The Styrous® Viewfinder: 1,000,001 CDs 18: Gavin Bryars With Tom Waits ‎~ Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet

Two things happened on a December 7th; the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1941 and the birth of Tom Waits in Pomona, California in 1949. Both changed my life forever and we would never see the world the same way again.

I first became aware of Waits when I was dancing on Broadway at the hungry i in San Francisco (link below). Janice, one of the girls who danced there, loved his songs and used them regularly. Then one night he actually came into the club; Janice was in heaven and I got to meet him. He is an easy going, down-to-earth guy and I liked him a lot.

In 1971, Gavin Bryars composed a work based on a loop of an unknown homeless man in a Lambeth church in London, England, in 1975, singing a brief improvised stanza. The loop was the singer's recollection of the chorus of a Gospel hymn, by James M Black, published in 1911.

Lambeth church - 1975

homeless man - London

Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty Images

Bryars made a loop of 13 bars; he was by that time teaching at Leicester Polytechnic and was able to make use of a small sound studio there. To preserve the delicate original, he recorded it on to a second machine, leaving the loop running while he went to fetch a coffee. When he returned, he found that the painting students in the various rooms around the studio had fallen silent and were listening sombrely to the old man’s voice. Someone was weeping in a corner. It’s an effect that audiences have been experiencing ever since.

Recognizing that his piano was in tune with the singer, began to work on harmonization. He made a simple chordal arrangement, which in later versions has developed into a rich ensemble sound with strings and brass, weighted to the low end of the harmonic scale. There have been several versions of the work from 1972 to 2019. This is the 1993 version and the CD has Tom Waits singing the hymn.

Bryars was deeply interested in using “found material”. He spent significant time away from composition, studying the work of Marcel Duchamp, whose “readymades” are key works of high modernism, and he had already experimented with found material in the 1969 indeterminate piece The Sinking of the Titanic (link below).

Gavin Bryars & Tom Waits ‎~ Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet

CD front & back

Design – David Lau

cover photos by Nick White

photo of CD cover by Styrous®

The piece was first recorded for use in a documentary which chronicles street life in and around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo, in London. When later listening to the recordings, Bryars noticed the clip was in tune with his piano and that it conveniently looped into 13 bars. For the first LP recording, he was limited to a duration of 25 minutes; later he completed a 60-minute version of the piece for cassette tape; and with the advent of the CD, this is a 74-minute version.

This is a very strange recording in so many ways, which is not unusual for neither Bryars nor Waits. I have a favorite track on any album; I don't on this one because although there are six tracks, the music runs from one track to the next. The tape loop of the homeless man (called The Tramp) plays with orchestral variations on the first four tracks but Waits doesn't actually come in until the fifth track when he accompanies the tape loop of "The Tramp". Waits then takes over on the sixth track which is VERY quiet and dreamy but his whiskey-and-cigarette flavored voice is unmistakable.

Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has worked in jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, avant-garde, and experimental music.

Tom Waits is an American singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He worked primarily in jazz during the 1970s, but his music since the 1980s has reflected greater influence from blues, rock, vaudeville, and experimental genres.

Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet was shortlisted for the 1993 Mercury Prize, an annual music prize awarded for the best album released in the United Kingdom by a British or Irish act created by Jon Webster. The prize when to Suede for their self-titled album.

Tracklist:

1 - Tramp With Orchestra I (String Quartet) - 27:05
2 - Tramp With Orchestra II (Low Strings) - 15:16
3 - Tramp With Orchestra III (No Strings) - 4:48
4 - Tramp With Orchestra IV (Full Strings) 6:06
5 - Tramp And Tom Waits With Full Orchestra - 19:38
6 - Coda: Tom Waits With High Strings - 1:47

Companies, etc.

    Phonographic Copyright (p) – Point Music
    Copyright (c) – GB Records (2)
    Copyright (c) – Mnemonic Records
    Copyright (c) – Point Music-
    Produced For – Euphorbia Productions Ltd.
    Produced For – Philips Classics Productions
    Manufactured By – PolyGram Classics & Jazz
    Marketed By – PolyGram Classics & Jazz
    Made By – UML
    Recorded At – Prairie Sun Recording Studios
    Engineered At – The Looking Glass Studios
    Mixed At – The Looking Glass Studios
    Produced At – Dave Hunt Studio
    Produced At – Cedar
    Published By – Island Records Inc.

