Paul Robeson - Paul Robeson: The Complete EMI Sessions 1928-1939 (2008)

Paul Robeson remains as well known as an actor and athlete as for his musical activities, and in general is a "big name" whose music most listeners have sampled only in bits and pieces. For that reason alone, this seven-disc compilation of Robeson's EMI recordings, made in Britain, would be worth a place in libraries and collections; it presents music by the great African-American bass not in bits and pieces but in collections that show the full range of his activities and capture a whole arc of his career. Missing among the types of music Robeson recorded are only his explicitly leftist workers' anthems, which generally date from years later than the 1939 cutoff point of this set. Beyond that, the first thing to strike the listener may be the vast range of music with which Robeson was comfortable. He is best known for African-American spirituals and for the artful quasi-spiritual language of Jerome Kern's "Ol' Man River" and similar items. But even a quick Internet sampling of this set will reveal much more. A partial list would include early African-American musical theater (Robeson's several versions of Will Marion Cook's "Down de Lovers Lane" convey perhaps the best idea yet of what these shows sounded like in their time); minstrel and "plantation" songs like Dixie, from both white and black composers (some of them irredeemably racist by today's standards); pop songs including a glorious set by Hoagy Carmichael; operetta; folk songs from Russia and elsewhere; parlor-room classics by Ethelbert Nevin and Carrie Jacobs Bond; country and western music (which were separate genres at the time); and American and British art songs. Robeson sounds as natural singing of "England's green and pleasant land" in Hubert Parry's Jerusalem (CD 7, track 6) as in a spiritual like Steal Away. The British origin of the recordings results in a few ridiculous moments, but Robeson spent years in Britain (especially in Wales, whose industrial struggles played a key role in the development of his activist consciousness), and in general the box represents the mainstream of Robeson's career in the late '20s and 1930s, not one of its tributaries. The remastering is superb, and the original recordings, with the later ones supervised by legendary producer Walter Legge, were impressive enough in their own time. The booklet notes, in English, French, and German, basically present a brief Robeson biography with a slight emphasis on the European phases of his career, but the track list is detailed and informative in itself. A major historical release that is highly listenable in itself.