On July 16, 2026, KALX DJ Velvet Einstein interviewed Josh Rosenthal of Tompkins Square Records to discuss the label’s recent release,1925 Songs.
Velvet Einstein: [00:00:00] All right. And it is a few minutes before 2:00 PM. I’m very excited to have Josh Rosenthal here with me to talk about Tompkins Square’s recent release collecting music from 1925. So that’ll be up in just a moment. But to get us in the mood here, I thought we would start with a little bit of music. Mr. Johnson’s Blues.
Musical excerpt
Velvet Einstein: Music of Lonnie Johnson there. That was Mr. Johnson’s Blues from a great new compilation called Dick Spottswood & Tompkins Square Present 1925 Songs. More about that in a moment. Very excited to be joined here by Josh Rosenthal fromTompkins Square.
Josh Rosenthal: Hey! Thank you. Nice to see you.
Velvet Einstein: Yeah. So 1925 is the year that you’re looking at on this album.
Josh Rosenthal: Mm-hmm.
Velvet Einstein: Is that the year they were recorded, released? How did you decide that?
Josh Rosenthal: I gave myself some latitude there. Some of the tunes might have been released in, like, 1926, but recorded in 1925. But I’d say most of them were released in 1925.
Velvet Einstein: Okay. Yeah. It’s a fascinating collection of music. On the cover here, you list blues, country jazz, and more. So we’ll get into that later, but you have, like, the first Cajun recording on here as well. What else would you put in that more category?
Josh Rosenthal: Well, you know, there’s a bunch of tunes that I didn’t even know how important they were until I started actually researching to do the notes for the comp. So, like, the Wheat Street Female Quartet, whatever it is, they are one of the first all-female gospel groups to record, and I didn’t know that when we picked the track.
So there’s interesting things like that, but most of it hues towards, like, hot jazz, which is not really my- lane, and that’s where Dick comes in. Dick Spottswood is a, a great archivist and musicologist, and he knows a lot more about that stuff and knows how to choose tracks, which I really would have a hard time doing that with the, the hot jazz stuff. But blues, early country, like that’s more my zone, and I can play in, in that particular sandbox, like a lot easier.
Velvet Einstein: I’ve got so many questions for you, but I think we should probably start by just giving the listeners an overview of where this started. So, so why did you pick 1925, and, and what was your goal in, in selecting these tracks?
Josh Rosenthal: Okay, so there’s a shameless commercial aspect to the project, which is that the Music Millennium Act of 2018 or ’19, I think it was, that was passed by Congress, established that anything that’s 100 years or older is public domain. That doesn’t mean that you can necessarily go out and just release anything, but it does mean that if you contextualize something and make it historically viable in terms of like a research project, let’s say, with notes and context and track notes and things like that, then you’re more in the clear.
But technically, everything, all masters from, that are 100 years old or more, are public domain. So, that was the first part of it, and then I was like, “Well, there’s so much great music in 1925,” and like a light bulb went off when I started working on my book, which is called Treasures Untold: A Modern 78 RPM Reader, and I was here talking about that book, you know, when it came out like last year.
And I just started realizing how much great music there was in that period because 1925 is really the start of electrical recording. The techniques had changed and gotten better by 1925, so then- I would say the money years are like ’25 to ’30, where there’s just unbelievable cascade of great American music that’s never been equaled pretty much. Um, so it’s fun to, to dabble in this stuff now.
Velvet Einstein: In listening to the album, the audio quality does vary from track to track. And as you were digging these out, did you find certain similarities in, in recording styles, and what similarities did you find? Were there common techniques that were done? And did that vary by genre?
Josh Rosenthal: I mean, not really. I think once people found out that they could record with electrical equipment versus like just playing into a horn and having it transcribed, you know, that opened up a lot of possibility. But there’s probably some tunes on here that are recorded non-electrically, like acoustic recordings.
I couldn’t tell you which ones. Um, maybe the ones that don’t sound as good. I really have no idea. But my mastering engineer, Jessica Thompson, who does all the mastering now for Tompkins Square, she’s like an audio savant. I mean, she’s knows what she’s doing, and she really had a good feel for the flow and, you know, just kind of easing out that, that whole process, you know?
