MCCLENNAN, TOMMY
“Bottle It Up and Go,” Bluebird, Chicago, 1939. Tommy McClennan: The Complete Recordings, vol. 1:1939-1940, Document DOCD 5669.
“Cotton Patch Blues” (with Robert Petway), Bluebird, Chicago, 1939. Cotton Pickin Blues, Acrobat CIT-570.
“New Highway 51,” Bluebird, Chicago, 1940. Tommy McClennan: The Complete Recordings, vol. 1:1939-1940, Document DOCD 5669.
MCCOY, “KANSAS” JOE
“When the Levee Breaks” (with Memphis Minnie), Columbia, New York, 1929. Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe, vol. 1:1929-1930, Document DOCD 5028.
MCDOWELL, MISSISSIPPI FRED
“Highway 61” Prestige Records, Como, Miss., 1959. Mississippi Fred McDowell, Rounder 612138.
MCFADDEN, CHARLES “SPECKS”
“Harvest Moon Blues,” Brunswick, Chicago, 1929. Charles “Specks”McFadden: Complete Recorded Works, 1929-1937, Document BDCD 6041.
MEMPHIS JUG BAND
“Cocaine Habit Blues,” Victor, Memphis, 1930. Memphis Jug Band: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 3:1930, Document DOCD 5023.
MILLINDER, LUCIUS “LUCKY”
“We’re Gonna Have to Slap the Dirty Little Jap,” Decca, New York, 1942. Lucky Millinder and His Orchestra: Let It Roll Again, Jukebox JB 613.
MISSISSIPPI SHEIKS
“Sittin’ On Top of the World,” Okeh, Shreveport, La., 1930. Honey Babe Let the Deal Go Down: The Best of the Mississippi Sheiks, Columbia/Legacy 65709.
MOORE, ALICE
“Black and Evil Blues,” Paramount, Richmond, Ind., 1929. The Paramount Masters, JSP JSPCD 7723.
MORTON, JELLY ROLL
“Beale Street Blues,” Victor, Chicago, 1927. Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers, vol. 2: From Chicago to New York, Jazz Archives HS 15119.
MOSS, BUDDY
“Chesterfield,” Columbia, Nashville, 1966. Buddy Moss: Rediscovery, Biograph BLP 12019.
PALMER, SYLVESTER
“Broke Man Blues,” Columbia, Chicago, 1929. St. Louis Barrelhouse Blues, 1929-1934: The Complete Recorded Works of Wessley Wallace, Henry Brown, & Associates, Document DOCD 5104.
PATTON, CHARLEY
“Green River Blues” and “High Water Everywhere, Pts. 1 & 2,” Paramount, Grafton, Wisc., 1929. Charley Patton: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 2: 1929, Document DOCD 5010.
PULLUM, JOE
“CWA Blues,” Bluebird, San Antonio, 1934. Joe Pullum: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 1: 1934-1935, Document DOCD 5393.
“Joe Louis is the Man,” Bluebird, San Antonio, 1935. Joe Pullum: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 2:1935-1951, Document DOCD 5394.
ROBISON, CARSON
“We’re Gonna Have to Slap the Dirty Little Jap,” Bluebird, 1942. Carson Robison: A Real Hillbilly Legend, Cattle CCD 265.
ROLAND, WALTER (ALABAMA SAM)
“Red Cross Blues” and “Red Cross Blues No. 2,” Banner, New York, 1933. Walter Roland: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 1:1933, Document DOCD 5144.
“CWA Blues,” Banner, New York, 1934. Walter Roland: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 2: 1934-1935, Document DOCD 5145.
SCOTT, SONNY
“Red Cross Blues No. 2,” Vocalion, New York, 1933. Alabama and the East Coast: 19331937, Document DOCD 5450.
SHORT, J. D.
“She Got Jordan River in Her Hips,” Victor, Louisville, Ky., 1931. Good Time Blues: St. Louis, 1926-1932, Mamlish LP S3805.
“It’s Hard Time,” Bluebird, Chicago, 1933. St. Louis Country Blues: 1929-37, Document DOCD 5147.
SMITH, BESSIE
“Yellow Dog Blues,” Columbia, New York, 1925. Broadcasting the Blues: Black Blues in the Segregation Era, Document DOCD 322010.
“Muddy Water (A Mississippi Moan),” Columbia, New York, 1927. Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Son House, Columbia CK 90493.
SPAND, CHARLIE
“Hard Time Blues,” Paramount, Grafton, Wisc., 1931. Charlie Spand: The Complete Para-mounts: 1929-31, Document DOCD 5108.
SPECKLED RED (RUFUS PERRYMAN)
“Welfare Blues,” Bluebird, Aurora, Ill., 1938. Speckled Red: Complete Recorded Works, 1929-1938, Document DOCD 5205.
SYKES, ROOSEVELT
“Training Camp Blues,” Okeh, Chicago, 1941. Roosevelt Sykes: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 7:1941-1944, Document DOCD 5122.
