DFW News App

WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — Before streaming services, black music was pressed onto 78-rpm records, even before vinyl. As we wrap up our Black Music Appreciation Month celebration, we introduce you to Justine Goode, who is making it his mission to take us back in time.

These aren’t just records, they’re time machines. At 78 revolutions per minute, they spin not just music, but memories, and for Justine Goode, preserving them is a mission to keep black musical history alive.

“It’s a step back in time, honestly, when you listen to music that was made a hundred years ago, 80 years ago, you are ripped back in time to another era. And even if you didn’t grow up during those years, you can imagine what it was like in those years and you’re in the shoes of your parents and grandparents”, said Goode.

Through his store, Antique 78 RPM, Goode is giving new life to old sounds.

“It’s important to talk about three genres, jazz, blues and gospel. In jazz, there’s two giant figures, Lewis Armstrong and Duke Ellington”, said Goode.

Louis Armstrong’s trumpet lit the fire, and Duke Ellington gave it sophistication. Both legends were immortalized on 78 rpm records.

“The way Louis Armstrong played, how he soloed, how he sang. Once people heard that, it changed all of the music all over the world after that. Now there’s also Duke Ellington. Duke Ellington is one of the greatest American composers of the 20th century,” Goode said. “He was learning how to play classical piano in his teens, and he was inspired by early jazz like most of the people in the 20s. He ended up in Harlem, and he and his house band became the biggest band at the Cotton Club in the late 20s.”

You can’t talk about jazz without talking about blues and one of its innovators, T-Bone Walker.

“T-Bone was one of the first people that play electric guitar and used that through the 40s. And that changed how post-war blues was played. One of his first songs at his first session that he cut was Wichita Falls blues, which he recorded as Oak Cliff T-Bone in 1929, and as I understand it, that’s the first song with Wichita Falls in the title,” Goode said.

But even T-Bone wasn’t as iconic as Bessie Smith, a female voice in a male-dominated industry.

“Bessie Smith was known as the Empress of the Blues. She recorded nearly 150 songs from 1923 to 1933. She inspired so many people and one large figure that most people know in this area is Bob Wills from Bob Wills and the Texas Flyboys. Bob Wills once rode 50 miles on horseback to go watch the Empress of the Blues play,” Goode said.

That’s the power of music: It moves people, inspires, and sometimes exposes.

“On 78s there’s a lot of protest songs. People stood up on their platform through music to talk about society. One of the largest ones was Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”. It was a poem that was about all the all the lynchings in the south in the 30s,” Goode said.

Although music brings joy to many, most of the music of the time was rooted in pain, pain that brought people closer to God, which brings us to the gospel.

“Sister Rosetta Tharpe is called the Godmother of Rock and Roll. Many people were inspired by her, Elvis, Bob Dylan, also Little Richard and Chuck Berry,” Goode sid.

Another artist inspired by gospel is Ray Charles.

“One of his biggest hits is ‘I’ve Got a Woman’, and that was actually pulled from a group, The Southern Tone’s ‘It Must Be Jesus’,” Goode said. “It’s almost a carbon copy of the song, how it’s played, all the phrasing. Ray Charles ripped them off and he made that. But that’s just what everybody did. They were inspired by others, and that’s how music was, is made.”

Jazz, blues & gospel. Their voices built the soundtrack of America, and thanks to 78s and the people preserving them, with the drop of a needle, we can take a trip to the past.