An Introduction to Blues Resources at the Institute of Jazz Studies
This guide provides an overview of blues-related collections at the Institute of Jazz Studies.
Archivist, Institute of Jazz Studies
IJS 101
The Institute of Jazz Studies is open by appointment. We offer research appointments and tours between the hours of 10-6 on M, T, Th, and F and 10-1 on W. Both require at least one week's advance notice. To make an appointment, email ask_ijs@libraries.rutgers.edu and indicate the date(s) you would like to visit as well as the time you will arrive and plan to leave. Please also let us know in your message what materials you would like to access so that we can be prepared for your visit. When scheduling your appointment, feel free to ask questions about what resources are available that might help you with your research. Many collections at IJS are not available online, so it's always a good idea to ask.
For more information about using the Institute's collections, please visit our website.
Recordings
The Institute has over 200,000 audio recordings in its collections, and all of the commercially-published LPs and CDs are in the Rutgers Libraries catalog, Quicksearch. We also have 78 and 45 rpm discs, but these are not in Quicksearch. Additionally, we have a large collection of record company catalogs that contain information about recordings.
To look in Quicksearch specifically for blues recordings at the Institute, enter the search terms "blues music," with quotation marks around the two-word phrase, or "blues (music)." (The latter option returns slightly fewer search results.) On the search results page, use the left-hand column options to filter your search results both by type ("sound recordings") and library ("jazz studies"). You can also filter your search to look for other types of materials using the options in the left-hand column, including videos, books, notated music, articles, etc.
Alternately, you can search by a performer's name or the name of an album or CD, if you have a more specific search in mind, or a combination of several terms. It's always good to try several approaches if you don't immediately find what you're looking for.
Databases
- RIPM Jazz PeriodicalsWhile focused on jazz, RIPM Jazz Periodicals includes substantial blues-related content. It is a collection of over 100 full-text and full-image digitized journals. Its focus is on historic titles that ceased publication in the 20th century. The initial 2019 release of RIPM Jazz Periodicals included publications from the United States of America. Newly digitized titles are continually being added to this collection, and future updates will also include publications from additional countries. RIPM Jazz Periodicals was developed in collaboration with the Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) at Rutgers University, which contributed many periodicals to the database.
- Music IndexMusic Index is an index of journal articles, news articles, book reviews, and obituaries relevant to the study of classical and popular music. Subjects covered include music, musicians, and the music industry, and the database encompasses a wide range of musical cultures and genres. It includes data from over 850 music periodicals published in more than 40 countries.
- Chicago DefenderThis collection contains every issue of the newspaper the Chicago Defender published between 1910 to 1975, including all articles, illustrations, and advertisements. Each issue has been fully digitized and indexed. With the majority of its readership outside the Chicago region, the Chicago Defender served as the de facto national black newspaper in the U.S., and it was the most influential African-American newspaper of the 20th century.
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses GlobalProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global is a database of doctoral dissertations and master's theses from institutions around the world. It includes records for international dissertations beginning in 1637 and U.S. dissertations beginning in 1861 (the year the first doctoral dissertation was accepted at a U.S. institution). It covers all academic disciplines, and it is updated every semester with newly completed dissertations and theses.
The database includes the full text of most dissertations and theses added after 1997; for earlier years, it may contain only indexing or indexing and abstracts. Many dissertations and theses are available for purchase using the "Order a Copy" link. However, some authors have chosen not to make their works available to view or purchase. - RILM Abstracts of Music LiteratureRILM Abstracts of Music Literature is a database that provides indexing and abstracts of music scholarship. It is the world's largest continuously updated bibliography of music literature. A wide variety of genres and subject areas are included, such as classical, traditional, and popular music, jazz, historical musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, instruments, voice, and dance.