‘Cause it, like you say, there’s a lot of variance in terms of the sound. So mastering is a challenge, and she met that challenge ’cause the, you know, it sounds really, really good, and I’ve had a lot of people tell me that, so.
Velvet Einstein: It definitely does. And do you have a sense of how difficult it was for her? Is there a large difference between what would come off the 78 today and, and what we hear on the CD?
Josh Rosenthal: So some of the tunes were digitally sourced. That’s different than taking a 78 and mastering it off, right off the 78. And there are some tunes that are from my collection that are on this set that she actually did that process. Those are two different processes. So I think it’s challenging either way. I mean, there’s, there’s all kinds of, like, sonic imperfections and problems and speed issues and, like, all kinds of stuff, but, you know, she’s a whiz, so she, she did it. But I’m sure it was a big pain in the ass, you know.
Velvet Einstein: Well, why don’t we take this moment to go into another track here? This next track is the, the Ida Cox tune. Do you wanna talk about this one?
Josh Rosenthal: Oh, yeah. It’s funny ’cause I found an acetate in a collection that was a recording of Ida Cox’s birthday party, which was pretty weird. Like, some birthday party she had in the ’60s I guess or something, and all these people were just, like, carousing and having fun, and, “Ida,” you know? It’s, like, a really, a strange thing to find. But, um, you know, she’s just one of these iconic female blues artists from the early ’20s, and she was a pretty, pretty big deal back then alongside her contemporaries like Bessie Smith and people like that.
Velvet Einstein: How did you decide on what would go on the album? So Ida Cox, obviously a, a known name. Bessie Smith, a bigger known name. So you didn’t include Bessie Smith, but you did include Ida Cox.
Josh Rosenthal: Correct. So I’m, I basically eschewed anything that I thought people knew what they sounded like. I mean, we played Lonnie Johnson. He’s probably the most famous person on the record, but- Yeah … sort of forgotten, too. I mean, he was a monster guitar player, but he’s kinda left out of the conversation, so I thought he was okay to put on there. But that, that was generally the idea is, like, no Louis, no Bessie.
You know, there’s a, a lot of people who are well-known, and people know what they sound like. I would never put, like, Billie Holiday on this record. I’m just not gonna include those people because that’s not where the discovery is taking place, as great as those people are. They’re iconic, and I love them.
Velvet Einstein: Well, let’s have a listen here to, to Ida Cox.
Musical excerpt: Ida Cox
Velvet Einstein: Music from the great Ida Cox there. That was How Can I Miss You When I’ve Got Dead Aim, coming off of the release Dick Spottswood and Tompkins Square present 1925 Songs. And I’m joined here by Josh Ros- Rosenthal and we’re talking about the compilation. And the next question I had would be around sourcing this stuff.
So you mentioned earlier that some of these came digitally. What exactly does that mean? Where, where are they coming from? Like, where did you find the digital versions of them?
Josh Rosenthal: So some of them are transfers from other collectors in some cases. Like, they had the record, so they made a transfer, and we used it. Some of them are from my collection, and for the ones where there was, like, a hole in that, we basically just found good sources online, and there’s a ton of different sources that were tapped. And in fact, Jessica probably used some things that I don’t even know where she got them.
Velvet Einstein: Oh, okay.
Josh Rosenthal: Because she would be unhappy with a particular transfer if somebody, some collector sent in a transfer and she didn’t like it. She would have to go use another source. So that’s, that’s basically how that worked.
Velvet Einstein: Yeah. And how does the copyright then work? ‘Cause you mentioned that, you know, it’s 100 years, so, so these would be in the clear. But these transfers, does that sort of renew the copyright on a particular instance of the song?
Josh Rosenthal: You know, it’s really interesting ’cause I obviously conferred with a lawyer on this kind of stuff and learned a lot, actually, about this. So if you were to take that Ida Cox tune and play a tuba on it and remix it and put it out, that would be a new creative work, and you can copyright it.. But if I remaster something and it’s the same performance It’s not protected.
