Why I'm Doing This

A riff on the mission of Echo Locator

It started several years ago, between songs on the lowkey happy hour gigs that were no big deal in the before times. Some musician would bring up a record that had become an obsession, sharing some small trait that snared them, something singular about the music.

As the description went on, always what was most striking was the sense of love, the reverence for the work and the artist. And by extension, the reverence for music itself – the still-magical experience of putting a record on and having your world utterly rearranged.

It could have been a one-off Wayne Shorter side, made in a day for Blue Note in the ‘60s. Or some recording of Mahler. Or Sly and the Family Stone.

Or these two still-riveting tracks from the 1950s heyday of the Swan Silvertones, the enormously influential gospel group that doesn’t get mentioned often enough. The Swans, named after Swan Bakeries, the sponsor of the radio show that helped launch the group, are vital links in the chain of American music, influencing generations of singers and even some songwrtiers. (According to legend, a line in this version of “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” became part of Paul Simon’s inspiration for “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” )

Those stray echoes are more than trivia. They are the threads through which the past informs the music of the present. Think for a minute about the “churn” that surrounds music, the relentless torrent of new releases as well as the records that lurk, mostly undisturbed, in the dusty back rooms of digital archives. It’s a world in constant motion. While we probably don’t we need to stop every day and pay respects to the icons and the unheralded geniuses of previous eras, I believe there’s value in glancing in that direction once in a while. To appreciate the artists and the sounds they made and the ideas they shared. To savor how things were done in pre-digital days, where there was no Auto-Tune, no fancy audio software suites.

That’s the “mission” of Echo Locator. I’m not here saying the old days were better, or that music would be better off if we returned to the old performance practices and ways of doing things. Just that the digital revolution has brought many awesome changes to music – both in how it’s made and how it’s consumed. We’ve embraced those, happily and instantly, without stopping to consider any associated downsides – the artists whose work gets plowed under, the collateral damage that comes with progress. Just listen to these voices, working all the way live in a room, quite possibly gathered around a single microphone. They’re bringing a sound and a spirit and an approach to singing that we, as participants in the community of music, should probably hang onto, no matter what comes next.

Why yes, we have a fancy digital suggestion box. Share your favorite Underloved/Overlooked records here: echolocatormusic@gmail.com.

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