The database contains over 750,000 citations and abstracts, which are drawn from articles, books, conference proceedings, bibliographies, catalogues, dissertations, festschriften, iconographies, critical commentaries to complete works, ethnographic recordings and videos, and reviews. It includes records from over 10,000 journals, 140 languages, and 178 countries.
The RILM database is compiled by the RILM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale) International Center. It is the electronic version of the print annual publication RILM Abstracts of Music Literature. - Entertainment Industry Magazine ArchiveIn the Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive collection, Rutgers has access to Music Magazine Archives in the genres of folk, hip-hop, and rock. Each print magazine issue has been fully digitized in high-resolution color, including all articles, illustrations, and advertisements. The full text of every issue is completely searchable. The collection contains more than 1,400 issues with over 100,000 pages and more than 91,000 articles.
Archives
Below is a sampling of IJS archival holdings with significant blues content.
- Leonard Kunstadt papers and audio recordingsThis collection contains business records, correspondence, financial documents, personal notes, and journals. There are research files and correspondence related to his work as editor and publisher of Record Research magazine. Also included are discographical notes, publication materials, handbills, articles, and business files of the label, Spivey Records. There are also travel documents, press clippings, memorabilia, and papers documenting the career of Victoria Spivey. There are early photographs of jazz and blues performers and a scrapbook with information on 1920s orchestras.
This collection also consists of audiocassettes, 78s, and forty-nine audio reels. The majority of the recordings are test pressings, Spivey releases, and early jazz records. - Victoria Spivey papersThe Victoria Spivey Collection consists primarily of songs and photographs of Ms. Spivey with various artists, friends, and family. The collection also contains correspondence and other collected writings, business and personal papers, and some tax papers and financial documents.
- Gennett Records Division of Starr Piano Company records and sound discsThe Gennett Records Division of Starr Piano Company records and sound discs contains materials that span the period of 1920 to 1939 with additional undated materials; the bulk of the material dates from 1921 to 1933. The collection consists of business records (recording cards, disposition records, and ledgers) and sound discs with their original folders. The recording cards document the various recording sessions that occurred at Gennett's studios in Richmond, Indiana, and New York City. These sessions cover a wide variety of styles, including classical, jazz, blues, ethnic, country, gospel, novelty, sound effects, hokum, popular music, and oratory. Some notable performers who appear on the recording cards are King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington and His Washingtonians, Fats Waller, Ladd's Black Aces, and Leon Ropollo. Private (also known as "vanity") recording sessions are also documented, including several by the Ku Klux Klan. Several recording cards contain technical remarks by the recording engineer. The ledgers hold financial and administrative information related to recording sessions, including recording dates, location, copyright information, and royalties as well as documentation of when some master recordings were destroyed. The majority of the these records were kept in bound ledgers, some of which have since been unbound, though there are several loose sheets. A few advertisements related to Gennett recordings, such as seasonal releases and the sound effects series, are contained alongside the loose ledger sheets and disposition records. The sixteen sound discs are the metal masters (also known as "stampers") and mothers used to create 78-rpm shellac phonograph records.
- Bob Porter collectionThe Bob Porter collection includes business records for recording labels, including Atlantic Records. There are published and unpublished liner notes and record reviews. Also included are audio interviews with Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, and other musicians. The collection comprises recording industry ephemera, concert programs, funeral programs, and published obituaries. The collection also includes 128 audiocassettes, six compact discs, two 5 inch audiotape reels, and thirty-six 7 inch audiotape reels. Correspondence, circa 1968-2005, includes letters from Ross Russell, Red Rodney, and Norman Grantz. There are programs from music conferences and performance festivals as well as award nomination ballots. The collection also includes an award from the NY Blues and Jazz Society in recognition of the 25th anniversary of Porter's Portraits in Blue radio program.
- Newport Jazz Festival recordsThe bulk of the manuscript material in this collection covers the years 1954-1959. There are no extant administrative records of the Newport Jazz Festival after 1959. The collection contains a full run of official programs and schedules of the festival with some gaps.
