50 Miles of Elbow Room is based in Brooklyn, NY, & directed by Adam Lore, with essential help from many gifted contributors. Activities under the 50 Miles moniker began in 1998, born out of a desire to disseminate information regarding Cooper-Moore, Daniel Carter, the No-Neck Blues Band, & others. Over the years, 50 Miles' focus has largely been on American vernacular music such as blues, gospel, & free jazz/improvisation.

50 Miles of Elbow Room #1, a print publication featuring the above artists plus Rev. Louis Overstreet, Prince Far I, & Matthew Shipp, was released in 2000. The second issue had articles about Hamid Drake, Rev. Charlie Jackson, Louis Moholo, Otha Turner & the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, June Tyson, & Robert Pete Williams, and was published in 2002. Contributors included Lynn Abbott, John Allen, Yancey Allison, Daniel Carter, Fitz Gitler, Matthew Heyner, Eric Hoffsten, Steven Joerg, David Nuss, Clare O'Dea, William Parker, John Fell Ryan, Phil Schaap, Matthew Shipp, David Shuford, & Thierry Trombert.

In earlier years, 50 Miles of Elbow Room produced or co-presented concerts by The Organic Trio, Isaiah Owens (as documented in the film Pray and Get Ready, by Tyler Bell), A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Cooper-Moore & William Parker, and a benefit/tribute for Otha Turner & Bernice Turner Pratcher. A program, subsequently catalogued as 50 Miles of Elbow Room #3, was produced & given to attendees of the lattermost concert.

50 Miles of Elbow Room #4 is set of five 7" records of solo recordings by Cooper-Moore, housed in a branded cedar wood box & accompanied by a 16-page booklet. It was released in 2004 as a numbered edition of 300. Later it was reissued on CD in an edition of 500, a co-release with AUM Fidelity.

50 Miles of Elbow Room #5, the first of 3 volumes of live recordings by Rev. Charlie Jackson, was released on LP in 2011, followed by a second volume in 2012. Also in 2012, 50 Miles brought RL Boyce up from Mississippi to play a few intimate & very memorable gigs. A Cooper-Moore / Lonnie Holley double-bill was co-organized with the Whitney Museum as part of the "Blues for Smoke" exhibit on March 22, 2013.

50 Miles has been conducting ongoing research into the life & art of bassist / visiual artist / poet Earl Freeman for quite a while. Many of the resulting interviews & artifacts are collected on the Earl Freeman article page. Another result of this effort is a collection of some of Freeman's work, Poems & Drawings, co-published by 50 Miles of Elbow Room (#7) & Wry Press (#5), first in 2020 & then again in 2021.

Work continues on the third & final volume in the Rev. Jackson series, currently conceived as a 2LP set. Quite a bit about Rev. Jackson was posted to celebrate the 90th anniversary of his birth, on July 11, 2022. A related article on Henry Simmons, Jr. was posted in 2023.

This website & accompanying mailorder business was launched in 2006. In 2021, it was decided to let mailorder side of things wind down, but noteworthy records, CDs, & publications do still come in from time to time. 

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50 Miles of Elbow Room
PO Box 310113
Brooklyn, NY 11231