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Download: “How Long” – Sister Ola Mae Terrell (1948) (mp3)

Here is the first of three songs we’ll be presenting this week from the forthcoming, eagerly awaited Fire In My Bones: Raw, Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel, 1944-2007, a stunning 80-song, triple-CD set compiled by Mike McGonigal of Yeti Magazine fame. Most of the songs on Fire are sourced from independent regional labels, and almost none have ever been widely available. These are some genuine lost treasures of American devotional music, folks. Mike has done some serious collecting, culling, and sequencing on this set, and we’re all the lucky beneficiaries.

“How Long” is from the set’s opening disk, “The Wicked Shall Cease from Troubling.” From the liner notes: “Sister O.M. Terrell recorded one 78 for the Playboy label in 1948, then cut six songs for Columbia five years later. Like many working within the ‘sanctified blues’ tradition, she was an itinerant evangelical singer with holiness affiliations (hers being with the Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God).”

Sister Terrell died in 2006 at the age of 95.

Fire In My Bones: Raw, Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel, 1944-2007 is being released on October 27, 2009 by the good people of Tompkins Square Records of New York City. You can pre-order now from Amazon.