Despite rhythm and blues culture’s undeniable role in molding, reflecting, and reshaping black cultural production, consciousness, and politics, it has yet to receive the serious scholarly ...examination it deserves. Destructive Desires corrects this omission by analyzing how post-Civil Rights era rhythm and blues culture articulates competing and conflicting political, social, familial, and economic desires within and for African American communities. As an important form of black cultural production, rhythm and blues music helps us to understand black political and cultural desires and longings in light of neo-liberalism’s increased codification in America’s racial politics and policies since the 1970s. Robert J. Patterson provides a thorough analysis of four artists—Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Adina Howard, Whitney Houston, and Toni Braxton—to examine black cultural longings by demonstrating how our reading of specific moments in their lives, careers, and performances serve as metacommentaries for broader issues in black culture and politics.
This book explores how, and why, the blues became a central component of English popular music in the 1960s. It is commonly known that many 'British invasion' rock bands were heavily influenced by ...Chicago and Delta blues styles. But how, exactly, did Britain get the blues? Blues records by African American artists were released in the United States in substantial numbers between 1920 and the late 1930s, but were sold primarily to black consumers in large urban centres and the rural south. How, then, in an era before globalization, when multinational record releases were rare, did English teenagers in the early 1960s encounter the music of Robert Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller, Memphis Minnie, and Barbecue Bob?
Roberta Schwartz analyses the transmission of blues records to England, from the first recordings to hit English shores to the end of the sixties. How did the blues, largely banned from the BBC until the mid 1960s, become popular enough to create a demand for re-released material by American artists? When did the British blues subculture begin, and how did it develop? Most significantly, how did the music become a part of the popular consciousness, and how did it change music and expectations? The way that the blues, and various blues styles, were received by critics is a central concern of the book, as their writings greatly affected which artists and recordings were distributed and reified, particularly in the early years of the revival. 'Hot' cultural issues such as authenticity, assimilation, appropriation, and cultural transgression were also part of the revival; these topics and more were interrogated in music periodicals by critics and fans alike, even as English musicians began incorporating elements of the blues into their common musical language.
The vinyl record itself, under-represented in previous studies, plays a major part in the story of the blues in Britain. Not only did recordings shape perceptions and listening habits, but which artists were
Lonnie 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 1948, the Orioles, a Baltimore-based vocal group, recorded "It's Too Soon to Know." Combining the sound of Tin Pan Alley with gospel and blues sensibilities, the Orioles saw their first hit reach ...#13 on the pop charts, thus introducing the nation to vocal rhythm & blues and paving the way for the most successful groups of the 1950s. In the first scholarly treatment of this influential musical genre, Stuart Goosman chronicles the Orioles' story and that of myriad other black vocal groups in the postwar period. A few, like the Orioles, Cardinals, and Swallows from Baltimore and the Clovers from Washington, D.C., established the popularity of vocal rhythm & blues nationally. Dozens of other well-known groups (and hundreds of unknown ones) across the country cut records and performed until about 1960. Record companies initially marketed this music as rhythm & blues; today, group harmony continues to resonate for some as "doo-wop." Focusing in particular on Baltimore and Washington and drawing significantly from oral histories,Group Harmonydetails the emergence of vocal rhythm & blues groups from black urban neighborhoods. Group harmony was a source of empowerment for young singers, for it provided them with a means of expression and some aspect of control over their lives where there were limited alternatives. Through group harmony, young black males celebrated and musically confounded, when they could not overcome, complex issues of race, separatism, and assimilation during the postwar period. Group harmony also became a significant resource for the popular music industry. Goosman interviews dozens of performers, deejays, and industry professionals to examine the entrepreneurial promise of midcentury popular music and chronicle the convergence of music, place, and business, including the business of records, radio, promotion, and song writing. Featured in the book's account of the black urban roots of rhythm & blues are the recollections of singers from groups such as the Cardinals, Clovers, Dunbar Four, Four Bars of Rhythm, Five Blue Notes, Hi Fis, Plants, Swallows, and many others, including Jimmy McPhail, a well-known Washington vocalist; Deborah Chessler, the manager and songwriter for the original Orioles; Jesse Stone, the writer and arranger from Atlantic Records; Washington radio personality Jackson Lowe; and seminal black deejays Al ("Big Boy") Jefferson, Maurice ("Hot Rod") Hulbert, and Tex Gathings.
Long before the world discovered grunge, the Pacific Northwest
was already home to a singular music culture. In the late 1950s,
locals had codified a distinct offshoot of rockin' R&B, and a
...surprising number of them would skyrocket to success, including
Little Bill and the Bluenotes, the Wailers, Ron Holden, Paul Revere
and the Raiders, the Kingsmen, Merrilee Rush, and the Sonics.