The papers document the early years of the Newport Jazz Festival from its inception particularly through George Wein's files. Wein's multiple business dealings, not only as NJF director but as an enterprising club owner, are inextricably interspersed throughout the collection. Indeed, the first four series are George Wein's administrative papers. Whenever possible, his personal/professional dealings have been separated from that of his work at NJF. However, in many instances individual letters may contain information on his organization of the festival as well as the administration of Storyville--to be sure, many artists played the Newport Jazz Festival as well as his Boston club and various other Wein productions. But, the promotion of jazz and American music in general from 1954 to 1959 is well-documented by Wein's correspondence with artists, agents, jazz critics, entrepreneurs, and the television and record industries.
The records also document a civil lawsuit involving Elaine Lorillard versus the Newport Jazz Festival in 1959-1960 and includes transcripts of depositions from which a great deal of NJF history can be gleaned. It is entirely possible that this is how the collection was preserved--since the materials end in 1959-1960.
Many of the Institute's archival collections are minimally described or do not have finding aids. Collections for which finding aids are unavailable but that have substantial blues-related materials include:
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Chris Albertson papers |
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Institute of Jazz Studies collection of jazz oral history sound recordings |
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Institute of Jazz Studies collection of ephemera, memorabilia, and scrapbooks |
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Institute of Jazz Studies collection of audio recording catalogs |
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Institute of Jazz Studies photograph collection |
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Institute of Jazz Studies collection of audio recordings |
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Institute of Jazz Studies artist and clippings files |
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Jazz Oral History Project interview transcripts and sound recordings |
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Wallace Theodore "Ed" Kirkeby papers |
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Musicraft Records, Incorporated business records and audio recordings |
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Nancy Miller Elliott photographs, papers, and collection of Buck Clayton music, artifacts, and ephemera |
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Mississippi Rag photographs |
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Mary Lou Williams papers, music, artifacts, and audiovisual materials |
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John S. Wilson papers and audio recordings |
Magazines and Periodicals
For a list of all magazine and periodical titles available in print at the Institute, please visit the Institute's Research Guide. There are 38 titles with the word "blues."
Books
Below is a sampling of titles available at the Institute and/or other Rutgers Libraries' locations. While the Institute's collections do not circulate and must be used in the reading room, other Rutgers Libraries locations may offer copies for check out. To request a circulating copy, Rutgers affiliates can log in with their NetID at libraries.rutgers.edu to request a book from any Rutgers Libraries location.
Black Pearls by Call Number: ML3521.H38 1988ISBN: 0813512794Publication Date: 1988-03-01Throughout the 1920s, in tents, theaters, dance halls and cabarets, and on "race" records, black American women captivated large audiences with their singing of the blues. University of Maryland professor Harrison examines the subjects and texts of their songs, the toll these performers paid for their right to be heard, and what they did to transform a folk tradition into a popular art. She describes the singing and lifestyles of Sippie Wallace, Victoria Spivey, Edith Wilson and Alberta Hunter to illustrate how they introduced a new model of the black woman: assertive and sexy, gutsy yet tender, bereft but not downtrodden, exploited but not resentful, independent yet vulnerable. The author shows that their choice of performing style, inflection, emphasis and improvisation provided a perspective and expressiveness that profoundly affected later American popular music.
