It started with a question about the blues: what makes the music of the downtrodden black man so alluring to white middle-class ears? And that’s where it gets interesting. Because blues is more than a musical genre: it’s a cultural phenomenon that spans several centuries on both sides of the Atlantic, from slavery to Black Lives Matter, from Jan van Riebeeck to Fees Must Fall, from Robert Johnson to Abdullah Ibrahim.

In Blues for the White Man, Fred de Vries looks for answers in America’s Deep South, drawing historical parallels with South Africa’s experience of colonialism, slavery, racism, civil war, segregation and protest. Travelling to Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta, De Vries speaks to musicians, Black Lives Matter activists and Trump supporters. He continues the conversation in South Africa, interviewing student protesters, white farmers and political thought-leaders to develop an understanding of white supremacy and black anger, white fear and black pain.

A fascinating, insightful journey through time and space, Blues for the White Man is a celebration of multiculturalism and a plea for white people to do some ‘second line dancing’ for a change.

Blues history is steeped in Chicago's sidewalks; it floats out of its restaurants, airport lounges and department stores. It is a fundamental part of the city's heritage that every resident should know and every visitor should be afraid to miss. Allow Rosalind Cummings-Yeates to take you inside the Checkerboard and Gerri's Palm Tavern, where folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Ma Rainey transformed Chicago into the blues mecca. Continue on to explore the contemporary blues scene and discover the best spots to hear the purest sounds of Sweet Home Chicago.

In June of 1964, three young, white blues fans set out from New York City in a Volkswagen, heading for the Mississippi Delta in search of a musical legend. So begins Preachin' the Blues, the biography of American blues signer and guitarist Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (1902 - 1988). House pioneered an innovative style, incorporating strong repetitive rhythms with elements of southern gospel and spiritual vocals. A seminal figure in the history of the Delta blues, he was an important, direct influence on such figures as Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson.
The landscape of Son House's life and the vicissitudes he endured make for an absorbing narrative, threaded through with a tension between House's religious beliefs and his spells of commitment to a lifestyle that implicitly rejected it. Drinking, womanizing, and singing the blues caused this tension that is palpable in his music, and becomes explicit in one of his finest performances, "Preachin' the Blues." Large parts of House's life are obscure, not least because his own accounts of them were inconsistent. Author Daniel Beaumont offers a chronology/topography of House's youth, taking into account evidence that conflicts sharply with the well-worn fable, and he illuminates the obscurity of House's two decades in Rochester, NY between his departure from Mississippi in the 1940s and his "rediscovery" by members of the Folk Revival Movement in 1964. Beaumont gives a detailed and perceptive account of House's primary musical legacy: his recordings for Paramount in 1930 and for the Library of Congress in 1941-42. In the course of his research Beaumont has unearthed not only connections among the many scattered facts and fictions but new information about a rumoured murder in Mississippi, and a charge of manslaughter on Long Island - incidents which bring tragic light upon House's lifelong struggles and self-imposed disappearance, and give trenchant meaning to the moving music of this early blues legend.

Development Drowned and Reborn is a "Blues geography" of New Orleans, one that compels readers to return to the history of the Black freedom struggle there to reckon with its unfinished business. Reading contemporary policies of abandonment against the grain, Clyde Woods explores how Hurricane Katrina brought long-standing structures of domination into view. In so doing, Woods delineates the roots of neoliberalism in the region and a history of resistance. Written in dialogue with social movements, this book offers tools for comprehending the racist dynamics of U.S. culture and economy. Following his landmark study, Development Arrested, Woods turns to organic intellectuals, Blues musicians, and poor and working people to instruct readers in this future-oriented history of struggle. Through this unique optic, Woods delineates a history, methodology, and epistemology to grasp alternative visions of development. Woods contributes to debates about the history and geography of neoliberalism. The book suggests that the prevailing focus on neoliberalism at national and global scales has led to a neglect of the regional scale. Specifically, it observes that theories of neoliberalism have tended to overlook New Orleans as an epicenter where racial, class, gender, and regional hierarchies have persisted for centuries. Through this Blues geography, Woods excavates the struggle for a new society.

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.