So that’s, that’s an interesting nuance. And the thing behind that that’s kind of interesting is people don’t classify, or at least the law doesn’t classify a transfer that’s mastered as a creative work. But mastering engineers would probably disagree with that and say that mastering is a creative work. But, um, it’s not protected at that point. Anything that’s 100 years old is fair game in terms of the recording. The original recording.
Velvet Einstein: But then if, if I were to go and, and start with your release here, that would be fair game as well?
Josh Rosenthal: Yes. 100%.
Velvet Einstein: Okay.
Josh Rosenthal: Feel free, people, you know?
Velvet Einstein: And then if I put a beat behind it, I can copyright it?
Josh Rosenthal: That is correct.
Velvet Einstein: Okay.
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah.
Velvet Einstein: All right, then let’s move on. Let’s talk about genre and how that breaks down. So you did all this research back to 1925. How were these records sort of classified at the time versus, like, how we would think of them?
Josh Rosenthal: So 1925s, not only the advent of electrical recording and changes in recording, but also a lot of changes in how music was marketed. So the record companies started getting smart to all the different sort of niche genres that they could, could sell records to, whether it was, like, white folks, you know, hillbilly music. You know, this guy Vernon Dalhart, who was, like, a giant country star. He was probably the, one of the first They just saw a niche.
They saw an opportunity. So they started recording a lot of country musicians just out of… You know, this is pre-1927 Bristol Sessions. There was a very important session in Asheville, North Carolina that’s represented on that, the 1925 set where, you know, they just did an open call, and people would come down and play a fiddle or, you know, you’d have a string band do something in the studio.
So there was that, and then also they, they took most of the Black repertoire and called them race records. That’s what they were called. You know, like Ida Cox would be in a Paramount catalog, and it would say race records, and that’s how they marketed blues records to Black folks. You know, you started seeing the, the evolution of that, really the start of it in around the same time.
Velvet Einstein: And, and were the race records, would that be any genre, or would it be blues? Like, if it was like Louis Armstrong, would that also be considered to be a race record?
Josh Rosenthal: Um, no, because the jazz stuff was, was-
Velvet Einstein: Separate.
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah, it was separate. Yeah. It was, it was marketed separately, I would say, for the most part.
Velvet Einstein: Okay. And then for this early country music, like a lot of that we would, you know, sometimes use… Would the term hillbilly have been used in those days? Or is that… ‘Cause today that’s kind of a derogatory term.
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah.
Velvet Einstein: What about back then? Was it-
Josh Rosenthal:I don’t know exactly when that started. Like, for sure people used it, like in the ’30s and ’40s and stuff. You’d see that in the marketing materials, you know, for labels. I probably should just throw out a caveat that I’m not an expert on this stuff.You know? Like, I’m really not. Yeah. I mean, I’m more like a dilettante. You know, I’ve always been, like for the past 20 years doing my label, I just pick up on stuff.
I’m definitely not a musicologist. I’m not a discographer. I’m just a guy who’s, like a fan who likes to throw out my dalliances- here and there on different things, you know. But you do pick up knowledge and, you know, collecting 78s has made me extremely more knowledgeable about things. And, and also the idea of having a year, a specific year, you, you start to break down music by year when you collect 78s.
It’s just like a natural thing that happens, and you see the timeline of like 20th century music like so much more clearly, and it’s delineated by year. So that’s why it’s fun for me.
Velvet Einstein: Yeah, so that’s a great segue into talking about your collaborators. So let’s, let’s start with Dick then.
Josh Rosenthal: Mm-hmm.
Velvet Einstein: Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal: So, um, this book that I put out, Treasures Untold: A Modern 78 RPM Reader, which is now sold out, but you can still get it as an e-book- So I, I put that together. It’s like a collection of essays of collectors just telling their stories, and one of them was an interview with Dick Spottswood with Ian Nagoski, who’s done a ton of compilations, and he has Canary Records.
He’s a really brilliant guy. That kind of gave me the idea to contact Dick, and Dick is, like, 89 years old now. He lives in Florida. I just didn’t want to do it myself. You know, I wanted a collaborator. And like I said, I have blind spots, like the hot jazz stuff. I really don’t have a clue. You know?
