h 34 Walk Around

This wonderful four-disc, 105-track box of postwar Afro-American gospel releases from the 1940s and 1950s was compiled by record collector and gospel historian Opal Louis Nations, and it perfectly captures what was surely a golden age for black gospel. Gospel as we now know it emerged in the South in the early '30s, an outgrowth of the right to assemble and the advent of gospel songwriters like Thomas A. Dorsey (who had sung previously in the secular arena as Georgia Tom), who brought the blues to church, tossed in some ragtime piano rhythms, and almost single-handedly created the genre to the point that his compositions were simply known as "Dorseys.

Between 1968 and 1974, amateur songwriters, musicians and home taping enthusiasts Peter Howell and John Ferdinando - aka H & F Recordings - retreated to their makeshift home studio in East Sussex to mastermind a series of privately-issued albums that were attributed to semi-fictitious groups such as Ithaca and Agincourt. Only pressed in double-digit quantities, those albums are now amongst the most valuable vinyl artefacts of the era, with copies selling for upwards of £2,000 on the extremely rare occasions that they surface. A Game For All Who Know: The H & F Recordings Box gathers together all four albums and adds an unreleased-at-the-time fifth, the Friends LP Fragile, which was abandoned at acetate stage after Howell accepted an invitation in 1974 to join the BBC Radiophonic Workshop on a full-time basis. The first four albums are presented in miniature card sleeve replicas of the original vinyl artwork, while the Friends album recreates the duo's original plans for the artwork had the LP reached pressing stage.