This is the first CD in a new series for the record label that, “…charts the evolution of soul music across America through genres like R&B, blues and proto soul spanning the fifties and early sixties.” Rather than take each artist at a time, the series forms around the compilation format and, in this first effort, covers 25 tracks.
For Loren Schoenberg of the Jazz Museum of Harlem, it's the discovery that capped nearly forty years of searching. For us at Mosaic, it's the "find" that has us re-examining an era we thought we knew inside out. And now, for listeners, it's an historic and fleeting opportunity to own a treasure trove of previously unknown music. Mosaic Records presents "The Savory Collection" - six CDs with 108 tracks locked away for more than 70 years and finally available on CD for the very first time anywhere. The recordings are from the personal collection of Bill Savory, a quirky and secretive studio engineer in New York whose day job in the late 1930s and early 1940s was transcribing radio broadcasts for foreign distribution, and whose nighttime passion was turning on the disc recorders to pull in and preserve what was happening in the clubs of New York City and other cities.
While both Bear Family sets deal with a largely unissued wealth of material, this collection is devoted in the main to all the Memphis recordings from 1951 and 1952 that saw the light of day on a number of Los Angeles-based labels owned by the Bihari Brothers, being issued and reissued and reissued again on a plethora of $1.98 budget albums. Featuring recordings done in Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service and surreptitious sessions recorded by a young Ike Turner in makeshift studios, these 18 sides are the missing piece of the puzzle in absorbing Wolf's early pre-Chess period. It also helps that this just happens to be some of the nastiest sounding blues ever recorded.