Blues and Gospel Records by Call Number: ML156.4.B6D59 1997ISBN: 0198162391Publication Date: 1997-10-30Since its first edition in 1964, Dixon and Godrich's Blues and Gospel Records has been dubbed "the bible" for collectors of pre-war African American music. It provides an exhaustive listing of all recordings made up to the end of 1943 in a distinctively African American style, excluding those customarily classed as jazz (which are the subject of separate discographies). The book covers recordings made for the commercial market (whether issued at the time or not) and also recordings made for the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song and similar bodies--about 20,000 titles in all, by more than 3,000 artists. For each recording session, full details are given of: BL artist credit BL accompaniment BL place and date of recording BL titles BL issuing company and catalogue numbers BL matrix numbers BL alternative takes There are also short accounts of the major "race labels" that recorded blues and gospel material, and a complete list of field trips to the south by travelling recording units. Howard Rye has joined the original compilers for this thoroughly revised, enlarged, and reset fourth edition. The scope has been widened by the addition of about 150 new artists in addition to newly discovered recordings by other artists. The compilation now includes recordings by groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the Pace Jubilee Singers, and the Tuskegee Institute Singers, who, although they employed African American materials and musical devices, were designed to appeal to a predominantly white audience. Early cylinder recordings of gospel music from the 1890s are included for the first time. Previous editions of this work are applauded for their completeness, accuracy, and reliability. This has now been enhanced by the addition of new information from record labels and from record company files, and by listening to a wide selection of titles, and detailed cross checking.
Blues People by Call Number: ML3556.J73ISBN: 9780688184742Publication Date: 1999-01-20"A must for all who would more knowledgeably appreciate and better comprehend America's most popular music." -- Langston Hughes "The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music--through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music." So says Amiri Baraka (previously known as LeRoi Jones) in the Introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960's, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America--not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history.
Blues Records, Nineteen Forty-Three to Nineteen Seventy by Call Number: ML156.4.B6L43 1987ISBN: 0907872077Publication Date: 1987-06-01
Blueswomen by Call Number: ML54.6.B79B6 1996ISBN: 0786421223Publication Date: 2004-10-26While much has been written over the years about male blues singers of the first half of the 20th century, little attention has been paid to blueswomen. These women used their songs to proclaim their pain or to speak up and protest unfair conditions and discrimination. Through their songs, they expressed a desire for freedom and equality in a time when women were almost universally subjugated. The 37 women profiled here are representative of the many blueswomen who performed in the United States through the end of World War II. Some are well known (e.g., Lucille Bogan and Sippie Wallace), but many are obscure (such as Lil Johnson, Liza Brown and Margaret Whitmire). Biographical profiles are followed by a sampling of the performers' lyrics.
Chasin' That Devil Music by Call Number: ML3521.W37 1998ISBN: 0879305525Publication Date: 1998-08-01(Book). Chasin' That Devil Music Searching for the Blues presents the results of extensive research by a blues scholar who has researched the artists on old 78 RPM records to uncover their stories. Includes rare interviews and the actual songs which available online using the unique code printed inside each book.
Chicago Blues by Call Number: ML394.W5 2006ISBN: 0252030680Publication Date: 2006-05-11Through revealing portraits of selected local artists and slice-of-life vignettes drawn from the city's pubs and lounges, Chicago Blues encapsulates the sound and spirit of the blues as it is lived today. As a committed participant in the Chicago blues scene for more than a quarter century, David Whiteis draws on years of his observations and extensive interviews to paint a full picture of the Chicago blues world, both on and off the stage. In addition to portraits of blues artists he has personally known and worked with, Whiteis takes readers on a tour of venues like East of Ryan and the Starlight Lounge; home to artists such as Jumpin' Willie Cobbs, Willie D., and Harmonica Khan. He tells the stories behind the lives of past pioneers including Junior Wells, pianist Sunnyland Slim, and harpist Big Walter Horton, whose music reflects the universal concerns with love, loss, and yearning that continue to keep the blues so vital for so many.
Delta Blues by Call Number: ML3521.G56 2008ISBN: 9780393062588Publication Date: 2008-10-17The blues grew out of the plantations and prisons, the swampy marshes and fertile cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. With original research and keen insights, Ted Gioia--the author of a landmark study of West Coast jazz and the critically acclaimed The History of Jazz--brings to life the stirring music of the Delta, evoking the legendary figures who shaped its sound and ethos: Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, and others. Tracing the history of the Delta blues from the field hollers and plantation music of the nineteenth century to the exploits of modern-day musicians in the Delta tradition, Delta Blues tells the full story of this timeless and unforgettable music. No cultural force boasts such humble origins or such world-conquering reverberations. In this evocative rags-to-riches tale, Gioia shows how the sounds of the Delta altered the course of popular music in America and in the world beyond.
