Washington Phillips and his ‘Manzarene Dreams’

THE OLD MAN FROM FREESTONE COUNTY: Washington Phillips poses with his two zithers circa 1927.Courtesy Dust-to-Digital

In September of 1954, Rev. Washington “Wash” Phillips died after falling down a set of stairs at City Hall in the small town of Teague, Texas. He was 74 years old, and had made the trip to Teague’s Department of Welfare Services that day from nearby Simsboro on the back of his mule-drawn wagon. To the locals, Phillips was an eccentric old black man from rural Freestone County. But to a niche group of musical fanatics, he was a touchstone. The songs he recorded for Columbia Records between 1927 and 1929 were a blessing sent from heaven above, transcending time and obscurity with psychedelic revelry.

When Phillips died, a secret history of pre-war gospel blues was born; a mystery shrouded in speculation and mistaken identity. But through the legwork and dedication of semi-retired Texas music journalist Michael Corcoran and Atlanta’s Dust-to-Digital archival record label, nearly 90 years after his final recordings were made, Phillips’ story can be told.

“The reason our label exists and supports people like Michael Corcoran is because for some people, this music means the world,” says Lance Ledbetter, who co-runs Dust-to-Digital with his wife April. “Anyone can get on the internet and find 99 percent of the information that’s already out there. But Corcoran, found the vital missing percent: He made the drive to Teague, he knocked on doors, he found people who knew Washington Phillips. If the music means that much, why wouldn’t you want to know more from the people who knew him and are still alive? The stories and the information that he uncovered are priceless.”

In November, Dust-to-Digital published a 76-page book and 16-track CD chronicling Phillips’ life and music, titled Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams. The book is the culmination of more than a decade that Corcoran spent scanning old newspapers for clues, conducting interviews, and scouring the East Texas countryside. At the same time, Dust-to-Digital worked to track down the highest quality surviving 78s of Phillips’ songs to remaster.

Threaded throughout Phillips’ 14 known songs is a singularly warm and celestial sound. How he made that sound was subject to debate. For decades, researchers were convinced the delicate and chiming melodies they heard in songs such as “What Are They Doing In Heaven Today,” “Lift Him Up That’s All,” and “Denomination Blues” parts 1 and 2 was a Dolceola, an antique instrument resembling a zither with a miniature piano keyboard.

THE OLD MAN FROM FREESTONE COUNTY: Washington Phillips and his mule-drawn wagon.Courtesy Dust-to-Digital

Later, it was proven that Phillips played two zithers. Their ethereal strings sparkle brighter than ever when coupled with Phillips’ sweetly imploring voice as he sings the lyrics from “A Mother’s Last Word To Her Daughter:” “Old mother, she called her daughter to her dying bed / She placed her hand upon her daughter’s head / Grasped her tightly in her arms / Saying, ‘I will not be with you very long.’”

Corcoran says he will never forget the first time he was struck by the song. In the fall of 2001, he worked as a music critic for Austin’s daily newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman. It was an era before the internet eclipsed the business of disseminating music to writers, and then to readers. Scores of manilla envelopes arrived in the mail every day, stuffed with promotional CDs from record labels searching for reviews. While tearing through a stack of packages he’d received, Corcoran came across what at first seemed like an unremarkable compilation titled Amazing Gospel. “It was a British compilation, and you could just tell they hadn’t paid any royalties to the artists,” Corcoran says. “There was very little information that came with it, just the year that each recording was made, and who the artist was.”

When Corcoran pressed play, he was immediately transfixed by what he heard: The hiss of antique recordings wrapped around gospel and blues convictions sung by the likes of artists such as Arizona Dranes, Rev. J.M. Gates, and Blind Willie Johnson. When he heard Phillips’ angelic voice, he had to know more about the obscure Baptist preacher.

Aside from a handful of 78s and scattered compilation appearances throughout the decades, not much was known about the old man from Freestone County. Ry Cooder wrote an arrangement of “Denomination Blues” for his 1971 album Into the Purple Valley and “You Can’t Stop a Tattler” for 1974’s Paradise and Lunch. In 1980, a Dutch school teacher named Guido van Rijn released the first reissue compilation of Phillips’ material titled Denomination Blues for Agram Records. When van Rijn sent off for a copy of Phillips’’ death certificate, he received the death certificate for Phillips’’ cousin of the same name who died in a mental institute in 1938.

