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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
scholarship
scholarship
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loscott
3 posts
Feb 03, 2012
9:48 AM
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I was wondering what are some of the foundational studies of blues scholarship. I’ve read Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues as well as Elijah Wald’s biography of Robert Johnson and Stephen Calt’s biography Skip James. From passing remarks on this forum, I have gathered the Glover/Dirks/Gaines bio of Little Walter is something I should add to my reading list. I also plan to read the Honeyboy Edwards’ autobiography and Alan Lomax’s The Land Where the Blues Began.
The following two threads seem to offer a good amount of material:
http://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/board/board_topic/5560960/540527.htm
http://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/board/board_topic/5560960/1501642.htm
I have also found helpful some of the thoughts shared and sources cited in the following threads:
AG on the devil in blues:
http://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/board/board_topic/5560960/903366.htm
Issues of race in blues reception:
http://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/board/board_topic/5560960/522690.htm?page=1
As I look over the books people often recommend for general reading, it seems that biographies are disproportionally prevalent. I guess this makes sense for books targeted towards general audiences; the “life and times” of some blues great usually provides some pretty juicy reading. I really appreciated that Wald’s bio of RJ had a thesis, which it advanced (I thought) effectively. The Calt bio of Skip James was also fascinating, if not only for the insights it lent into the psyches of both its subject and its author. Calt also seems to have had a knack for writing both informative and provocative liner notes. I guess my question is where can I find literature that extends beyond the “life and times” of an individual musician. Is there an active scholarly community that investigates issues pertaining to blues music. What are the venues (journals, conferences, etc.) for this academic discourse?
I’ve heard it said that Palmer is “of his time,” but what does that mean? Isn’t all scholarship of its time? Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolution (1939) is certainly on some level preoccupied with European fascism as it details the rise of the Augustan regime. What are the pressing questions that contemporary blues scholarship seeks to answer?
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nacoran
5173 posts
Feb 03, 2012
12:24 PM
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Wow, that's a heady subject. I do most of my reading online these days, a small article here, a snippet there. The best I can do is offer this. Blues is often about the escape from oppression, whether it's oppression from race, or poverty or just a bad run of luck. I think one of the reasons Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads reverberates is it takes a man with nothing, not even a skill, and turns him into something, a man who can play like nobody else, but at a cost.
If you are down and have nothing the idea that you can sell your soul to the devil, or buy a lotto ticket, and the next day you'll have everything is pretty appealing. There is a certain Romanticism to the whole thing, an aching that you'd sell your soul if only someone would offer. I think the fact that most of the blues guys didn't get rich, and just laid themselves out there, selling their soul and getting double crossed by the record companies, makes it all the more tragic.
Then, if you look at something like Charlie Daniels' 'Devil Went Down to Georgia' you have sort of the reverse, the defiant stance of standing up to the devil, which if you think of him as the personification of what is holding you down instead of a literal devil, resonates with everyone who struggles to be best at what they do.
Sort of by accident my band has ended up with three original lyrics about the devil. In one, it's a straight forward send up of Charlie Daniels, except about a harp player and sillier, sort of making fun of the whole thing, (at least when I play the harmonica- if someone better was playing it might be more of a defy the devil sort of thing.) The second one is definitely more about the evil of man and a metaphorical devil. And the last one is more of a straight defiance thing like Charlie Daniels (no harp or fiddle though.) It's interesting though, because I didn't set out to write songs about the devil, it just sort of came out of writing the blues. Blues sort of winds itself around spiritual issues, even if you aren't particularly spiritual yourself.
Sorry I don't have any particular reading suggestions for you, except more of Adam's stuff.
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Nate
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jdblues
77 posts
Feb 05, 2012
12:21 PM
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For scholarship, I highly recommend Peter Guralnick's "Lost Highway" and "Feel Like Going Home."
My favorite book of all time is Milton Mezz Mezzrow's "Really the Blues." It's the memoir of a Jewish jazz musician discovering African American culture and becoming part of the black community in NY and Chicago. Regarding the music, it comes from the era when jazz and blues were hard to distinguish. (Think WC Handy.) It's not really scholarship, but it features deep insight on the relationship between race and music.
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kudzurunner
2974 posts
Feb 05, 2012
1:36 PM
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I've taught several different courses on the blues at the University of Mississippi. The most recent was a 500-level course called "Robert Johnson, the Devils' Music, and the Blues. I'm pasting extracts below, including the course description, the reading list, and the weekly reading assignments.
The point is, there's quite a lot of scholarship out there. Paul Oliver is the granddaddy of blues scholarship. I'd recommend Elijah Wald's book to anybody.
