October 6, 2014

Check Out This Incredible Trove of Vintage Amateur Gospel

Memphis Spiritual FourBig Legal Mess Records

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Various Artists
The Soul of Designer Records
Big Legal Mess Records

 

With 101 tracks on four discs, The Soul of Designer Records isn’t for casual listeners, but it will delight most anyone who partakes. This amazing, irresistible collection chronicles the output of the Memphis-based Designer label, which from 1967 to 1977 served as a vanity press for mostly amateur gospel artists looking to record their own 45s. Despite the artists’ nonprofessional status, not to mention the microscopic budgets, the recordings are almost uniformly excellent and exciting, marked by raw, unfeigned passion and stripped-down settings that suggest a church-ified counterpart to garage rock. From Grand Junction to Cora Bell Watkins to the Mighty Blytheville Aires, likable nobodies all, this is one terrific set.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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