MANCE’S MUSIC
Mance referred to himself as a Songster. His repertoire included a wide array of material, ranging from country blues, that sparse – mostly raw and roosty form directly linked to slave work songs and field hollers to ballads, rags, deep blues, boogies, pop, spirituals and soft children’s songs.
Mance’s gentle nature was exemplified by his light, swinging vocals and captivating delivery. Although he was almost 65 before he began his recording career, he left behind an incredibly rich catalog of Texas blues before his death in 1976.
Chris Strachwitz – Arhoolie Records founder
On November 3, 1960, the first Arhoolie LP (stands for Long Play, 33 1/3 rpm record, for you young folks!) arrived from the pressing plant: 250 copies of Mance Lipscomb’s “Texas Sharecropper and Songster.” Wayne Pope, his wife Alice and I sat around his kitchen table gluing printed cover slicks onto black jackets which I had ordered from an album plant. We stuffed the discs into the jackets and inserted a booklet which included Mack McCormick’s interesting and informative notes and the texts of the songs. After a lot of hard work we finally had 250 “homemade” copies for sale!