The study of jazz comes of age with this anthology. One of the first books to consider jazz outside of established critical modes, Jazz Among the Discourses brings together scholars from an array of disciplines to question and revise conventional methods of writing and thinking about jazz. Challenging "official jazz histories," the contributors to this volume view jazz through the lenses of comparative literature; African American studies; music, film, and communication theory; English literature; American studies; history; and philosophy. With uncommon rigor and imagination, their essays probe the influence of various discourses-journalism, scholarship, politics, oral history, and entertainment-on writing about jazz. Employing modes of criticism and theory that have transformed study in the humanities, they address questions seldom if ever raised in jazz writing: What are the implications of building jazz history around the medium of the phonograph record? Why did jazz writers first make the claim that jazz is an art? How is an African American aesthetic articulated through the music? What are the consequences of the interaction between the critic and the jazz artist? How does the improvising artist navigate between chaos and discipline? Along with its companion volume, Representing Jazz, this versatile anthology marks the arrival of jazz studies as a mature, intellectually independent discipline. Its rethinking of conventional jazz discourse will further strengthen the position of jazz studies within the academy.Contributors. John Corbett, Steven B. Elworth, Krin Gabbard, Bernard Gendron, William Howland Kenney, Eric Lott, Nathaniel Mackey, Burton Peretti, Ronald M. Radano, Jed Rasula, Lorenzo Thomas, Robert Walser

Over the course of his long career, legendary bluesman William ""Big Bill"" Broonzy (1893@-1958) helped shape the trajectory of the genre, from its roots in the rural Mississippi River Delta, through its rise as a popular genre in the north, to its eventual international acclaim. Along the way, Broonzy adopted an evolving personal and professional identity, tailoring his self-presentation to the demands of the place and time. His remarkable professional fluidity mirrored the range of expectations from his audiences, whose ideas about race, national belonging, identity, and the blues were refracted through Broonzy as if through a prism. Kevin D. Greene argues that Broonzy's popular success testifies to his ability to navigate the cultural expectations of his different audiences. However, this constant reinvention came at a personal and professional cost. Using Broonzy's multifaceted career, Greene situates blues performance at the center of understanding African American self-presentation and racial identity in the first half of the twentieth century. Through Broonzy's life and times, Greene assesses major themes and events in African American history, including the Great Migration, urbanization, and black expatriate encounters with European culture consumers. Drawing on a range of historical source materials as well as oral histories and personal archives held by Broonzy's son, Greene perceptively interrogates how notions of race, gender, and audience reception continue to shape concepts of folk culture and musical authenticity.

Is jazz a universal idiom or is it an African-American art form? Although whites have been playing jazz almost since it first developed, the history of jazz has been forged by a series of African-American artists whose styles caught the interest of their musical generation--masters such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker. Whether or not white musicians deserve their secondary status in jazz history, one thing is clear: developments in jazz have been a result of black people's search for a meaningful identity as Americans and members of the African diaspora. Blacks are not alone in being deeply affected by these shifts in African-American racial attitudes and cultural strategies. Historically in closer contact with blacks than nearly any other group of white Americans, white jazz musicians have also felt these shifts. More importantly, their careers and musical interests have been deeply affected by them. The author, an active participant in the jazz world as composer, performer, and author of several books on jazz and Latin music, hopes that this book will encourage jazz lovers to take a rhetoric-free look at the charged issue of race as has affected the world of jazz.

A work about the formulation of identity in the face of racial difference, the book considers topics such as the promotion of black Southern culture and inner-city styles like rhythm and blues and rap as a means of achieving black racial solidarity. It discusses the body of music fostered by an identification to Africa, the conversion of black jazz musicians to Islam and other Eastern religions, and the impact of a jazz community united by heroin use. White jazz musicians who identify with black culture in an unsettling form by speaking black dialect and calling themselves African-American is examined, as is the assimilation of jazz into the wider American culture.

Albert provides a survey of the impact of jazz on both American and foreign fiction, along with an annotated listing of almost 400 short stories, novels, plays, and jazz fiction criticism. Access is augmented by an index of novels, plays, and short stories and by a general index. Albert examines the strong impact jazz and the blues have had on fiction. The annotated listing of 400 novels, short stories, and jazz fiction criticism will serve as a resource for those doing research in both music and literature, as well as serving as a reading guide for jazz devotees who are looking for literature with a jazz motif. Access is augmented by an index of novels, plays, and short stories and by a general index.

This reference work details Frank Sinatra's extensive creative accomplishments and includes biographical information as it relates to his art. A valuable tool for researchers and fans, this book provides access to extensive data, collected from disparate sources, including the first published listing of Internet resources. The information is divided into three parts, each arranged alphabetically, and covers his music, film, radio, and television appearances, and his concerts and humanitarian contributions. A thorough bibliography provides important information on locating additional resources. The only American performer to span seven decades of recording (1930s-1990s), Sinatra is regarded as an American icon. The wealth of information in this reference attests to Sinatra's well-earned reputation as an American musical legend. This reference aptly includes information not only about his creative endeavors but about his humanitarian efforts as well. Because Sinatra is recognized and admired for his musical talent, a large portion of this reference is devoted to his songs and recordings. The alphabetical arrangements of song entries includes information on the songs, record labels, arrangers, and recording dates. Three appendices at the end of the volume provide additional information about the recordings. The encyclopedia concludes with the many awards and honors bestowed upon Sinatra.

