Music Review
Pitchfork
April 2009
Link
8.0
Despite all the superlatives lobbed at the Numero Group’s catalog, the descriptions that really stick often come from the reissue label’s own liner notes. Along with the warm patina of age emanating from re-mastered recordings and the cracked, yellowing photographs, these narratives are prime examples of music anthropology, thick with details that amplify each song’s impact. The label exceeds its own storytelling standards with Local Customs: Downriver Revival, a collection of music recorded at Double U Sound, a rec room turned recording studio in suburban Detroit. The 24-track guided tour through Double U’s history is paired with a detailed multimedia DVD that includes a 30-minute documentary and an interactive sound vault with over 200 extra tracks, arranged by individual boxes of tape. It not only makes most bonus DVDs look like cheap wastes of plastic and time, it lets listeners virtually walk into the lost basement studio in Ecorse, Mich., and view some of the people and places that seeped into Double U’s reels of tape.
Proprietor Felton Williams, an unassuming Ford Motor Company electrician and member of the Church of the Living God, managed to piece together a truly DIY studio operation. While the self-taught electrical whiz’s longed-for hit factory never materialized, his dedication and open-door policy unwittingly turned Double U and its small stable of labels, mostly active from 1967 to 1981, into a local music time capsule.
Williams’ church connections and devotion to gospel weren’t uncommon, but the variety of sacred music he recorded stands out. Toledo, Ohio, singer and fellow congregant Shirley Ann Lee’s sweet, somber voice graces “There’s a Light”, which tests the fidelity of Felton’s setup, and “Please Accept My Prayer”, a bluesy end-of-service ode to the Lord. Mother-daughter duo the Coleman Family drop some rambling, back porch Appalachia-infected tunes and the Apostles of Music deliver a showy, funked-up version of “Wade in the Water”. Some of the most peculiar songs, including Calvin Cooke’s “What Happens to People”, incorporate Church of the Living God’s unique infatuation with the sitar and pedal steel guitar, producing an odd, wobbly twang.
Equally intriguing secular sounds, ranging from sunny vocal harmonies to funk workouts, also blasted out of Williams’ basement, like the Organics’ Hammond-flavored instrumental “Foot Stumpin'”. The true outlier of the bunch is “Running Mod”– with the Quadrophenia-appropriate chorus “You can’t catch a running mod”– by Young Generation, a cut-rate local garage band fronted by black singer Alan Crowell.
But the album is just a warm-up for the DVD’s wealth of music from artists on the CD and those that didn’t make the cut. After hearing jam sessions and alternate takes, a Shirley Ann Lee radio show, Felton Williams’ pedal steel lessons, the Mergers’ oddball organ rocker “Unworthy Americans”, and even the disorienting sounds of deteriorating tapes, it’s hard to imagine uncovering more layers to the story. The documentary includes interviews with and performances by Williams, Lee, and Cooke, who rocks the pedal steel. Footage of sunlight striking a white cross and shots of weeds cracking through the asphalt of crumbling houses make the setting almost palpable. It’s one thing to hear a tape of the young Shirley Ann Lee, but to watch her older self gently sing along to a recording of “Please Accept My Prayer” in the front seat of a parked car, and then whisper “thank you” as the shot fades to black, isn’t easily captured in words. Downriver Revival not only adds a chapter to Numero’s legacy of spotlighting the art and ambitions of forgotten artists, but it lets listeners share some of that rush of discovery.