Timeless Holland
1998
The Cotton Pickers
About This Album
During the years immediately following the First World War, a rapidly expanding phonograph industry began to target the African-American record buying public as well as a gradually increasing the number of Caucasian customers who would willingly pursue music nominally associated with African-American culture without necessarily involving African-American musicians. This lucrative formula was still in use decades later when Pat Boone emerged as the great sanitized alternative to Little Richard. Back in the early 1920s, several record companies dreamed up carefully coded names for their all-white ensembles, banking upon the light-skinned public's craving for syncopated music associated with the "Ethnic Other." This is the historical background for the Cotton Pickers, a jazzy dance band that recorded for the Brunswick label at various times during the 1920s. (The reference to cotton production, a labor-intensive enterprise that was largely fueled by the poorly compensated efforts of ex-slaves and their descendents, speaks volumes about U.S. culture during the early 20th century.) A fine collection of early Cotton Pickers recordings (1922-1925) was released by Timeless Historical in 1998.
Track List (try tracks 1,3,4,9,13 and 14)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.