t actually believe I would go through such lengths to acquire something. And then I started to make him offers, which were preposterous at that time.īut the second time he came to the house with that record, he had learned that I had recently turned up a very rare record. At first, I got him to bring the record to my house, where I listened to it. I acquired the disc out of a trade with another collector.
I had to work very hard for several months. How did you acquire your copy of “Last Kind Word Blues?” Here King talks about his music collecting. “People in the story talked about this record as being the holy grail of blues collecting,” says Amy Kellner, a photo editor at the magazine, so it made sense to show “one of the only physical clues to these two women.” King’s record is one of fewer than 10 surviving copies of the three known Paramount releases from Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, the mysterious blues musicians who are central to John Jeremiah Sullivan’s cover story. What inspires a music collector to search high and low and pay large sums of money to acquire one record? Obsessiveness, says Chris King, who owns the record “Last Kind Word Blues,” by Geeshie Wiley, that appears on this week’s cover.
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