Thank you for buying this record. What follows is its documentation: the pressing identified, the matrix / runout transcribed by hand from the dead wax, and the condition as assessed before it was listed. It is yours to keep with the record.

— Paul, Vinyl Curator

Five Blind Boys of Alabama

I'm A Rolling

c. 1973-1976 · Up Front Records UPF 134 · Stereo · US · LP · 33 1/3 RPM

Pressing details

Label	Up Front Records
Catalogue number	UPF 134
Year	c. 1973-1976
Mono / Stereo	Stereo
Country	US
Format	LP
Speed	33 1/3 RPM
Genre	Gospel - Black Gospel Quartet
Musicians	Archie Brownlee (lead vocal), Lawrence Abrams (vocal), Joseph Watson (vocal), J.T. Clinkscales (bass vocal), Roscoe Robinson (vocal) - as the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, misidentified on this release as the Five Blind Boys of Alabama

Matrix / Runout

Side A:  UPF-134-A 3-1170
Side B:  UPF-134-B 3-1170

Condition

Cover: VG+
Vinyl: VG+

Variant chronology

1959 - original session issued as "The Original Five Blind Boys," Vee Jay LP-5004, credited to Five Blind Boys of Mississippi
c. mid-1970s - budget reissue on Up Front, UPF-134, retitled "I'm A Rolling" and miscredited to Five Blind Boys of Alabama, ten of the original twelve tracks  <- this copy

This Pressing

Budget-label reissue, c. mid-1970s - repackages the 1959 Five Blind Boys of Mississippi session under a mistaken "Five Blind Boys of Alabama" credit and a new title.

The Album

The ten selections gathered here were first recorded for the Vee Jay label in Chicago in 1959 by one of postwar gospel's most explosive vocal groups, fronted by the searing, gravel-shredding lead of Archie Brownlee. Formed by blind students at a Mississippi school in the 1930s and touring professionally from the following decade, the group built its reputation on hard, driving quartet harmony and Brownlee's screaming, house-wrecking delivery, a style that left a deep mark on the shouters of soul and R&B who followed. By the time of this session the group had already scored a national gospel hit with an earlier recording and stood among the two or three most influential quartets of the era, rivaled chiefly by the similarly named group from Alabama with whom they were - and still are - frequently confused. Selections such as

Tracklist

Side 1

1. My Robe Will Fit Me
2. I'm A Rolling
3. Don't Forget The Bridge
4. Let's Have Church
5. I Never Heard A Man

Side 2

1. You Don't Know
2. I Can See Everybody's Mother
3. How Far Am I From Canaan
4. Somebody's Mother
5. All Over Me

The Label

The side label is a plain white background printed only in pink/magenta ink, with the angular "UP FRONT" logo at top, the song title and artist credit beneath it, catalogue number and "Stereo" at lower left, and speed/side notation at lower right - there is no colour band, no second logo, and no visible plant or pressing-house mark. This is the standard house design used across the Up Front catalogue (a sister budget line to Trip and Springboard Records, all based at the same Linden/Rahway, New Jersey address) through the 1970s. This single, unchanging Up Front stock label was used for the whole numbered run this catalogue number belongs to, so it does not itself separate a first pressing from a later one; the catalogue number and back-cover checklist of contemporaneous UPF-1xx titles place it within that one production era.

Fidelity

The masters were dubbed from the original 1959 Vee Jay tapes for a low-cost reissue program and pressed at an unidentified contract plant typical of the era's budget labels; the plain runout carries no mastering engineer's initials or stamper codes. Collectors generally regard these Trip/Up Front/Springboard family reissues as thin, several generations removed from the master and pressed on lightweight vinyl, and rank them well below the Vee Jay original as a listening copy. There is no audiophile reissue of this specific repackaged edition to compare against; the benchmark for sound remains the 1959 Vee Jay pressing of the full program.

Notes

This is a 1970s budget reissue, not an original pressing: the program is drawn from a 1959 Chicago gospel session by the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, ten of its original twelve songs repackaged here under a new title and a mistaken artist credit to the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. The plain stock Up Front label carries no plant identifier and the jacket's back-cover grid of sister UPF-1xx titles places it in the label's mid-1970s New Jersey production run rather than the original Vee Jay issue. Runout etchings read simply as the catalogue number repeated per side with no stamper, mastering or plant marks noted.

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