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK Bessie Smith: singer, icon, pioneer. Scotland's National Poet Jackie Kay brings to life the tempestuous story of the greatest blues singer who ever lived. 'A gem of a book . . . beautiful.' BERNARDINE EVARISTO 'A wonderful writer on a magnificent singer.' ROBERT WYATT 'Kay's book is the amplifier that Smith's voice deserves.' SUNDAY TIMES 'The most vivid evocation of Bessie Smith I have ever read.' IAN CARR, BBC MUSIC BESSIE SMITH was born in Tennessee in 1894. Orphaned by the age of nine, she sang on street corners before becoming a big name in travelling shows. In 1923 she made her first recording for a new start-up called Columbia Records. It sold 780,000 copies and made her a star. Smith's life was notoriously difficult: she drank pints of 'bathtub gin', got into violent fist fights, spent huge sums of money and had passionate love affairs with men and women. She once single-handedly fought off a cohort of the Ku Klux Klan. As a young black girl growing up in Glasgow, Jackie Kay found in Bessie someone with whom she could identify and who she could idolise. In this remarkable book Kay mixes biography, fiction, poetry and prose to create an enthralling account of an extraordinary life. 'Biographies don't usually bring the subject to life again. This one did. I finished the book then started it again immediately.' PEGGY SEEGER 'What a life! What gulpable storytelling! Exactly the kind of writing about music we need: personal, ardent, playfully confrontational, questioning, undogmatic. A love song to a complicated idol.' KATE MOLLESON 'Pure joy: one trailblazing woman pays tribute to another. Jackie Kay finds the music in the short, dazzling, capricious life of Bessie Smith.' HELEN LEWIS

The harmonica is one of the most important, yet overlooked, instruments in music. This definitive volume celebrates the history of the world's most popular musical device, its impact on various forms of music, folk, country, blues, rock, jazz and classical music. The author traces the development of the harmonica from the ancient Chinese sheng to futuristic harmonica sythesizers. Nearly seventy harmonica masters are profiled including Stevie Wonder, Little Walter, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Reed, Charlie McCoy, Sonny Terry, and John Popper. This updated edition includes an extensive new afterword, an expanded discography of the finest harmonica recordings, and a listing of the best harmonica resources on the internet.

Early Jazz is one of the seminal books on American jazz, ranging from the beginnings of jazz as a distinct musical style at the turn of the century to its first great flowering in the 1930s. Schuller explores the music of the great jazz soloists of the twenties--Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and others--and the big bands and arrangers--Fletcher Henderson, Bennie Moten, and especially Duke Ellington--placing their music in the context of the other musical cultures of the twentieth century and offering analyses of many great jazz recordings.
Early Jazz provides a musical tour of the early American jazz world. A classic study, it is both a splendid introduction for students and an insightful guide for scholars, musicians, and jazz aficionados.

Containing over 500 annotated entries for individual poets and several anthologies, this work presents a substantial collection of poems that have been inspired by blues and jazz. Thousands of poems written between 1916 and the present are included. References to individual jazz figures addressed in the poetry are cross-referenced. The range of poems includes homages to jazz musicians and work written primarily to be read with jazz accompaniment. This wide selection of poetry offers a unique guide to the poetry inspired by jazz musicians and their music.

Of interest to scholars and jazz enthusiasts alike, this substantial bibliography, annotated by author and cross-referenced by musician, presents a wealth of information previously unavailable in a single source. The jazz-related poetry identified will attract a range of writers and musicians. Furthermore, the broad variety of poets and anthologies presented crosses many boundaries and will also interest scholars of 20th century poetry, African American literature, and American literature.

One of the greats of blues music, Willie Dixon was a recording artist whose abilities extended beyond that of bass player. A singer, songwriter, arranger, and producer, Dixon's work influenced countless artists across the music spectrum. In Willie Dixon: Preacher of the Blues, Mitsutoshi Inaba examines Dixon's career, from his earliest recordings with the Five Breezes through his major work with Chess Records and Cobra Records. Focusing on Dixon's work on the Chicago blues from the 1940s to the early 1970s, this book details the development of Dixon's songwriting techniques from his early professional career to his mature period and compares the compositions he provided for different artists. This volume also explores Dixon's philosophy of songwriting and its social, historical, and cultural background. This is the first study to discuss his compositions in an African American cultural context, drawing upon interviews with his family and former band members. This volume also includes a detailed list of Dixon's session work, in which his compositions are chronologically organized.