Downhome Blues Lyrics by Call Number: PS591.N4D6 1990ISBN: 0252017285Publication Date: 1990-10-01
Early Downhome Blues by Call Number: ML3521.T58 1994ISBN: 0807821705Publication Date: 1995-02-28Hailed as a classic in music studies when it was first published in 1977, Early Downhome Blues is a detailed look at traditional country blues artists and their work. Combining musical analysis and cultural history approaches, Titon examines the origins of downhome blues in African American society. He also explores what happened to the art form when the blues were commercially recorded and became part of the larger American culture. From forty-seven musical transcriptions, Titon derives a grammar of early downhome blues melody. His book is enriched with the recollections of blues performers, audience members, and those working in the recording industry. In a new afterword, Titon reflects on the genesis of this book in the blues revival of the 1960s and the politics of tourism in the current revival under way.
Encyclopedia of the Blues 2-Volume Set by Call Number: ML102.B6E53 2006ISBN: 0415926998Publication Date: 2005-10-28This comprehensive two-volume set brings together all aspects of the blues from performers and musical styles to record labels and cultural issues, including regional evolution and history. Organized in an accessible A-to-Z format, the Encyclopedia of the Blues is an essential reference resource for information on this unique American music genre. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclopedia of the Blues website.
Escaping the Delta by Call Number: ML420.J735W35 2004ISBN: 0060524235Publication Date: 2004-01-06Robert Johnson's story presents a fascinating paradox: Why did this genius of the Delta blues excite so little interest when his records were first released in the 1930s? And how did this brilliant but obscure musician come to be hailed long after his death as the most important artist in early blues and a founding father of rock 'n' roll? Elijah Wald provides the first thorough examination of Johnson's work and makes it the centerpiece for a fresh look at the entire history of the blues. He traces the music's rural folk roots but focuses on its evolution as a hot, hip African-American pop style, placing the great blues stars in their proper place as innovative popular artists during one of the most exciting periods in American music. He then goes on to explore how the image of the blues was reshaped by a world of generally white fans, with very different standards and dreams. The result is a view of the blues from the inside, based not only on recordings but also on the recollections of the musicians themselves, the African-American press, and original research. Wald presents previously unpublished studies of what people on Delta plantations were actually listening to during the blues era, showing the larger world in which Johnson's music was conceived. What emerges is a new respect and appreciation for the creators of what many consider to be America's deepest and most influential music. Wald also discusses how later fans formed a new view of the blues as haunting Delta folklore. While trying to separate fantasy from reality, he accepts that neither the simple history nor the romantic legend is the whole story. Each has its own fascinating history, and it is these twin histories that inform this book.
Give My Poor Heart Ease by Call Number: ML3521.G58ISBN: 9780807833254Publication Date: 2009-11-01Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, folklorist William Ferris toured his home state of Mississippi, documenting the voices of African Americans as they spoke about and performed the diverse musical traditions that form the authentic roots of the blues. Now, Give My Poor Heart Ease puts front and center a searing selection of the artistically and emotionally rich voices from this invaluable documentary record. Illustrated with Ferris's photographs of the musicians and their communities and including a CD of original music, the book features more than twenty interviews relating frank, dramatic, and engaging narratives about black life and blues music in the heart of the American South. Here are the stories of artists who have long memories and speak eloquently about their lives, blues musicians who represent a wide range of musical traditions--from one-strand instruments, bottle-blowing, and banjo to spirituals, hymns, and prison work chants. Celebrities such as B. B. King and Willie Dixon, along with performers known best in their neighborhoods, express the full range of human and artistic experience--joyful and gritty, raw and painful. In an autobiographical introduction, Ferris reflects on how he fell in love with the vibrant musical culture that was all around him but was considered off limits to a white Mississippian during a troubled era. This magnificent volume illuminates blues music, the broader African American experience, and indeed the history and culture of America itself.
