Take Me to the Water (DUST-TO-DIGITAL) - Hardcover

Sante, Luc; Linderman, Jim; Ledbetter, Steven

4.54

24 ratings by Goodreads

9780981734217: Take Me to the Water (DUST-TO-DIGITAL)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0981734219 ISBN 13: 9780981734217

Publisher: Dust-to-Digital, 2009

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Making the past vividly present once again, Grammy winner Dust-to-Digital unveils Take Me to the Water, a revelatory examination of baptismal rites and music. Comprising a beautiful hardcover book and a CD featuring rare, vintage songs and sermons recorded between 1924-1940, Take Me to the Water draws on the collection of Jim Linderman, a scholar of American outsider art, early American folk art and daguerreotype photography. It reproduces 75 sepia photographs that depict amazing scenes of immersion baptisms-the likes of which are rarely seen today-with preacher and baptismal candidates shown immersed in the middle of the river, while the congregation looks on from the riverbank. The CD compiles rare gospel and folk recordings from original 78-rpm records, with artists such as Washington Phillips, Carter Family, Tennessee Mountaineers, the Belmont Silvertone Jubilee Singers and rare vocal recordings of baptismal sermons. Renowned writer Luc Sante provides a history of baptismal rites in America, and writes of this volume: "Whether you have ever actually experienced a baptism or not, whether you are a believer or not, these pictures and the music that accompanies them transmit all the emotional information: the excitement and the serenity, the fellowship and the warmth, the wind and the water you would have to have a heart of tin not to recognize this as one of the happiest collections of archival photographs ever assembled."

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About the Author:

For most of his life, collector Jim Linderman has searched high and low for authentic things unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn t for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference. John Foster, Accidental Mysteries

Review:

Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950 is Linderman s first book. The 96-page hardcover book (8.75 x 6 inches) has 75 sepia photograph reproductions from 1890-1950 and is accompanied by a CD of rare gospel and folk recordings from original 78-RPM records (1924-1940). It features recordings of artists like Washington Phillips, Carter Family, Tennessee Mountaineers, and lesser known and rare groups like the Belmont Silvertone Jubilee Singers, a vocal quartet in 1939. Included as well are rare vocal recordings of sermons and preaching which highlight the fervor leading up to the moment of cleansing one s soul in immersion baptism. --John Foster, Accidental Mysteries

The meat of this book is of course the gorgeous set of black and white photographs culled from the personal archives of collector Jim Linderman. I m embarrassed to admit that I was expecting a yuppie coffee-table book where these old photographs made for interesting conversation (and obscure one-upmanship, sure), albeit with a stunning disc of accompanying tunes (this is Dust-to-Digital after all). What I found, after reading Linderman s introduction and Luc Sante s brief essays were incredibly moving photographs of true spiritual experiences culled from America s not-too-distant past. One gets the feeling that, with the men in their Sunday finery and the women in their hats, the people in white robes standing in the river, this specific type of Sunday morning may be long gone. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. These people s spiritual experiences no doubt never left their hearts and now, thanks to the painstaking work of collectors and archivists like Linderman and Ledbetter, the feelings these eerie and beautiful photographs can evoke are there for anyone who wants or needs them. --Justin Brooks, PopMatters

The Dust to Digital label has done a magnificent job of putting together packages that bring very specific periods of the past to life. Take Me To The Water lives up to the high standards they have established with their previous releases. It offers the opportunity to experience, as much as possible without actually being there, the old time public baptisms that were once an integral part of the fabric of life for a great many North Americans. This package gives us all an opportunity to appreciate just what a wonderful thing faith can be, and the joy and pleasure it can bring. That's a lesson we could all stand to learn, as we have somehow managed to twist faith into being weapon these days instead of the celebration it once was. Who says we can't learn anything from the past? --Richard Marcus, Blog Critics

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