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Website Revision History

November 30, 2024
- Added 36 new discs, 185 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 227 song samples (with the majority of the samples derived from the digital collection of "dying for bad music").
October 31, 2024
- Added 35 new discs, 128 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 402 song samples (very many of the samples from "dying for bad music").
- Regrettably, during the month it came to my attention that the utilities to upload images, song samples, comments, and suggested additions had stopped working sometime in the summer, presumably due to some infrastructure change implemented by my Web host. While troubleshooting I also discovered that there were random previous occasions when uploads had been lost. As a result, I have disabled these features. Instead, you should contact me by email at rcs.discography@gmail.com.
September 30, 2024
- Added 57 new discs, 200 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 124 song samples (including 44 samples from the YouTube channel of Martin Hall.
July 31, 2024
- Added 47 new discs, 163 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 41 song samples.
June 30, 2024
- Added 64 new discs, 176 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 24 song samples.
- Added 33 more artist photos from Gospel Singing World magazine. My thanks to James Zurek for sharing his GSW collection with me.
May 31, 2024
- Added 63 new discs, 201 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 80 song samples.
- Added 23 artist photos from Gospel Singing World magazine.
March 31, 2024
- Added 48 new discs, 149 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 100 song samples.
February 29, 2024
- Added 91 new discs, 316 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 189 song samples, with many from "dying for bad music" and Shawn Chambers.
December 31, 2023
- Added 68 new discs, 273 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 182 song samples, with many from "dying for bad music" and Shawn Chambers.
October 31, 2023
- Added 32 new discs, 136 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 138 song samples, with many from Shawn Chambers and "dying for bad music".
September 30, 2023
- Added 52 new discs, 243 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 215 song samples, with many from James Zurek, Al Turner, Shawn Chambers, and "dying for bad music".
August 31, 2023
- Added 202 new discs, 344 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 169 song samples, with many from Shawn Chambers and Al Turner.
June 30, 2023
- Added 90 new discs, 307 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 204 song samples, with many from Shawn Chambers, Al Turner, and "dying for bad music".
April 30, 2023
- Added 88 new discs, 293 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 192 song samples, with many from Shawn Chambers, Al Turner, and "dying for bad music".
February 28, 2023
- Added 95 new discs, 312 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 230 song samples, with many of them again from Shawn Chambers.
- I would also like to gratefully acknowledge Discogs community member TheGlassbee, who has been tirelessly and systematically adding information to that database on the output of pressing plants such as Rite, QCA, PRP, and SoN.
December 31, 2022
- Added 122 new discs, 365 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 233 song samples, with many of them again from Shawn Chambers.
- Revised all pages to use Google Analytics 4.
October 31, 2022
- Added 102 new discs, 341 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 185 song samples, with many of them again from Shawn Chambers.
August 31, 2022
- Added 110 new discs, 422 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 129 song samples, with many of them from Shawn Chambers.
June 30, 2022
- Changed to a bimonthly update cycle.
- Added 83 new discs, 351 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 131 song samples.
April 30, 2022
- Added 82 new discs, 254 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 79 song samples.
March 31, 2022
- Added 40 new discs, 195 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 182 song samples.
- I have dropped the notes regarding vocal and instumental characteristics, as my aging ears just refuse to engage in the sort of analytical listening required to identify them.
- Current statistics two years after launch:
February 28, 2022
- Added 61 new discs, 227 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 145 song samples.
- Began a project to illustrate artist pages with photos from album covers.
- Revised scripts to work under PHP7.
January 31, 2022
- Added 70 new discs, 319 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 275 song samples.
December 31, 2021
- Added 61 new discs, 238 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 202 song samples. Many thanks again to Shawn Chambers.
November 30, 2021
- Added 46 new discs, 234 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 111 song samples. Once again, Shawn Chambers has been very active.
October 31, 2021
- Added 46 new discs, 260 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 247 song samples, with Shawn Chambers being an especially prolific contributor this month.
September 30, 2021
- Added 64 new discs, 344 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 466 song samples.
August 31, 2021
- Added 35 new discs, 377 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 155 song samples.
July 31, 2021
- Added 35 new discs, 181 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 221 song samples.
June 30, 2021
- Added 58 new discs, 199 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 277 song samples, many of them from indian-head's listings on eBay.
May 31, 2021
- Added 47 new discs, 221 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 373 song samples (180 of them from Mike Emerson).
- Finished a long-term project to add images from rootsvinylguide.com.
April 30, 2021
- Added 38 new discs, 199 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 46 song samples.
- My thanks to Mike Emerson, who contributed much new material that I am still processing.
March 31, 2021
- Added 68 new discs, 280 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 120 song samples.