The Inconvenient Lonnie Johnson by Call Number: ML419.J625S56 2022ISBN: 9780271092553Publication Date: 2022-04-05Lonnie Johnson is a blues legend. His virtuosity on the blues guitar is second to none, and his influence on artists from T-Bone Walker and B. B. King to Eric Clapton is well established. Yet Johnson mastered multiple instruments. He recorded with jazz icons such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, and he played vaudeville music, ballads, and popular songs. In this book, Julia Simon takes a closer look at Johnson's musical legacy. Considering the full body of his work, Simon presents detailed analyses of Johnson's music--his lyrics, technique, and styles--with particular attention to its sociohistorical context. Born in 1894 in New Orleans, Johnson's early experiences were shaped by French colonial understandings of race that challenge the Black-white binary. His performances call into question not only conventional understandings of race but also fixed notions of identity. Johnson was able to cross generic, stylistic, and other boundaries almost effortlessly, displaying astonishing adaptability across a corpus of music produced over six decades. Simon introduces us to a musical innovator and a performer keenly aware of his audience and the social categories of race, class, and gender that conditioned the music of his time. Lonnie Johnson's music challenges us to think about not only what we recognize and value in "the blues" but also what we leave unexamined, cannot account for, or choose not to hear. The Inconvenient Lonnie Johnson provides a reassessment of Johnson's musical legacy and complicates basic assumptions about the blues, its production, and its reception.
In Search of the Blues by Call Number: E185.93.T4M56 2010ISBN: 0292722893Publication Date: 2010-04-01The rich, complex lives of African Americans in Texas were often neglected by the mainstream media, which historically seldom ventured into Houston's Fourth Ward, San Antonio's East Side, South Dallas, or the black neighborhoods in smaller cities. When Bill Minutaglio began writing for Texas newspapers in the 1970s, few large publications had more than a token number of African American journalists, and they barely acknowledged the things of lasting importance to the African American community. Though hardly the most likely reporter--as a white, Italian American transplant from New York City--for the black Texas beat, Minutaglio was drawn to the African American heritage, seeking its soul in churches, on front porches, at juke joints, and anywhere else that people would allow him into their lives. His nationally award-winning writing offered many Americans their first deeper understanding of Texas's singular, complicated African American history. This eclectic collection gathers the best of Minutaglio's writing about the soul of black Texas. He profiles individuals both unknown and famous, including blues legends Lightnin' Hopkins, Amos Milburn, Robert Shaw, and Dr. Hepcat. He looks at neglected, even intentionally hidden, communities. And he wades into the musical undercurrent that touches on African Americans' joys, longings, and frustrations, and the passing of generations. Minutaglio's stories offer an understanding of the sweeping evolution of music, race, and justice in Texas. Moved forward by the musical heartbeat of the blues and defined by the long shadow of racism, the stories measure how far Texas has come . . . or still has to go.
In Search of the Blues by Call Number: ML3521.H34 2009ISBN: 9780465028580Publication Date: 2008-01-29Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton-we are all familiar with the story of the Delta blues. Fierce, raw voices; tormented drifters; deals with the devil at the crossroads at midnight. In this extraordinary reconstruction of the origins of the Delta blues, historian Marybeth Hamilton demonstrates that the story as we know it is largely a myth. The idea of something called Delta blues only emerged in the mid-twentieth century, the culmination of a longstanding white fascination with the exotic mysteries of black music. Hamilton shows that the Delta blues was effectively invented by white pilgrims, seekers, and propagandists who headed deep into America's south in search of an authentic black voice of rage and redemption. In their quest, and in the immense popularity of the music they championed, we confront America's ongoing love affair with racial difference.