Like, it’s not my favorite, so I needed somebody else. I wanted someone else’s ears on these different years. So I asked him for, you know, ’25, ’26, ’27. You know, I don’t want to overburden him. So I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna chill out a little bit and just do those with him. And, uh, so he picked some of the tracks, and I picked the tracks, and it’s just a collab, you know, and he’s the easiest to work with. He’s super cool. And if you look up discographical information online from this authoritative website, which is called DAHR, D-A-H-R, which is Discographical American Historical Recordings or whatever it is, UC Santa Barbara has this website. And all over the website it says, it’s citation after citation, Dick Spottswood. And he did all those, all that discographical work without the internet
Velvet Einstein: Wow
Josh Rosenthal: Which is insane
Velvet Einstein: So we have Dick Spottswood, and then the, the liner notes. Can you talk a little bit about, uh, like, the author of those and-
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah …
Velvet Einstein: where they came from?
Josh Rosenthal: Um, I didn’t want boring liner notes. I, I think- Yeah … we’ve all been through that, you know? Like, historical liner notes are really, like, toothpicks to keep the eyes open- … type of stuff a lot of the time, and I’m really tired of it, so I wanted to do something different. So there’s this guy, Cameron Knowler, C-A-M-E-R-O-N Knowler. K-N-O-W-L-E-R, and he has a site called Rural Guitar, and he’s 30 years old. He works for the Opry as a photo archivist.
He plays guitar, goes on tour, plays acoustic guitar on old guitars. He also has written books about Riley Puckett and Dick Justice, and other music-related books. He’s a brilliant guy, and he’s, like, doing everything. And he works for David Rawlings. He does projects with David Rawlings. So he’s a really brilliant guy.
So he, he wrote this very personal essay about his connection to the music and his background and stuff like that. Actually talks about buying a Tompkins Square record, and that kinda set him off on the Riley Puckett. That’s kind of a full circle moment for me. But he did great, and the two of us split the chore of, like, writing the individual track notes, but he wrote a very long essay that’s in the set.
Velvet Einstein: We were talking about the different genres, and so on the compilation here, you have what was billed as the first Cajun recording, and, and what’s the story behind this one?
Josh Rosenthal: Well, I love Cajun. You know, I did a, a Cajun comp, um, that’s really pretty incredible some years back, and this one came to me in a very odd way.
So the artists, there’s someone who works at my distributor who is related to Dr. James Roach, who’s on the record. It’s, like, her relative, her great-grandfather, great-uncle, or whatever he is, I can’t remember, and she came to me once. She’s Tompkins Square’s distribution company, Virgin Music Group. She’s employed by them.
Velvet Einstein: Oh, okay.
Josh Rosenthal: She approached me, and she’s like, “You know, I have… My great-grandfather made a record, but the family can’t really track it down. It’s, it’s from Louisiana. We’re from New Orleans,” this and that. So I contacted Wade Falcon, who’s Joseph Falcon’s descendant. Joseph Falcon made the first Cajun records on Columbia Records, like, in the ’20s.
So I connected them, and he found the record and he sent the record to the family, so now they have the record. But it’s, it’s, it’s a very interesting thing because OK Records back in those days, if you paid them, they would make a record for you. So it was never commercially released. It was only released to the family, and maybe they made, I don’t know how many copies. Very few.
Yeah. I mean, it was… It’s a private press is what it is. So you can make a private press OKEH record, and there are some of these. Okeh. I know. So that led into it appearing on this album because, uh, you know, he made a transfer for us. Wade did. So that, that’s how it wound up on the record. And then it got interesting because if you go on his site, he has a website, Early Cajun Music, he talks about the track being possibly the first Cajun track, but then there being a lot of debate as to whether or not it’s actually Cajun, even though the song is French, uh, has a French title.
And then when I went back to my friend at Virgin, she was like, “We think it, it is the first Cajun song.” Like, there’s a little bit of tribal something going om there, but I didn’t get too deep into it. You know what I mean? But it’s, it’s definitely an outlier on the record for many reasons.
Velvet Einstein: Is the family actually Cajun, do you know?
Josh Rosenthal: Well, they’re from New Orleans, so, and they have roots down there in different places like Lafayette and, you know-
Velvet Einstein: Okay …
Josh Rosenthal: Cajun country. So it’s crazy. Yeah. It, it’s a crazy way for it to wind up on the record, for sure.