“Southern Blues,” Victor, Chicago, 1948. Roosevelt Sykes: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 9:1947-1951, Document BCDC 6049.
TAMPA RED (HUDSON WHITTAKER)
“I. C. Moan,” Melotone, Chicago, 1930. Tampa Red: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 3:1929-1930, Document DOCD 5075.
“Depression Blues,” Vocalion, Chicago, 1931. Tampa Red: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 4:1930-1931, Document DOCD 5076.
“Things ‘Bout Coming My Way,” Vocalion, loc. unavailable, 1931. Tampa Red: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 5, Document DOCD 5077.
WASHBOARD SAM (ROBERT BROWN)
“River Hip Mama,” Bluebird, Chicago, 1934. Washboard Sam: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 6:1941-1942, Document DOCD 5176.
“CCC Blues,” Bluebird, Chicago, 1938. Washboard Sam: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 3:1938, Document DOCD 5173.
WASHINGTON, INEZ
“Soldier Man Blues” (with the Four Dukes of Rhythm), Cincinnati Records, Cincinnati, 1945. 1940s Vocal Group Harmony, vol. 1, Tone Productions TP124.
WATERFORD, CHARLES
“L. A. Blues,” Capitol, Los Angeles, 1947. Crown Prince Waterford, 1946-1950, Classics Jazz 5024.
WATERS, MUDDY (MCKINLEY MORGANFIELD)
“Country Blues” and “I Be’s Troubled,” Library of Congress, Stovall, Miss., 1941. Muddy Waters: The Complete Plantation Recordings, 1941-1942, Chess CHD 9344.
“I Can’t Be Satisfied” and “I Feel Like Going Home,” Aristocrat, Chicago, 1948. Muddy Waters: His Best, 1947 to 1955, Chess CHD 9370.
“Louisiana Blues,” Chess, Chicago, 1950. Muddy Waters: His Best, 1947 to 1955, Chess CHD 9370.
“Mannish Boy,” Chess, Chicago, 1955. Muddy Waters: His Best, 1947 to 1955, Chess CHD 9370.
WELDON, CASEY BILL
“Flood Water Blues No. 1” and “Flood Water Blues No. 2,” Vocalion, Chicago, 1936. Casey Bill Weldon: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 1:1935-1936, Document DOCD 5217.
“Casey Bill’s New WPA,” Vocalion, Chicago, 1937. Casey Bill Weldon: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 3:1937-1938, Document DOCD 5219.
WESTON, ARTHUR
“Uncle Sam Called Me (I Got To Go),” Testament, St. Louis, 1963. The Sound of the Delta, Testament Records 5012.
WHEATSTRAW, PEETIE (WILLIAM BUNCH)
“Tennessee Peaches,” Vocalion, Chicago, 1930. Peetie Wheatstraw: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 1:1930-1932, Document DOCD 5241.
“When I Get My Bonus (Things Will Be Coming My Way),” Decca, New York, 1936. Peetie Wheatstraw: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 3:1935-1936, Document DOCD 5243.
“Drinking Man Blues,” Decca, Chicago, 1936. Peetie Wheatstraw: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 4:1936-1937, Document DOCD 5244.
“Devilment Blues,” “Give Me Black or Brown,” “Working on the Project,” and “New Working On the Project,” Decca, Chicago, 1937. Peetie Wheatstraw: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 5:1937-1938, Document DOCD 5245.
“304 Blues,” “Cake Alley,” “Road Tramp Blues,” and “What More Can A Man Do?” Decca, New York, 1938. Peetie Wheatstraw: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 5: 1937-1938, Document DOCD 5245.
“Sinking Sun Blues,” Decca, New York, 1939. Peetie Wheatstraw: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 6:1938-1940, Document DOCD 5246.
“Chicago Mill Blues,” Decca, New York, 1940. Peetie Wheatstraw: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 6:1938-1940, Document DOCD 5246.
“Mr. Livinggood,” Decca, Chicago, 1941. Peetie Wheatstraw: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 7:1940-1941, Document DOCD 5247.
WHITE, JOSH
“Uncle Sam Says,” Keynote, New York, 1941. Josh White: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 4:1940-1941, Document DOCD 5405.
WILLIAMS, BIG JOE
<
br /> “Highway 49,” Bluebird, Chicago, 1935. Big Joe Williams: Break Em On Down; Complete Recorded Works, vol. 1:1935-1941, Document BDCD 6003.
“His Spirit Lives On,” Chicago Records, Chicago, 1945. Big Joe Williams, vol. 2 (1945-1949): Somebody’s Been Worrying Document BDCD 6004.
WILLIAMSON, JOHN LEE (SONNY BOY)
“Welfare Store Blues,” Bluebird, Chicago, 1940. The Original Sonny Boy Williamson, Col-lectables COL 5537.
“War Time Blues,” Bluebird, Chicago, 1940. Sonny Boy Williamson: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 3:1939-1941, Document DOCD 5057.
“We Got To Win,” Victor, Chicago, 1945. Sonny Boy Williamson: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 4:1941-1945, Document DOCD 5058.