Long Lost Blues by Call Number: ML3521.M85 2010ISBN: 9780252034879Publication Date: 2010-01-06Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of ""Crazy Blues"" is commonly thought to signify the beginning of commercial attention to blues music and culture, but by that year more than 450 other blues titles had already appeared in sheet music and on recordings. In this examination of early popular blues, Peter C. Muir traces the genre's early history and the highly creative interplay between folk and popular forms, focusing especially on the roles W. C. Handy played in both blues music and the music business. Long Lost Blues exposes for the first time the full scope and importance of early popular blues to mainstream American culture in the early twentieth century. Closely analyzing sheet music and other print sources that have previously gone unexamined, Muir revises our understanding of the evolution and sociology of blues at its inception.
Looking up at Down by Call Number: ML3521.B36 1989ISBN: 0877225834Publication Date: 1989-09-01Takes a cultural and historic look at the evolution of the blues from post-Reconstruction to the 1920s.
The Music by Call Number: ML3556.B17 1987ISBN: 0688043887Publication Date: 1987-05-01
Nothing but the Blues by Call Number: ML3521.N68 1993ISBN: 1558592717Publication Date: 1993-12-01Like Abbeville's Country: The Music and the Musicians, Nothing but the Blues is an illustrated, comprehensive history of music and musicians, also covering promoters, producers and others who have shaped this powerful and enduringly popular American musical art form. A guide to the best discography is included at the back of the book which will appeal to blues fans and record collectors.
The Original Blues by Call Number: ML3521.A23 2017ISBN: 9781496810021Publication Date: 2017-02-28In this volume, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff complete their groundbreaking trilogy on the development of African American popular music, authoritatively connecting the black vaudeville movement with the explosion of blues that followed. At the end of the nineteenth century, vaudeville began to replace minstrelsy as America's favorite form of stage entertainment. Segregation necessitated the creation of discrete African American vaudeville theaters. When these venues first gained popularity, ragtime coon songs were the standard fare. Black vaudeville theaters provided a safe haven where coon songs could be rehabilitated. Dynamic interaction between the performers and their audience unleashed creative energies that accelerated the development of the blues. The first blues star of black vaudeville was Butler ""String Beans"" May, a blackface comedian, pianist, singer, and dancer from Montgomery, Alabama. Before his senseless death in 1917, he was recognized as the ""blues master piano player of the world."" His legacy, elusive and previously unacknowledged, is preserved in the repertoire of country blues singer-guitarists and pianists of the Race recording era. While male blues singers remained tethered to the role of blackface comedian, female ""coon shouters"" acquired a more dignified aura in the emergent persona of the ""blues queen."" Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and most of their contemporaries came through this portal; while others, including forgotten blues heroine Ora Criswell and her protégé Trixie Smith, reconfigured the use of blackface for their own subversive purposes. In 1921 black vaudeville was effectively nationalized by the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.). In collusion with the emergent Race recording industry, T.O.B.A. theaters featured touring companies headed by blues queens with records to sell. While the 1920s was the most celebrated and remunerative period of vaudeville blues, the previous decade was arguably the most creative, having witnessed the emergence, popularization, and early development of the original blues in southern theaters.
