***Memphis gospel singer Elder Jack Ward’s spirit took flight on April 11, 2023 after a remarkable life of spreading God’s word through example, message and most especially, song. His latest album, The Storm, had just been released by Bible and Tire Records at the time of his passing and has now become the final word and work of a life well lived. Like its 2021 predecessor, Already Made, The Storm captured an element of Ward that producer Bruce Watson found truly rare in the world of gospel music: song writing. “When we connected with him and heard him, his voice was still amazing,” Watson recounted to Bob Mehr of the Memphis Commercial Appeal. “He can still really hit those high notes. He has hundreds of songs...he would start singing all these different songs to us and we were pretty blown away. The fact that he writes his own songs is fairly unique. Most gospel artists, they’re doing traditional numbers. But he actually writes. So it really brings a different element to what he’s expressing.”
LP $21.95
06/02/2023
***Most of the material was drawn from the D-Vine Spirituals catalog which has enjoyed a critically acclaimed comeback through a recent reissue series. Shipp, an 83 year old producer, DJ and longtime manager of Elizabeth, didn’t miss the chance to be back in the studio with Elizabeth, egging her on. This 60 year old relationship has flourished as the recordings indicate. Once the album was thought to have been completed, producer Bruce Watson had one more trick up his sleeve. He enlisted Mississippi rhythm & blues shaman Jimbo Mathus (Squirrel Nut Zippers, Buddy Guy, Andrew Bird) to produce one more cut for the record. He wanted a Mathus original. Something outside the box. What came was the title track I Got a Love.
LP $21.95
06/24/2022
***"Like the Blind Boys of Alabama’s Jimmy Carter and the Savettes’ Goldwire McLendon, Johnny Ray Daniels didn’t record his first solo album after until after his Social Security checks started arriving. Regardless, his debut, Whatever You Need, is a fine example of how traditional gospel music still thrives in certain parts of the nation. The seventy-six-year-old patriarch of the North Carolina-based Daniels / Vines gospel music dynasty digs deep into the hymnbook for a handful of wooden church classics. His son Anthony “Amp” (Dedicated Men of Zion) and granddaughter KeAmber Daniels are the background vocalists. Indeed, the finest moments on the album are the instances of call-and-response between Daniels and the singers, who are as much a part of the project as Daniels himself..."—Robert M. Marovich (Journal Of Gospel Music)
LP $21.95
05/20/2022
***Dedicated Men of Zion (DMZ)—the sacred soul quartet from eastern North Carolina who are all related to one another by blood or marriage—has come a long way since the release of 2020’s ‘Can’t Turn Me Around’ on producer Bruce Watson’s Bible & Tire Recording Co. label. They have performed at globalFEST, Telluride Blues & Brews, and Fresh Grass festivals. They have earned the acclaim of Brooklyn Vegan, NPR Music, and The New York Times. They scored placements on best of 2020 lists from NPR Music and the Philadelphia Inquirer. With Bruce Watson of Fat Possum at the helm, they have surpassed their debut with The Devil Don’t Like It. The Memphis-based Sacred Soul Sound Section provided the supple but sinewy grooves, featuring GRAMMY winner Matt Ross-Spang on guitar (Jason Isbell, Margo Price, John Prine), drummer George Sluppick (Rufus Thomas, Albert King, J.J. Grey & Mofro, Chris Robinson Brotherhood), guitarist Will Sexton (Alejandro Escovedo, Roky Erickson), bassist Mark Edgar Stuart (Elizabeth King, Alvin Youngblood Hart), and organist Al Gamble (St. Paul & The Broken Bones).
LP $21.95
04/01/2022
***In 1970, while the United States was recovering from the tumultuous unrest of the sixties and Southern segregationist George Wallace was between bids for the presidency, a young black preacher and an aging hillbilly bandleader struck up a friendship in a coffee shop in downtown Memphis. For the next decade and a half, record producer Juan D. Shipp and studio engineer Clyde Leoppard embarked on a musical journey that produced some of the most stirring sacred soul music ever laid to tape. Behold the story of Shipp's D-Vine Spirituals record label, told here for the very first time since it's 45 RPM glory days, and see if you don't agree with the original company motto: "D-Vine Is Gospel."