Credits:

    Alto Vocals [Chorus] – Elsa Higby, Katie Geissinger, Margo Grib*
    Art Direction – Margery Greenspan
    Baritone Vocals [Chorus] – Gregory Purnhagen, Jeffrey Kensmoe*, Peter Stewart (2)
    Bassoon [Orchestra] – Kim Laskowski
    Cello [Hampton String Quartet] – John Reed (3)
    Cello [Orchestra] – Beverly Lauridsen, Clay Ruede, Jeanne LeBlanc, Jesse Levy, Mark Shuman, Semyon Fridman
    Clarinet [Orchestra] – Allen Blustine, Steven Hartman
    Composed By [Music] – Gavin Bryars
    Conductor, Producer – Michael Riesman
    Contrabassoon [Orchestra] – Jeffrey Marchand
    Design – David Lau (2)
    Double Bass [Bass] [Orchestra] – Barbara Wilson (2), Homer Mensch, John Beal
    Engineer, Mixed By – Chris Ekers, Dante DeSole
    Executive-Producer – Kurt Munkacsi, Philip Glass, Rory Johnston
    Flute [Orchestra] – Michael Parloff
    French Horn [Orchestra] – Ann Yarborough*, Ron Sell, Sharon Moe, Tony Miranda
    Guitar [Orchestra] – Brian Koonin
    Harp [Orchestra] – Karen Lindquist, Nina Kellman
    Oboe [Orchestra] – Dorothy Darlington
    Organ [Orchestra] – Michael Riesman
    Percussion [Orchestra] – Frank Cassara
    Photography By [Cover Photo] – Nick White (4)
    Photography By [Photos (Inlay Card & Inside) Except Tom Waits] – Alastair Thain
    Recorded By [Tom Waits' Vocals] – Mark "Mooka" Rennick*
    Soprano Vocals [Chorus] – Kristin Norderval, Lisa Bielawa, Marion Beckenstein, Michele Eaton
    Tenor Vocals [Chorus] – Eric Lamp*, Jeffrey Johnson, John Koch
    Trombone [Orchestra] – James Pugh*, Keith O'Quinn
    Trumpet [Orchestra] – Neil Balm, Wilmer Wise
    Tuba [Orchestra] – Alan Ralph*
    Viola [Hampton String Quartet] – Richard Maximoff
    Viola [Orchestra] – Alfred Brown, Juliet Haffner, Olivia Koppel*, Paul Peabody
    Violin [1st] [Hampton String Quartet] – Regis Iandiorio
    Violin [2nd] [Hampton String Quartet] – Richard Henrickson
    Violin [Orchestra] – Dale Stuckenbruck, David Nadien, Donna Tecco, Elena Barere, Eriko Sato-Oei*, Jan Mullen, Jean Ingraham, Laura Seaton, Matthew Raimondi, Max Ellen, Mayuki Fukuhara, Nancy McAlhany, Richard Sortomme, Sanford Allen
    Vocals [Additional] – Tom Waits

Notes:

Original version © 1971 Gavin Bryars.
Current version © 1993 Mnemonic/(MCPS/PRS).
℗ © 1993 Point Music / a joint venture of Euphorbia Productions, Ltd. and Philips Classics Productions.

Manufactured and marketed by PolyGram Classics and jazz, a division of PolyGram Records, Inc., New York, NY.
Printed in the U.S.A.

Engineered and mixed at The Looking Glass Studios, NYC.
Tom Waits' vocals recorded at Prairie Sun Recording, Cotatti, CA.
Pre-Production/Tape Preparation: Dave Hunt Studio, London; Cedar Audio, Cambridge; Nick Gilpin, Autograph.

Tom Waits appears courtesy of Island Records, Inc.

Total Time - 74:43

Barcode and Other Identifiers

    Barcode (Scanned): 028943882323
    Barcode (Text): 0 289-438823-2 3Tom Waits
    Matrix / Runout (Burned on Master): 438 823-2 02@
    Matrix / Runout (Pressed on Stamper - Variant 1): E
    Matrix / Runout (Pressed on Stamper - Variant 2): D
    Label Code: LC 6042
    Rights Society: MCPS/PRS
    Other: PG 925
    Other: PTH
    Matrix / Runout (Pressed on Stamper - Variant 3): G

Gavin Bryars With Tom Waits ‎– Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet
Label: Point Music ‎– 438 823-2
Format: CD, Album, Reissue
Country: US
Released:
Genre: Electronic, Classical
Style: Abstract, Contemporary, Minimal

Viewfinder links:

Samuel Becket

Gavin Bryars

Philip Glass

Hungry i articles

Kurt Munkacsi

The Sinkinig of the Titanic

Michael Riesman

Tom Waits

Net links:

The Cross-Eyed Pianist ~ A mesmerising musical experience

The Cusp Magazine ~ Bryars' famous work performed at Tate Modern