Race Music by Call Number: ML3556.R32 2003ISBN: 0520210484Publication Date: 2003-06-01This powerful book covers the vast and various terrain of African American music, from bebop to hip-hop. Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., begins with an absorbing account of his own musical experiences with family and friends on the South Side of Chicago, evoking Sunday-morning worship services, family gatherings with food and dancing, and jam sessions at local nightclubs. This lays the foundation for a brilliant discussion of how musical meaning emerges in the private and communal realms of lived experience and how African American music has shaped and reflected identities in the black community. Deeply informed by Ramsey's experience as an accomplished musician, a sophisticated cultural theorist, and an enthusiast brought up in the community he discusses, Race Music explores the global influence and popularity of African American music, its social relevance, and key questions regarding its interpretation and criticism. Beginning with jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel, this book demonstrates that while each genre of music is distinct--possessing its own conventions, performance practices, and formal qualities--each is also grounded in similar techniques and conceptual frameworks identified with African American musical traditions. Ramsey provides vivid glimpses of the careers of Dinah Washington, Louis Jordan, Dizzy Gillespie, Cootie Williams, and Mahalia Jackson, among others, to show how the social changes of the 1940s elicited an Afro-modernism that inspired much of the music and culture that followed. Race Music illustrates how, by transcending the boundaries between genres, black communities bridged generational divides and passed down knowledge of musical forms and styles. It also considers how the discourse of soul music contributed to the vibrant social climate of the Black Power Era. Multilayered and masterfully written, Race Music provides a dynamic framework for rethinking the many facets of African American music and the ethnocentric energy that infused its creation.
Red River Blues by Call Number: ML3521.B39 1986ISBN: 0252012135Publication Date: 1986-10-01
Texas Blues by Call Number: ML394.G68 2008ISBN: 9781585446056Publication Date: 2008-10-09Texas Blues allows artists to speak in their own words, revealing the dynamics of blues, from its beginnings in cotton fields and shotgun shacks to its migration across boundaries of age and race to seize the musical imagination of the entire world. Fully illustrated with 495 dramatic, high-quality color and black-and-white photographs--many never before published--Texas Blues provides comprehensive and authoritative documentation of a musical tradition that has changed contemporary music. Award-winning documentary filmmaker and author Alan Govenar here builds on his previous groundbreaking work documenting these musicians and their style with the stories of 110 of the most influential artists and their times. From Blind Lemon Jefferson and Aaron "T-Bone" Walker of Dallas, to Delbert McClinton in Fort Worth, Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins in East Texas, Baldemar (Freddie Fender) Huerta in South Texas, and Stevie Ray Vaughan in Austin, Texas Blues shows the who, what, where, and how of blues in the Lone Star State.
Waiting for Buddy Guy by Call Number: ML3521.H377 2016ISBN: 9780252040085Publication Date: 2016-02-15In the late 1970s and early 1980s, British blues fan Alan Harper became a transatlantic pilgrim to Chicago. "I've come here to listen to the blues," he told an American customs agent at the airport, and listen he did, to the music in its many styles, and to the men and women who lived it in the city's changing blues scene. Harper's eloquent memoir conjures the smoky redoubts of men like harmonica virtuoso Big Walter Horton and pianist Sunnyland Slim. Venturing from stageside to kitchen tables to the shotgun seat of a 1973 Eldorado, Harper listens to performers and others recollect memories of triumphs earned and chances forever lost, of deep wells of pain and soaring flights of inspiration. Harper also chronicles a time of change, as an up-tempo, whites-friendly blues eclipsed what had come before, and old Southern-born black players held court one last time before an all-conquering generation of young guitar aces took center stage.
Yonder Come the Blues by Call Number: ML3521.Y66 2001ISBN: 0521782597Publication Date: 2001-02-22Yonder Come the Blues combines three influential and much-quoted books: Savannah Syncopators; Blacks, Whites and Blues and Recording the Blues. Updated with additional essays, this 2001 volume discusses the crucial early development of the blues as a music of Blacks in the United States, explaining some of the most significant factors that shaped this music. Together, these three texts emphasise the significance of the African heritage, the mutuality of much white and black music and the role of recording in consolidating the blues, thus demonstrating the importance of these formative elements in its complex but combined socio-musical history. Redressing some of the misconceptions that persist in writing on African-American music, this book will be essential reading for all enthusiasts of blues, jazz and country music and will be important for students of African-American studies and music, popular music and popular culture.