Velvet Einstein: Yeah. All right. Well, let’s have a listen here to, um, Dr. James Roach.
Musical Excerpt Gue Gue Solingale by Dr. James Roach
Velvet Einstein: Music there from the first, possibly the first Cajun recording. Dr. James Roach there doing Gue Gue Solingale or something along those lines. And it can be found on the compilation Dick Spottswood and Tompkins Square Present 1925 Songs. And I’m joined here by Josh Rosenthal, who helped put together this release. And yeah, I can’t tell if that really is Cajun or not. Um-
Josh Rosenthal: I mean, certainly musically it’s not Cajun, but- It’s, I’m gonna leave it to the experts.
Velvet Einstein: Okay.
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah.
Velvet Einstein: Let other people fight about it.
Josh Rosenthal: Yes definitely …
Velvet Einstein: and we can just enjoy it for, for what it is. Another genre that we haven’t, uh, gotten into or we, we only briefly touched on would be the country music. So early country music. So what did you find in terms of the recordings that were around there in terms of like… Let’s start with the instruments. Like, what defined country music at that time?
Josh Rosenthal: The biggest country stars, like I said, Vernon Dalhart, who’s largely disparaged these days by the 78 community, a lot of them anyway, because he kinda crosses that line between, like, pop and early country, and vocally he sounds more like that guy you just played. You know?
He’s a little stilted and a little more pop in his approach. Still, he was, he was very influential, and a lot of the tunes that he, you know, that they released by Vernon Dalhart became, like, standards, you know, in country music. So he’s, he’s an important figure, but not somebody that I think a lot of the purists listen to a lot.
And then you had Fiddlin’ John Carson, who was also extremely prominent back in those days, um, as a fiddle player. Most of his early records are on Okeh, and he collaborated with his daughter, Kate. Moonshine Kate was her stage name, but her real name was Rosalie Carson. So Fiddlin’ John Carson, definitely very important.
And, you know, a lot of that early instrumentation is just people coming out and, like I said, playing a session from the hills, coming down from the hills and just playing from super rural communities where they learned to play fiddle and banjo and, um, in small groups, you know? String, string band music.
Velvet Einstein: And was it the case that… Did Okeh Records just think there was money in this, and so they had this open call to have people come down?
Josh Rosenthal: Sometimes. I get the impression that’s what that Asheville session was. Like, Ralph Peer, the big producer back then, he went to Asheville and recorded those, those folks. And then the big bang in ’27, which is exactly how it happened. He took out an ad, and the Carter family showed up. Jimmie Rodgers showed up. All that stuff is, like, very well-documented. There’s a giant doorstop box set about the 1927 Bristol sessions that you can get, and that began, like, the, all the classic repertoire.
Like, I would say ’25 is really interesting because prior to 1925, a lot of the so-called country music is really just fiddle music or banjo, like solo, like people like Eck Robertson. It wasn’t defined as a genre yet. It was just starting at that point in time.
Velvet Einstein: Looking at the, the selections you have here, they’re all great, and, and then Okeh Records, I just kind of romanticize them so much, but you mentioned earlier that you could have, like, a, a vanity pressing of that. So did you find a lot of bad music in all of your selections?
Josh Rosenthal: Oh, God Yeah. There’s so much bad music. Oh, God. I mean, it’s, it’s all down to taste, right?
Velvet Einstein: Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal: There’s a lot of stuff, and I talk about in my book, I talk about this very specifically. There are certain figures, and I guess Vernon Dalhart is a good example, but there’s a ton of other ones, who straddle that country, what’s considered, like, country music for the, the era, and pop.
So there’s a vocal thing that’s just like that the singers do that’s very off-putting, and you know it immediately when you hear it, and it’s just like, “No.” It’s, like, real cornball type of stuff. And then also you have a ton of foxtrots during this era, dance music, you know, like jazz dance type stuff that is, you know, I find personally some of it’s very objectionable.
Velvet Einstein: Lyrically or just because it’s corny?
