A version of this was published on The Santa Fe New Mexican Web site March 20, 2009 Three years ago, I wrote a column about eMusic, the music-download service. I’m still addicted. It isn’t really for the casual downloader who wants to pick up three or four songs a month. It’s a subscription service in which customers pay a monthly fee. In my plan, I pay about 25 cents a download — about a fourth of what iTunes charges. You won’t find much current mainstream music on eMusic. Many of the labels are indies. Some of my favorites include Sun, Stax, Norton, Voodoo Rhythm, Daptone, Bloodshot, and Arhoolie. In recent months, I’ve discovered a lot of great R & B, soul, early rock ’n’ roll, and gospel obscurities. Here’s a look at some recent favorites. * Funky Yo Yo by Don Covay. This is an obscure 1977 album from soul master Covay. Despite the fact that it came from the dawn-of-disco era, the album is free of ’70s gloss. In fact, some songs are downright minimalist. My favorite is “I Don’t Think I Can Make It,” which sounds almost like a long-lost Percy Sledge meditation with at organ coloring heavy drums. But the best part is the spoken-word segment: “You might your find yo’ love with the trash man, the ice man, sometimes the undertaker. But wherever you find it, baby, I want you to hold on to dear life.”

* The Day the Music Died: In Memory of The Big Bopper by J.P. Richardson and others. J.P. Richardson, aka The Big Bopper, is the only one of the three musicians killed in that plane crash in Iowa 50 years ago who never got a movie made of his life story. I can’t judge the cinematic value of his life compared with that of Buddy Holly or Ritchie Valens, but the Bopper was a fine songwriter. His big hit was “Chantilly Lace,” but he’s also responsible for George Jones’ “White Lightning” and Johnny Preston’s “Running Bear.” This collection shows he had a knack with novelty songs. You can hear “Big Bopper’s Wedding,” “Bopper’s Boogie Woogie,” “The Preacher and the Bear,” “Monkey Song (You Made a Monkey Out of Me),” and perhaps the ultimate ’50s novelty song, “The Purple People Eaeets the Witch Doctor.” And there are some non-Bopper tracks, including a spooky Holly song I’d never heard before called “Valley of Tears”; “We Belong Together” by Valens; and a maudlin little talking-song tribute to Holly, Valens, and Richardson called “Three Stars” by someone named Tommy Dee. * Impala Play R & B Favorites. Impala is an instrumental group from Memphis that plays a basic surfy sound sometimes augmented with a crazy sax. A song called “Taos Pueblo” — which sounds a lot like the surf classic “Apache” — caught my attention on this 1998 effort. But there are other tracks that make this album a real joy. There are greasy, sleazy tunes including covers of Henry Mancini’s “Experiment in Terror” and Link Wray’s “Vendetta.” The song “Makin’ It” sounds like the stuff they had to have played in Jack Ruby’s Carousel club. And no, “Hell of a Woman” is not the lame Mac Davis hit. This short but menacing tune could be used in the soundtrack to a movie version of the Jim Thompson novel of the same name. * Burn, Baby, Burn by Stud Cole. Yikes! This album, available now on Norton Records, includes some of the most intense stuff I’ve heard in a while. Some have called it “psychedelic rockabilly,” and I can’t think of a better label. There’s a mad apocalyptic feel to many of these songs. “The Devil’s Coming” sounds particularly acid damaged, aided by some cheap recording effects. And in “Black Sun,” Cole sounds like some swamp shaman railing against the elements. Meanwhile, songs like “I’m Glad” and “It Ain’t Right” sound right out of the ’50s. The gospel according to eMusic * Dragnet for Jesus by Sister Wynona Carr. Sister Wynona, who hailed from Cleveland, was active in the 1950s and worked as choir director for the Rev. C.L. Franklin’s (Aretha’s dad!) church in Detroit. But more important, she was influenced by and toured with the great Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She and Carr were guitar-picking gospel belters who moonlighted in the secular R & B world. This collection has several “novelty” gospel tunes including “Ball Game,” “15 Rounds for Jesus,” and the title song, which, yes, is a sanctified send-up of Jack Webb’s famous TV show. It must be heard to be believed. Don’t dismiss Carr as a novelty artist. This lady could sing. * Slide Guitar Gospel (1944-1964): The Complete Recordings of Rev. Utah Smith and Rev. Lonnie Farris. The Rev. Smith was a traveling, electric-guitar-slinging evangelist known for donning homemade wings and, with the help of ropes and pulleys, flying over his congregation as he sang his signature tune, “Two Wings.” He sang like the frog-throated Blind Willie Johnson and played guitar like a hopped-up Sister Rosetta. There are three versions of “Two Wings” here, recorded in the ’40s and ’50s.

I came for Elder Smith, as he also was known, but I stayed for the Rev. Farris. His recordings are more recent than those of Smith — apparently, they date from the early 1960s. Farris sounds like a direct precursor of the sacred-steel music we’ve come to know and love from Arhoolie Records. On some of the Farris songs, there’s a sax player. These are some of the grittiest recordings to ever come out of a church. * You Without Sin Cast The First Stone by Isaiah Owens. Owens, a Montgomery, Alabama, native, might be the Hasil Adkins of gospel music. Owens wails and pounds his electric guitar, which seems to be tuned to the key of H. And this isn’t a field recording from some long-gone era. All these tracks were recorded, mostly from radio broadcasts, in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Owens gives 17 amazing testimonials for Jesus and one fine pitch for a local auto mechanic — you never know when you may be down in Montgomery and need your brake pads fixed