kudzurunner
1228 posts
Mar 12, 2010
10:04 AM
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Folks: This time I'm not exaggerating. For anybody reading this who might live in or near Mississippi and wants to be among the first to see some very unusual footage, please read the following--and see the final paragraph for the interesting stuff.
"On Friday, March 26, at 1:00 p.m., poet and scholar Tony Bolden will give the annual Early Wright Lecture at the Department of Archives and Special Collections Center on the third floor of the J.D. Williams Library on the University of Mississippi campus.
"Bolden, an associate professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Kansas, was a panelist in several of the early Blues Today Symposia sponsored by Living Blues. Organized through the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Living Blues, and the Blues Archive, Bolden's lecture will be entitled "The Epistemology of Blue/Funk."
""What I'm proposing to do," says Bolden, "is provide a brief overview of the early history of funk, particularly as it relates to the blues idiom." ?Buddy Bolden, Bessie, Duke, as well as a few literary texts that are pertinent to the discussion." Bolden is the author of Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture (2004) and the editor of The Funk Era and Beyond: New Perspectives on Black Popular Culture (2008). He is currently at work on a book-length study that traces the history of the funk principle from its association with the blues to its subsequent manifestation in swing, soul, funk (as such), and hip-hop.
"Bolden will be the eighth invited guest to deliver the Early Wright Lecture, an endowed series created in the name of Mississippi's first African American disc jockey, a legend who spun blues records for decades on Clarksdale's WROX. Wright's colleague at RWOX, David Havens, established the fund. Previous lecturers have included Stanley Crouch, Paul Oliver, Samuel Charters, and William Ferris.
"Following the Early Wright lecture, two archivists from the University of Georgia, Margaret Compton and Renna Tuten, will show two silent home movies shot on 8mm Kodachrome film stock dating to c. 1942 and 1952 from the family of Rayburn Moore, son of Max Moore, founder of Interstate Grocery and creator King Biscuit Flour. The earlier film (4 minutes long) depicts Robert Junior Lockwood and Sonny Boy Williamson performing together on the porch of a country grocery store in Arkansas, and the later film (12 minutes long) shows segments from a 1952 bus tour through Arkansas with Williamson and various King Biscuit Time band members performing."
A 1952 tour with Sonny Boy tour down through Arkansas! I'll see you there.....
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