- Current statistics one year after launch:
February 28, 2021
- Added 80 new discs, 367 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 321 song samples. My thanks to Al Turner, Shawn Chambers, and Udo Frank for their continuing contributions.
- Tweaked the paging to include 500 entries per page rather than 400.
January 31, 2021
- This is a major update, not so much for content as for presentation. I have made a significant change to the way that artist and label discographies are retrieved and displayed.
- Previously each discography was contained on a single Web page that was as long as it needed to be. While this approach has several advantages, it has increasingly resulted in pages that are very long and slow to load (for example, the Blackwood Brothers, the Chuck Wagon Gang, Columbia, and RCA Victor). Beginning with this update, each artist or label discography is split into 400-track pages, with the conventional next/previous navigation controls to move between them.
- This splitting will have less of a negative impact on the typical user than you might expect. With paging set at 400 tracks, only 12 artists (out of 3,500) and 17 labels (out of 2,321) have their listings split across more than one page. Only 3 artists and 11 labels have more than two. (But, please note that, since paging is necessarily based on track counts, it is possible that the contents of a single disc can be split across two pages.)
- The good news is that, not only do these mega-discographies no longer try the user's patience, but also some enhancements have become practical for all pages that were impossible when I had to judge everything by its feasibility with the Blackwoods and RCA Victor. You will immediately notice that listings now include thumbnail images for label and cover shots. These thumbnails replace the old text-only buttons as the way to open the full-size 700x700 images.
- This change means that the true URLs for all artist and label pages have changed. However, incoming links that use the old-syle targets (which call "artist.php" and "label.php") will be redirected automatically (and silently) to the corresponding current pages (which use "search.php"). Nevertheless, it would be good practice for anyone maintaining links to update them.
- Previously, I tried to cope with page bloat by splitting the Blackwoods, Columbia, and RCA Victor each into two separate pages, one for singles/EPs and one for LPs. For the time being, I have left these divisions in place. Once it is clear that the new-style discographies are working satisfactorily, I will recombine them.
- Content-wise, this update features 101 new discs, 323 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 563 new song samples. This month Shawn Chambers has been especially diligent in uploading MP3s for Kentucky recordings.
- I would also like to acknowledge Discogs member TheGlassbee, who has been systematically adding Rite pressings to that database. While most of the information seems to come from sources I have already used (especially 45cat and 45rpmrecords), he has found some discs that I missed.
December 31, 2020
- Added 107 new discs, 689 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 223 song samples, many of them from James Zurek and Al Turner.
November 30, 2020
- Added 102 new discs, 475 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 474 song samples, including many from the Evil Eye 45s YouTube channel.
- Special thanks to Al Turner, James Zurek, Shawn Chambers, Andrew Bohan, Bruce McGuire, and Udo Frank for their many contributions this month.
- Implemented a utility to enable users to upload song samples.
October 31, 2020
- Added 92 new discs, 406 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 214 song samples.
- My thanks to Shawn Chambers, who has been diligently contributing information on Kentucky discs.
September 30, 2020
- Added 85 new discs, 275 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 347 song samples.
August 31, 2020
- Added 80 new discs, 336 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 269 song samples, a number of them from the Fixed Elsewhere YouTube channel.
- Implemented a utility to enable any user to suggest an addition to the discography. Links appear on the main page and on every artist page.
July 31, 2020
- Added 75 new discs, 427 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 272 song samples, including many from John Burton's 53jaybop YouTube channel.
- Fixed a few more bugs.
June 30, 2020
- Added 176 new discs, 777 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 430 song samples, many of them from the ThriftStoreVinyl channel on YouTube or Lee Hartsfeld's Music You Possibly Won't Here Anywhere Else blog.
- Many thanks to Jim Kumpe at Sweet Melissa's Records in Marietta, Georgia, who has been keeping an eye out for interesting gospel records.
- Fixed a bug that was generating some false links to RCS.
- Fixed a bug that was preventing display of the "pressed by Columbia" note.
May 31, 2020
- Added 100 new discs, 942 new or replacement label/cover shots, and 408 song samples.
- My thanks to Roger Shuttleworth, who has been especially generous with images this month.
April 30, 2020
- Added 191 new discs, 783 new or replacement label shots, and 524 song samples (many of them from Al Turner).
- Added a field to the Advanced Search form to enable users to retrieve a list of discs recently added to the database.
- Added a "{secular}" flag to identify non-religious flipsides and album tracks. Note, however, that I have not applied this flag to the sort of nostalgic, patriotic, or tragedy-themed songs that were so often part of a gospel performer's repertoire.
- Implemented the HTML5 viewport meta tag to make the site a bit more usable on mobile devices. However, it is still best viewed in landscape orientation.
- My thanks to Olivier Amiot, Shawn Chambers, Martin Thomas, and Roger Shuttleworth for making use of the image upload buttons to add label and cover shots.
- In addition, I am grateful to 45cat member DeadWax, who has systematically gone through the label lists to fill in many missing locations.
March 20, 2020
- Website open to the general public.
- Launch day statistics:
March 24, 2019
- Website available for private collaboration and beta testing.

This page revised on 1/31/2021

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