A Danish musician here presents the most accurate, comprehensive work on a major figure in American jazz: Lester Willis Young (1909-1959), better known as Pres' or Prez, ' from the nickname President' given to him by Billie Holiday. Based on interviews with Young's colleagues and friends, and often presenting his own vulgar scatological words, the book faithfully chronicles the ups and downs of his life and career. Despite his alcoholism, drug addiction, syphillis, epilepsy, and emotional disturbances, Young became the outstanding tenor saxophonist of his time and a dominant, profound influence on the development of bop and progressive (cool') jazz in the 1940s. His solos with the bands of Fletcher Henderson and Count Basie and his collaboration with Holiday are recalled in this outstanding biography. "Publishers Weekly"

This is] the big, warm book about Lester Young that swing lovers have been waiting for, written by a Danish jazz musician. This is a rich authentic life of one of the three greatest tenor players who ever lived, much of it told in vivid quotation from eyewitnesses. Kirkus this is the first thoroughgoing biography of one of America's greatest musicians; its fascination for at least jazz aficionados is magnetic....Along with Porter's magisterial work of musical analysis, Lester Young, this is the book to have on the most influential jazzman between Armstrong and Parker. "Booklist"

A fascinating and invaluable compilation of raw material...a straightforward, accurate narrative.

"The New York TimeS"

By far the most comprehensive work available on the extraordinary Lester Young, "You Just Fight For Your Life" is the jazz enthusiast's dream come true. Meticulously researched and teeming with previously unpublished information, this book accurately recreates the life and character of one of the world's greatest jazz musicians. Historian Frank Buchmann-Moller crafts a full length biography exclusively for Lester Young fans focusing on Young's philosophy of life, his exceptional ability as a bandleader, and his sharp wit. Through the examination of army psychiatric reports, interviews with fellow musicians, and concert reviews, "You Just Fight For Your Life" tells the story of this gifted yet troubled musician.

Beginning with his childhood, the book accurately chronicles the many bands in which Lester Young played prior to joining Count Basie in 1936. Through countless interviews with Young's peers, the book recounts the Basie years and the spicy stories of life on the road. The author includes new information about Young's own first band and follows this with details of his military experience. The final chapters deal with his years as featured soloist. Two appendices list all of Young's jobs from 1919-59 and his own bands chronologically as well as all musicians with whom he played. Now Lester Young followers have a full length biography valuable not only as a reference but for its recreation of a fascinating life.

The first book by David Dicaire, Blues Singers: Biographies of 50 Legendary Artists of the Early 20th Century, (McFarland, 1999), included pioneers, innovators, superstars, and cult heroes of blues music born before 1940. This second work covers those born after 1940 who have continued the tradition. This work has five sections, each with its own introduction. The first, Modern Acoustic Blues, covers artists that are major players on the acoustic blues scene of recent time, such as John Hammond, Jr. The second, Contemporary Chicago Blues, features artists of amplified, citified, gritty blues (Paul Butterfield and Melvin Taylor, among others). Section three, Modern American Electric Blues, includes some Texas blues singers such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmie Vaughan and examines how the blues have spread throughout the United States. Contemporary Blues Women are in section four. Section five, Blues Around the World, covers artists from four different continents and twelve different countries. Each entry provides biographical and critical information on the artist, and a complete discography. A bibliography and supplemental discographies are also provided.

This work puts together in one volume all the book and scholarly materials related to jazz lives and organizes them in such a way that the reader, at a glance, can see the entire sweep of writings on a given artist and grasp the nature of their contents. The bibliography includes many different kinds of biographical source material published in all languages from 1921 to the present, such as biographies, autobiographies, interview collections, musical treatises, bio-discographies, anthologies of newspaper articles, Master theses, and Ph.D. dissertations. With few exceptions, a work of at least 50 pages in length merits inclusion, providing it has a substantive biographical component or aids jazz research. The main section of the work is an alphabetical listing of sources on individual jazz artists and ensembles. Jazz artists, as defined by Carner, are those who have made their mark as jazz performers and who have led the "jazz life," playing the clubs and "joints," not the "legitimate" concert stage, Broadway, Las Vegas, or the like. Thus, musicians such as Ray Charles or Frank Sinatra, who have recorded and performed with jazz ensembles, do not qualify for inclusion. Each bonafide jazz musician is given a separate section with birth, death, and primary instrumentation provided. Biographical sources about the artist or ensemble follow. Each entry is annotated to differentiate it from another and to present basic data on the source's content, such as the inclusion of a discography, bibliography, music examples and transcriptions, footnotes, indexes, illustrations, filmographies, and glossaries. An invaluable tool for jazz researchers and historians, Jazz Performers will also appeal tojazz enthusiasts in general.