SST 598: Robert Johnson, The Devil’s Music, and the Blues: An Exploration in Black Southern Culture and Mythology (Spring 2011)
Tues. 4 – 6:30 PM in Barnard Observatory 108
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
The vexed figure of Delta bluesman Robert Johnson (1911-1938) sits at the center of what is arguably the most persistent mythology of the blues. He “sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads” we are told, in exchange for superhuman prowess on the guitar. Johnson’s purported soul-sale has provided fodder for a wide range of imaginative investments, from novels such as Ace Atkins’s Crossroad Blues and Walter Mosley’s R. L.’s Dream, to Hollywood films such as Crossroads, to early blues scholarship by fantasists such as Rudi Blesh and Greil Marcus. At the same time, revisionist scholars such as Elijah Wald, Patricia Schroeder, Barry Lee Pearson, and Bill McCullough have sharply criticized the myth-purveyors, regrounding Johnson in fresh, nuanced understandings of both his Delta milieu and the way in which his spectral figure has served various constituencies in contemporary America.
The question of Johnson’s devilish soul-sale at some unnamed southern crossroads opens out, in turn, into a larger dialogue about the relationship between black southern religions—Christianity, hoodoo, and voodoo—and the so-called “devil’s music”; between sacred and secular realms within black popular music as a whole. The persistence of African cultural elements (especially the crossroads spirits Legba and Esu) and the evangelizing of slave culture in the antebellum South are a part of this dialogue. Drawing on readings from a wide range of disciplines, we’ll explore all these issues and more.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Paul Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues
Jon Michael Spencer, Blues and Evil
Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
*Julio Finn, The Bluesman
Teresa L. Reed, The Holy Profane: Religion in Black Popular Music
John M. Giggie, After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875-1915
Ace Atkins, Crossroad Blues
Walter Mosley, R.L.’s Dream
Akira Hiramoto, Me and the Devil Blues 1: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson
**Crossroads [film] starring Ralph Macchio and Joe Seneca
selected secondary readings (see below)
SCHEDULE OF READINGS:
1/25: Introduction
“The Search for Robert Johnson” (documentary)
2/1: Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning
2/8: Spencer, Blues and Evil
Davis, “Who Is Eleggua? Trickster at the Crossroads”
Richards, “The Crossroads and the Myth of the Mississippi Delta Bluesman”
C&R papers due from 1’s
2/15: Wald, Escaping the Delta (pp. xiii-102, 194-249)
Nardone, “Roomful of Blues: Jukejoints and the Cultural Landscape of the Mississippi Delta”
C&R papers due from 2’s
2/22: Finn, The Bluesman
Kubik, Africa and the Blues (brief selection)
Epstein, “Conversion to Christianity”
C&R papers due from 3’s
3/1: Giggie, After Redemption
Gussow, “Heaven and Hell Parties: Ministers, Bluesmen, and Black Youth in the Mississippi Delta, 1920-1942”
C&R papers due from 1’s
3/8: Reed, The Holy Profane
Sacre´, “The Saints and the Sinners Under the Swing of the Cross”
Humphrey, “Prodigal Sons: Son House and Robert Wilkins”
Springer, “God’s Music vs. The Devil’s Music: The Evidence from Blues Lyrics”
3/15: spring break - no seminar
3/22: Wald, Escaping the Delta (pp.105-189, 250-276)
Wardlow, “Stop, Look and Listen at the Crossroad”
Pearson and McCullough, Robert Johnson Lost and Found (selections)
Lipsitz, “White Desire: Remembering Robert Johnson”
C&R papers due from 2’s
3/29: Harris, Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil
Hyatt, “Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork” (selections)
Smith, “Blues, Criticism, and the Signifying Trickster”
C&R papers due from 3’s
4/5: Crossroads (film)
Fitzsimmons, “Hellhound on My Trail: Crossroads and the Racist Ravishment”
Note: in order to make room for a screening of the film and subsequent discussion, class will be extended until 7 PM. Our seminar will meet in Bondurant auditorium and will be joined by Dr. Ownby’s SST 402 class.
C&R papers due from 1’s. Please email papers to instructor by Friday 4/8 at 4 PM
4/12: Atkins, Crossroad Blues
Lieberfeld, “Million-Dollar Juke Joint: Commodifying Blues Culture”
C&R papers due from 2’s
4/19: Mosley, RL’s Dream
Schroeder, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference”
C&R papers due from 3’s
4/26: Hiramoto, Me and the Devil Blues
Schroeder, “Robert Johnson as Contested Space”
5/3: Oral presentations on research projects (5 minute summary, with questions by instructor and students)
Last Edited by on Feb 05, 2012 1:39 PM
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loscott
4 posts
Feb 05, 2012
10:06 PM
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Thank you so much. This syllabus is incredibly helpful. My college unfortunately never offered any such course and all my education on the subject had to be self-taught. I know that you are working on a book about the devil and blues. I look forward to reading it as well as the material you've just provided.
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Andrew
1556 posts
Feb 06, 2012
5:28 AM
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Adam, doesn't your course examine the myth as part of the tradition of Faust and Paganini myths and, doubtless, numerous others? (I guess the archetype is Adam and Eve)
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Andrew.
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blogward
162 posts
Feb 06, 2012
8:00 AM
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One question that needs answering is, "Who was the first person to play the diatonic harmonica the wrong way round?"
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