Nearly 90 years ago, a peddler and part-time preacher arrived at a makeshift recording studio in Dallas carrying a strange instrument and a fierce aversion to spiritual hypocrisy.
The producer Columbia Records had sent down from New York was baffled by the man's contraption, cataloging it simply as a "novelty." But Columbia liked Washington Phillips' songs enough to record him five times from 1927-1929, in sessions that produced some of the era's most beautiful and beguiling gospel music.
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