LP $23.75
01/14/2022
***In 1970, while the United States was recovering from the tumultuous unrest of the sixties and Southern segregationist George Wallace was between bids for the presidency, a young black preacher and an aging hillbilly bandleader struck up a friendship in a coffee shop in downtown Memphis. For the next decade and a half, record producer Juan D. Shipp and studio engineer Clyde Leoppard embarked on a musical journey that produced some of the most stirring sacred soul music ever laid to tape. Behold the story of Shipp's D-Vine Spirituals record label, told here for the very first time since it's 45 RPM glory days, and see if you don't agree with the original company motto: "D-Vine Is Gospel."
LP $23.75
01/14/2022
***Eleven groups in eight days. A marathon recording session in a makeshift storefront studio in a 100-year-old building in the tiny Eastern North Carolina town of Fountain. Once the idea for the project was in place, Alice Vines of the Glorifying Vines Sisters started calling local musicians. It didn’t take her long to line up almost a dozen groups to come lift their voices and represent the region’s unique Sacred Soul traditions. Housed in gatefold jackets. Limited edition of 250 copies.
2XLP $26.95
10/15/2021
***The second installment of "The Last Shall Be First.." series focusing on D-Vine Spirituals subsidiary label, JCR Records. This reissue series is packed with incredible Sacred Soul performances from Memphis, TN in the late 1960s.
LP $23.75
06/04/2021
***Full length album from the legendary D-Vine Spirituals queen, Elizabeth King. At 79 years young, Elizabeth has reemerged as a shining light in the Memphis soul-gospel scene. Producer Bruce Watson (Bible & Tire Recording Co. / Big Legal Mess / Fat Possum) continues to broaden his landscape of "Sacred Soul". With a line up of seasoned, Memphis session musicians, these recordings of early D-Vine material are brought back to life with a fire, not yet previously realized within the catalog.
LP $21.95
04/16/2021
***“Going through your trials, I guarantee you, trouble gonna come and you need something. Music soothe your mind. You still be in pain but you can sleep,” says ELIZABETH KING of the power of gospel music, during a conversation upstairs at producer Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Studio in her hometown of Memphis, TN. This first reissue from the D-Vine Spirituals Recordings (Memphis circa late '60s / early '70s) showcases King, who has an incredible ability to simmer and then raise the heat. The gospel hit from King’s pen, “I Heard the Voice” is only the tip of the iceberg. Witness her intensity on “Jesus Is My Captain,” with a wah-wah guitar grooving, which also drives the funky “Wait on the Lord.” “Down Here Waiting” is the very definition of a Memphis backbeat. “I Found Him” finds her singing, “I found him to be my hellhound chaser. I found him to be my midnight rider.” The traditional “I’ll Fly Away” is done here a la Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” fast and joyful. (STREET DATE - 9/20/2019)
LP $19.95
09/20/2019
***"'Son, just keep on, keep doing what you're doing. Let it be good,' sings the father, and his grown children, standing close by, echo his words. 'Let it be good.' It's a moment of faith in both God and the father, for the younger ones seem to know the message of this song in their hearts already. They are already living it. To some it may be only a track on an album, the first release of the new Bible and Tire Recording Co. label. But for THE SENSATIONAL BARNES BROTHERS, it expresses an unbreakable bond with their own father, CALVIN 'DUKE' BARNES. . As with all the songs on this, their debut LP, produced by BRUCE WATSON of Bible and Tire Recording Co./Big Legal Mess Records at Delta-Sonic Studios in Memphis, it was chosen from the oft-forgotten 1970s catalog of the Designer Records label, but it could well have been written by the Barnes family themselves. For there, in a nutshell, are all the bonds that hold them close."—Alex Greene (STREET DATE - 9/20/2019)
LP $19.95
09/20/2019