With entertaining accounts gleaned from hundreds of interviews,
Peter Blecha tells the story of music in the Pacific Northwest from
the 1940s to the 1960s, a golden era that shaped generations of
musicians to come. The local R&B scene evolved from the area's
vibrant jazz scene, and Blecha illuminates the musical continuum
between Ray Charles (who cut his first record in Seattle) and
Quincy Jones to the rock 'n' rollers who forged the classic
jazz-tinged "Northwest Sound." DJs built a teen dance circuit that
the authorities didn't like but whose popularity pushed bands to
develop crowd-friendly beats. Do-it-yourself enthusiasts launched
groundbreaking record companies that scored a surprising number of
hit songs.
Highlighting key but overlooked figures and offering a new look
at well-known musicians (such as an obscure guitarist then known as
Jimmy Hendrix), Blecha shows how an isolated region launched
influential new sounds upon an unsuspecting world.
InI'm Feeling the Blues Right Now: Blues Tourism and the Mississippi Delta, Stephen A. King reveals the strategies used by blues promoters and organizers in Mississippi, both African American and ...white, local and state, to attract the attention of tourists. In the process, he reveals how promotional materials portray the Delta's blues culture and its musicians. Those involved in selling the blues in Mississippi work to promote the music while often conveniently forgetting the state's historical record of racial and economic injustice. King's research includes numerous interviews with blues musicians and promoters, chambers of commerce, local and regional tourism entities, and members of the Mississippi Blues Commission.
This book is the first critical account of Mississippi's blues tourism industry. From the late 1970s until 2000, Mississippi's blues tourism industry was fragmented, decentralized, and localized, as each community competed for tourist dollars. By 2003-2004, with the creation of the Mississippi Blues Commission, the promotion of the blues became more centralized as state government played an increasing role in promoting Mississippi's blues heritage. Blues tourism has the potential to generate new revenue in one of the poorest states in the country, repair the state's public image, and serve as a vehicle for racial reconciliation.
Blues Legacy Whiteis, David
10/2019, Letnik:
476
eBook
Chicago blues musicians parlayed a genius for innovation and emotional honesty into a music revered around the world. As the blues evolves, it continues to provide a soundtrack to, and a dynamic ...commentary on, the African American experience: the legacy of slavery; historic promises and betrayals; opportunity and disenfranchisement; the ongoing struggle for freedom. Through it all, the blues remains steeped in survivorship and triumph, a music that dares to stare down life in all its injustice and iniquity and still laugh--and dance--in its face.
David Whiteis delves into how the current and upcoming Chicago blues generations carry on this legacy. Drawing on in-person interviews, Whiteis places the artists within the ongoing social and cultural reality their work reflects and helps create. Beginning with James Cotton, Eddie Shaw, and other bequeathers, he moves through an all-star council of elders like Otis Rush and Buddy Guy and on to inheritors and today's heirs apparent like Ronnie Baker Brooks, Shemekia Copeland, and Nellie "Tiger" Travis.
Insightful and wide-ranging, Blues Legacy reveals a constantly adapting art form that, whatever the challenges, maintains its links to a rich musical past.
Michael Urban chronicles the advent of blues music in Russia and explores the significance of the genre in the turbulent, postcommunist society. Russians, he explains, have taken a music originating ...in the low culture of the American South and transformed it into an object of high culture, fashioning a social identity that distinguishes blues adherents from both the discredited Soviet past and the vulgar consumerism associated with the country's Westernization. While adapting the idiom to their own conditions, Russia's bliuzmeny (bluesmen) have absorbed the blues ethos encoded in the music by their American forebears, using it to invert their social world, thus deriving dignity and satisfaction from those very things that give one the blues. Based on more than forty interviews with blues musicians and fans, nightclub managers, and others, Russia Gets the Blues reveals the fascinating history of blues in Russia, from the initial mimicry of British blues-rock to the recent emergence of a specifically Russian blues. The gradual mastering of the idiom in Russia has been conditioned by the culture of the country's intelligentsia, a fact explaining why, on one hand, bliuzmeny feel compelled to proselytize on behalf of the music, to share with others this treasure of world culture, while, on the other, they perform blues almost exclusively in English—which almost no one understands—and condemn any and all efforts to make the music commercially successful.
Named one of the world’s great blues-rock guitarists by Rolling Stone, Mike Bloomfield (1943–1981) remains beloved by fans forty years after his untimely death. Taking readers backstage, onstage, and ...into the recording studio with this legendary virtuoso, David Dann tells the riveting stories behind Bloomfield’s work in the seminal Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the mesmerizing Electric Flag, as well as on the Super Session album with Al Kooper and Stephen Stills, Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, and soundtrack work with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson. In vivid chapters drawn from meticulous research, including more than seventy interviews with the musician’s friends, relatives, and band members, music historian David Dann brings to life Bloomfield’s worlds, from his comfortable upbringing in a Jewish family on Chicago’s North Shore to the gritty taverns and raucous nightclubs where this self-taught guitarist helped transform the sound of contemporary blues and rock music. With scenes that are as electrifying as Bloomfield’s solos, this is the story of a life lived at full volume.
