This landmark recording by musicologist Dr. Daniel Patterson is the one truly essential recording of Shaker music. These recordings were made during that 1960s at Sabbathday Lake, Maine, by Dr. Patterson. The community there had (and still does) kept to the old ways and style of singing. Many of the unharmonized Shaker tunes of the 19^th century were still alive in the oral tradition there when Dr. Patterson made his recordings. Sister Mildred Barker’s voice is hauntingly beautiful. This disc includes a recording of “Simple Gifts.” Essential.

This collection of forty 19th-century Shaker spirituals sung in tradtional unaccompanied style is the only recording available of the Shakers themselves singing their unique music. Sung by Sister Mildred Barker, with Sister Ethel Peacock, Elsie McCool, Della Haskell, Marie Burgess, Frances Carr, and other members of THE UNITED SOCIETY OF SHAKERS, SABBATH DAY LAKE, MAINE. With notes by Daniel W.Patterson.