Blues People: Negro Music in White America

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He studied at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard universities but left without a degree and attended the new school for social research. He won a scholarship to Rutgers in 1951, but a continuing sense of cultural dislocation prompted him to transfer in 1952 to Howard. He studied philosophy and religion, major fields. Jones also served three years in the air force as a gunner. Jones continued his studies of comparative literature at Columbia University. An anonymous letter accused him as a Communist to his commanding officer and led to the discovery of Soviet literature; afterward, people put Jones on gardening duty and gave him a dishonorable discharge for violation of his oath of duty. Intro- LeRoi Jones states that: ‘the path the slave took to ‘citizenship’ is what I want to look at. And I

The Brighton-based singer first burst on to the scene a few years ago, as one of a new generation of guitarists, but it’s her powerful voice that sets her apart from the rest of the crowd. With influences as diverse as Bonnie Raitt, Patsy Cline and Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Wilde is well-versed in all aspects of the blues. I always liked jazz," Baraka says. "And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that. But when I went to Howard, the great Sterling Brown was a great influence on many of us. A.B. Spellman and I, Toni Morrison ... a lot of us sat up under Brown. And so, you can always tell that influence.Other blues artists, such as John Lee Hooker, had influences not directly related to the Chicago style. John Lee Hooker's blues is more "personal", based on Hooker's deep rough voice accompanied by a single electric guitar. Though not directly influenced by boogie-woogie, his "groovy" style is sometimes called "guitar boogie". His first hit, " Boogie Chillen", reached number 1 on the R&B charts in 1949. [107] My mum disputes some details of McQueen’s retelling – notably the accents and the tactile dancing: “The art was to dance as close as possible without touching,” she told me as the film progressed. Others felt that sometimes stereotypes got the better of McQueen, who was only 11 at the time of the story. But it seemed that the millennial generation of Caribbeans in particular relished the plunge into nostalgia; and for those who have grown up on the stories of their parents, it was perhaps validating to see a lifelike depiction of historical tradition deeply mythologised yet under-documented in British history. Other recordings that are still available were made in 1924 by Lawrence Gellert. Later, several recordings were made by Robert W. Gordon, who became head of the Archive of American Folk Songs of the Library of Congress. Gordon's successor at the library was John Lomax. In the 1930s, Lomax and his son Alan made a large number of non-commercial blues recordings that testify to the huge variety of proto-blues styles, such as field hollers and ring shouts. [41] A record of blues music as it existed before 1920 can also be found in the recordings of artists such as Lead Belly [42] and Henry Thomas. [43] All these sources show the existence of many different structures distinct from twelve-, eight-, or sixteen-bar. [44] [45]

The Negro as slave is one thing. The Negro as American is quite another. But 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. And it seems to me that 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…I am saying that if the music of the Negro in America, in all its permutations, is subjected to a socio-anthropological as well as musical scrutiny, something about the essential nature of the Negro’s existence in this country ought to be revealed, as well as something about the essential nature of this country, i.e., society as a whole…

Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland – Stormy Monday Blues

There was one passage I found particularly interesting, a discussion of relative originality among the very early recorded blues singers. “Though certain techniques and verses came to be standardized among blues singers, the singing itself remained arbitrary and personal as the shout. Each man sang a different blues: the Peatie Wheatstraw blues, the Blind Lemon blues, the Blind Willie Johnson blues, etc. The music remained personal because it began with the performers themselves and not with formalized notions of how it was to be performed.” This seems to be a general truth that can be applied to any music when comparing those who did it first with those who came later. That it is a truth, I have no doubt.