Bessie Jones - Get in Union

The Guardian 100

(Tompkins Square)
This remastered set of Jones’s recordings with the Georgia Sea Island Singers richly celebrates a traditional vocalist of key historical importance

A woman from a small farming community in the state of Georgia, Bessie Jones was one of the most important traditional singers of the mid-20th century. Her accordion-playing grandfather, Jet Sampson, was enslaved as a child before the American civil war. He lived to 105 and taught her the songs of his times, which Jones was so determined to share with future generations that she travelled 1,000 miles to ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax’s New York flat in 1961 and told him to record her.