Shirley Ann Lee

I found a great weblog called World Music (http://musical-heritage.blogspot.com) to find, well, all kinds of world music. There I came across an album called "Local Customs: Downriver revival". On the album I found a few songs of Shirley Ann Lee. It were simple, but beautiful gospel songs. Listen here to There's A Light by Shirley Ann Lee.

There was not much information about this Shirley Ann Lee. The artist page on Last.fm was intriguingly empty. Lucky for me some Michael Goldberg wrote some something about Shirley on his blog. There should be much more songs of Shirley Ann Lee, but have all been forgotten.

Until now. A label called The Numero Group is looking for great stuff to re-release and came across old recordings of a label. So 40 years after Shirley Ann Lee sang her songs in the studio, people come to her door to show her her own music on cd.

Her songs were not only saved from being lost in oblivion, she could also hear her own songs after decades. But they had to listen to it in a car, because she did not have a cd player in her home. It resulted in a cute youtube movie.

You'll probably thinking what's so interesting about it. There is much more in the world than that. Well, this is just a small story, but somehow it's very heart-warming to find that there are people that try to save music from oblivion. And the internet is full of interesting little stories. It's a good that I have children and a job. Otherwise I could easily fill my days with tracking down these little musical pearls and the stories behind it (and blogging about it).