“Hospitality State of Mind” is a collection of blues and gospel recordings by George Mitchell. Volume two was curated by Lenny Kaye.

Available at The End of All Music in Oxford and Jackson, Mississippi. Also available online here.

All tracks are part of the George Mitchell Collection and are licensed by Fat Possum Records.

The record features songs by Houston Stackhouse, John Lee Ziegler, Lonzie Thomas, Green Pachal, Bud Grant, Robert “Nighthawk” Johnson, Bud White, Jim Bunkley, Robert Longstreet, George Henry Bussey, James Davis, and the Pettis Sisters.

Song selection by Lenny Kaye.

The cover photograph is by Jane Rule Burdine.

The font and layout is by J. Burwell.

Limited to 1000 copies.

The record includes 12 tracks of blues and gospel field recordings made by George Mitchell throughout the 1960’s through the 1980’s. These recordings were collected on Mitchell’s trips throughout the deep south searching for authentic blues musicians in their homes and workplaces.

Earlier this year, we sent the entire George Mitchell Collection to Lenny Kaye and told him to pick his favorites resulting in this new volume. The first volume in this series was released in 2020 and is now sold out. Read more about George Mitchell and see his photographs here.

This release is also the RECORD OF THE MONTH CLUB pick for July. Club Members will be getting a copy of the LP + the summer issue of Southwest Review featuring more of Jane Rule Burdine’s photographs.

If any record shops would like to purchase wholesale copies please email us at endofallmusic@gmail.com.

RECORD RELEASE PARTY: Thursday, July 9th at Wonderbird Distillery in Taylor, Mississippi at 6 p.m. We’ll be playing the record and drinking cocktails. Copies will be for sale. Jane Rule Burdine will be hanging out and chatting about her work. Copies of Southwest Review will also be available. 

 

 

Lenny’s liner notes: 

Music is most pure in the moment it is being made, in full proximity to the heart.  Guitar chord, harp bemoan, rhythm and voicing, perhaps no one to hear but yourself, your neighbors, the whirling tape recorder that bears witness in deep respect.  Then and gone.  Hunter-gatherer George Mitchell sought those whose song needed preservation before vanishing into the air, the threnody of the Hill Country.  Home Blues, as it were, and always will be.

Song selection by Lenny Kaye

Lenny Kaye is a guitarist, music journalist, and record producer. He is the longtime lead guitarist for the Patti Smith Group, as well as the compiler of the seminal 1972 garage rock anthology Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968. Lenny’s first solo album, Goin’ Local, is out now via Yep Roc Records.

Cover photo by Jane Rule Burdine

Mississippi Delta native Jane Rule Burdine is a photographer and University of Mississippi alumna. A freelance photographer since the 1970s, her work is widely exhibited. She was the subject of the 2018 documentary Under Her Skin and her monograph, Delta Deep Down, was published by the University Press of Mississippi. She currently lives in Taylor, Mississippi.

Text and layout design by J. Burwell 

Josh Burwell is a Mississippi-born artist and illustrator living in Los Angeles, California. His work has appeared numerous times at The End of All Music since 2012. He’s a great pal.

 

You can hear more of the George Mitchell Collection over at Fat Possum Records.