The case of mistaken identity was repeated when Yazoo released a 1991 compilation titled I Am Born To Preach the Gospel. It wasn’t until Corcoran published a 2002 story in the Austin American-Statesman, titled Exhuming the legend of Washington Phillips, that the record was set straight. Yazoo corrected the mistake and re-released its Phillips compilation as The Key To The Kingdom.

While working at the Statesman, Corcoran took advantage of the fact that he lived just a short drive from Phillips’ 87-acre property near Teague to start searching the area for clues. “Because my initial research found this case of mistaken identity, I was the first journalist to get any accurate biographical information on Phillips,” Corcoran says. “I became kind of obsessed with this opportunity and this responsibility and so I went to great lengths to get any information at all.”

It also presented an opportunity to escape the daily grind of disposable criticism of his job at the Statesman. “I’m getting up there in the years,” says Corcoran, now 60-years-old. “I was writing every day, but when you’re doing music criticism for a newspaper you are one of a million people writing about Janet Jackson. Even if you’re really good, no one will remember it. So it was important for me to build a legacy, and write something lasting.”

Starting in December of 2002, Corcoran began gathering as much information as he could find. In 2012 he published a book to go along with Tompkins Square’s Arizona Dranes compilation, He Is My Story: The Sanctified Soul Of Arizona Dranes. But Washington Phillips remained on his agenda.

A few years before Corcoran’s obsession with Phillips took hold, Ledbetter in Atlanta had stumbled upon Phillips’ music as well. While in school at Georgia State University, Ledbetter hosted a show on 88.5 FM/WRAS called “Raw Musics.” Much of the work he put into the show, researching and compiling songs, ultimately became the basis for Dust-to-Digital’s inaugural 2003 release Goodbye, Babylon.

At the time, Ledbetter was ordering tapes for the show from 78s in collector and musicologist Joe Bussard of Fonotone Records collection. One day he sent Ledbetter tapes of Phillips’ music. When he heard them, he was blown away.

“Who is this?” Ledbetter recalls thinking. “What is that instrument he’s playing? And when the label recorded it in the ‘20s they just wrote on the recording card ‘vocal accompanied by novelty instrument,’ so they didn’t know what it was either.”

"LIFT HIM UP THAT'S ALL!:" Washington Phillips original 78 released by Columbia Records.Courtesy Dust-to-Digital

Ledbetter says that Phillips songs were always among his favorite (two of Phillips’ songs, “Lift Him Up That’s All” and “What Are They Doing In Heaven Today,” made it onto Goodbye, Babylon). Through his audio preservation non-profit Music Memory, Ledbetter digitized a handful of 78 collectors’ archives, including Bussard in Frederick, Maryland, Frank Mare in Covington, Georgia, and Roger Misiewicz in Toronto, Canada. Through their collections he selected the best sounding recordings to give a modern remaster.

While putting the collection together, Ledbetter reached out to Corcoran to check in and see if any more information about Phillips had been uncovered. The answer was a solid yes, and the two collaborated to release Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams.

“When Lance e-mailed me in November 2013 to ask if I could write a book to go along with the CD, well, there was no way I was going to let anyone else do it,” Corcoran says. “Not that anyone else necessarily wanted to.”

 Nearly a decade after a seemingly unremarkable promo CD landed in Corcoran’s mail box, he has become the authority on Washington Phillips life and music. “The reason I was able to do so much primary research on him was because no one had ever really tried, aside from a Dutch school teacher,” he says. “He couldn’t drive to Teague, but I’m here, and I love doing it.”

Corcoran’s work with Washington Phillips and His Mazarene Dreams is now the base from which any further research that anyone will ever do on Phillips begins, now, or 100 years from now. Packaged together with Dust-to-Digital’s remastered collection of all of Phillips’ known recordings, the book is his lasting legacy.

ONE MAN’S STORY: The cover art for Dust-to-Digital’s Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams.Courtesy Dust-to-Digital