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah, it’s corny. It’s, like, you know, songs that have, like, “Oh! Oh!” with an exclamation point before the ‘Oh’, “Oh, Mary, dance with me” or something like that. It’s like if you see the ‘oh;, you just gotta run for the hills ’cause you know it’s gonna be not good.
It’s just like there’s certain things, to me, I- I’m just speaking for myself, honestly.. But, but yeah, there’s so much bad, quote-unquote, “bad music.” I really try to just really focus on, like, the cream, you know, which is gonna get harder as we move along because ’25, I feel like there’s a strong demarcation there for quality. Going forward. But if you, if you’re asking me to do ’23, ’24, ’22, I’m gonna have a, a bit of a hard time with that.
Velvet Einstein: Oh, interesting.
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah.
Velvet Einstein: Yeah. And you kinda hinted at…are you planning then a, a ’26 and a ’27?
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah, definitely gonna do it.
Velvet Einstein: Okay, wonderful.
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah. And I’m working on a couple other things too that are also 100-plus years old. I wanna start doing, like, artist compilations too. So I’ll do comps like this that are multi-artist, but then I’ll pick, you know, certain artists and just kinda focus on their repertoire.
Velvet Einstein: Oh, great.
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah.
Velvet Einstein: Can you give us a hint of who they are?
Josh Rosenthal: No. It’s a secret.
Velvet Einstein: All right.
Josh Rosenthal: But it’s a lot of fun. Saturday I’m gonna be out at Down Home spinning 78s and chatting, kinda like this, at 2:00 at Down Home in El Cerrito. Yeah. So that’ll be fun.
Velvet Einstein: Okay. Well-
Josh Rosenthal: Bring the family.
Velvet Einstein: Well, we’re gonna play another track here. Um, this is Rosa Lee Carson, who we were just talking about. Anything specific you wanna talk about before we play it?
Josh Rosenthal: Sure. So this is Fiddlin’ John Carson’s daughter, and she recorded this tune when she was 14 or 15 I think. And she lived pretty long. She was, like, 70 I think or so when she passed, and there’s really good interviews with her about playing with Fiddlin’ John Carson as a child. The guitar that’s used on this song, I actually saw it a few months ago, the actual guitar that was recorded 100 years ago at the Country Music Hall of Fame. And also I work with an artist named Maisy Owen, and she covered this song when we did a 1925 show for the album in New York. So that was cool because it was, like, full circle connection. You know? It’s like having my new artist on the label sing this 100-year-old song.
And Maisy was with me in Nashville when we saw the guitar that she used on this very recording. So it’s, it’s just cool. That’s what I love. You know?
Velvet Einstein: Maisy didn’t just break the glass and grab the guitar?
Josh Rosenthal: Well, actually they took us down into the catacombs of the Hall of Fame, so we kinda had a backstage pass.
Velvet Einstein: Oh, okay
Josh Rosenthal: And we went and saw just unbelievable instruments, like Maybelle Carter’s autoharp and stuff like that, and just, you just can’t believe it, the stuff that you’re looking at, you know? So that was really cool.
Velvet Einstein: Yeah, yeah. Well, actually that brings me to another question I had, which would be around, you know, access to these instruments and whatnot and how that’s changed from then to now.
And not just the, the instruments, like the recording ability. Do you feel that getting back to this notion of percentage of bad music, is it better or worse now? Do you have a sense that today there’s a lot more bad music being recorded ’cause it’s easier?
Josh Rosenthal: I mean, I think every era has great music. I hear stuff every day that’s good and bad. I get demos pretty much every day from folks, and some of them are really good. I mean, that’s how I signed Maisy. We had a mutual friend, texted me. I was like, “This is gonna be horrible.” Like 99% of the time it’s something I’m not interested in.
Velvet Einstein: Oh, yeah.
Josh Rosenthal: Sometimes the music’s really good, but I’m just, it’s not something I wanna devote my life to. ‘Cause when I put out a record, it’s like, that’s a chunk of my life for real. So, um, yeah, I got that Maisie Owen on text and, uh, listened to it. I had no idea what she looked like or how old she was or nothing. And I was just like, “What is that?” And then I was on a plane like two days later to Nashville to try to sign her.
