Encore

Encore was recorded in 1965 at a live concert in New York and during informal home-recording sessions by producer Peter K Siegel. The American performances of Joseph Spence had been facilitated partly by Pete Seeger, which helps confirm the great significance of this release. Spence had been initially recorded on the island of Andros in the Bahamas in 1958 by Samuel B Charters for the Folkways record label. Those recordings revealed a completely unique vocal and steel-strung guitar style that became the subject of study by numerous guitarists and folk music scholars – from Ry Cooder to The Grateful Dead. This previously unheard recording includes versions of Bahamian folk songs and Baptist spirituals from the repertoire of Spence and his ensemble comprised of sister Edith Pinder, her husband and daughter.

Spence’s endearing vocal style has seemingly random improvised phrases and joyous scat singing. His remarkable guitar playing is an adaptation of the vocal lead, bass and treble of the Bahamian rhyming tradition of the 1930s sponge fishermen. It is an album of charmingly eccentric vocals with a deftly innovative approach to guitar, lovingly annotated by Spence aficionados Siegel and Guy Droussart with some of Droussart’s evocative photographs of the guitarist at home.