Velvet Einstein: Oh, wow.
Josh Rosenthal: Yeah. There you go. So that’s… There you go.
Velvet Einstein: All right. Well, anyways, we, we said we were gonna play the, um, Rosalie Carson, so let’s go ahead and, and do that now.
Musical Excerpt: Rosa Lee Carson’s The Drinker’s Child
Velvet Einstein: Music there from Rosa Lee Carson. That was The Drinker’s Child from Dick Spottswood’s and Tompkins Square present 1925 Songs. And again, we’re here with Josh Rosenthal. Thank you so much for coming in today. Um, and again, you’re gonna be over at Down Home Records on Saturday, 2:00, to spin some music and to talk about these songs, just like we’ve been doing here.
Josh Rosenthal: Yep.
Velvet Einstein: We’re just about out of time, so I wanted to make sure we talk a little bit about jazz.
Josh Rosenthal: Mm-hmm.
Velvet Einstein: And so we’re gonna go out here with another track, and this is from, this is Grandpa Spells from Charles Creath’s Jazz-O-Matics.
Josh Rosenthal: Yep.
Velvet Einstein: And so how, how did you, you find this particular track?
Josh Rosenthal: Uh, you’d have to ask Dick. This was a Dick pick, for sure. He selected most of the jazz, I would say. And he’s sort of an expert on, like, what they call hot jazz. Not exactly my lane, but I wanted to be well-rounded, so that’s why I recruited Dick to be my partner with this, so that we had a full scope of the era. And this is a tune that’s written by Jelly Roll Morton.
Velvet Einstein: Great. Well, um, Josh, again, thanks so much for coming in, and thanks very much for, for putting out this compilation. So there’s a lot of effort put into this. It really shows through, and, um-
Josh Rosenthal: Thank you …
Velvet Einstein: I learned so much.
Josh Rosenthal: Thank you for having me. It’s, it’s too short. That’s all I would say. I could sit here all day.
Velvet Einstein: Oh, I thought, I thought you meant the album itself- … the two CDs was too short. Have you thought about, for the 1926, like, doing a, a full box set of this stuff?
Josh Rosenthal: So as you progress and go through the years, like, the choices become more copious, I would say. So, I’m definitely gonna make the comp based on what I think should be on the comp, and not worry about, like, how many CDs it’s gonna be. So in other words, for 1929, I mean, that’s just a cherry year. Uh, just unbelievable stuff came out in 1929, and there’s so much of it. So yeah, maybe four CDs? I don’t know. I haven’t really plotted that far. But, uh, I’ll be back to, to let you know.
Velvet Einstein: Okay. So here we have Charles Creath’s Jazz-O-Maniacs with Grandpa’s Spells.
Musical excerpt: Charles Creath’s Jazz-O-Maniacs Grandpa’s Spells
Velvet Einstein: Charles Creath there with Grandpa Spells, again from this great compilation, Dick Spottswood and Tompkins Square Presents 1925 Songs. And I’m back again with Josh Rosenthal ’cause we were gonna talk just briefly about Maisy Owen. So you mentioned before, um, signing her, and so we’re gonna play a track here called God Fear. Anything else you wanna talk about before we, before we let you go?
Josh Rosenthal: Uh, 23 years old from Nashville. Like I said, signed her, like, almost on the spot, like right away when I heard her. Um, she’s on tour. And she’s playing around. And, we just got back from England, the two of us. We went over there and she played on the BBC.
Velvet Einstein: Oh wow!
Josh Rosenthal: And she played with B.J. Cole, which was really cool, a really cool, pedal steel guitarist, and she’s fantastic. Well I hope everyone gets to see her eventually.
Velvet Einstein: Certainly let us know when she’s in town and we can announce it here. Dark on a Sunny Day (album).
Josh Rosenthal: Maisy Owen.
Velvet Einstein: This is God Fear.
Musical excerpt: Maisy Owen’s God Fear
Velvet Einstein: Taking us out of a wonderful talk there with Josh Rosenthal from the Tompkins Square label about that 1925 songs release. And again, you can check him out, He’ll be over at Down Home Records on San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito on Saturday at 2:00 PM spinning records and talking about music.