“Sloppy Drunk Blues (Bring Me Another Half a Pint),” Victor, Chicago, 1947. The Original Sonny Boy Williamson, Collectables COL 5537.
Notes
SOUND CHECK
1. August Wilson, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), ix. For a concise discussion of the differences between female and male blues singers’ repertoires, performative contexts, and commercial value, see Bill Malone, Southern Music, American Music (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1979), 45-51; see also Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Pantheon, 1998), 8-41; and Daphne Duval Harrison, Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988).
2. Neil McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), xiv; see also James Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation, 2nd ed. (New York: Orbis Books, 1995), 119-22. I use the term Jim Crow to mean racial subjugation and oppression (segregation, disfranchisement, social custom, and terrorism) between the 1890s and 1950s, hoping to avoid some of the ambiguities that come with the exclusive use of the term segregation; see John Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 1-20.
3. Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Blues People: Negro Music in White America, 2nd ed. (New York: Quill, 1999), 65.
4. Richard Wright, introduction to Paul Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues (London: Cassell and Co., 1960; citations are to repr., New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), xv. Here and throughout, the phrase “Lower Mississippi Valley” refers to the floodplains and deltaic deposit areas of the Mississippi River, including the Yazoo and Mississippi floodplains in northwest Mississippi, eastern Arkansas and Louisiana (including the Red River valley), western Tennessee, and the “black belts” of western Alabama and eastern Texas. The term Mississippi Delta or, simply the Delta, refers only to the roughly fourteen counties comprising the Yazoo floodplain in Mississippi between Memphis and Vicksburg.
5. Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (New York: Amistad, 2004), 9.
6. Ted Ownby, American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), chapter 3, “You Don’t Want Nothing: Goods, Plantation Labor, and the Meanings of Freedom, 1865-1920s,” 61-81.
7. See Martin Scorsese, Feel Like Goin Home (Vulcan Productions and Road Movies, 2003) in the PBS series The Blues, produced by Martin Scorsese.
8. Ronald Radano, Lying Up a Nation: Race and Black Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), chapter 5, “Of Bodies and Souls: Feeling the Pulse of Modern Race Music,” 230-77.
9. W. C. Handy, “The Significance of the Blues,” The Freeman (1919), quoted in Lynn Abbott and Doug Serhoff, “ ‘They Cert’ly Sound Good to Me’: Sheet Music, Southern Vaudeville, and the Commercial Ascendancy of the Blues,” in David Evans, ed., Ramblin on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 70.
10. Wald, Escaping the Delta, 10.
11. Ted Gioia, Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music (New York: Norton, 2008), 5.
12. W. C. Handy, Father of the Blues: An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1941; citations are to repr., New York: Da Capo, 1991), 74.
13. W. C. Handy, “Beale Street Blues” (Memphis: Pace and Handy Music Co., 1917); the lyrics are taken from Jelly Roll Morton, “Beale Street Blues,” Victor 20948-A (Chicago, 1927).
14. Abbott and Serhoff, “They Cert’ly Sound Good to Me,” in Evans, Ramblin on My Mind, 92; Houston Stackhouse quoted in Gioia, Delta Blues, 120.
15. Gioia, Delta Blues, 37.
16. Pete Welding, “Ramblin’ Johnny Shines,” Living Blues 22 (July-August 1975): 29.
17. Wald, Escaping the Delta, 15.
18. Harrison, Black Pearls, 56-7.
19. Jim O’Neal, liner notes, Crescent City Blues, Bluebird LP5522 (New York, 1975), quoted in Wald, Escaping the Delta, 65; Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 228.
20. B. B. King and David Ritz, Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B. B. King (New York: Avon Books, 1996), 75.
21. Baraka, Blues People, 91.
22. Charles Keil, Urban Blues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 57-58.
23. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, ix. See also John Solomon Otto and Augustus Burns, “ ‘Tough Times’: Downhome Blues Recordings as Folk History,” Southern Quarterly 21 (Spring 1983): 27. Historians increasingly find evidence of southern blacks’ political identity in their material and cultural lives. The best example of this trend is what Gaines Foster labeled “a southern manifesto by a new generation of southern historians” to “expand their conception of political history by incorporating tools developed in cultural history.” Gaines Foster, review of Jumpin Jim Crow, ed. Jane Dailey et al., Journal of American History 88 (March 2002): 1539-40.
24. See Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619-1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), ix-xii. A thoughtful review of the resistance-accommodation debate in American slavery historiography is George M. Fredrickson and Christopher Lasch, “Resistance to Slavery,” Civil War History 13 (December 1967): 315-29.
25. The historiographical discussion in this section is more fully developed and illustrated in R. A. Lawson, “The First Century of Blues: One Hundred Years of Hearing and Interpreting the Music and Musicians,” Southern Cultures (Fall 2007): 39-61.
26. Paul Oliver, Aspects of the Blues Tradition (New York: Oak Publications, 1970), 9. See also Frederic Ramsey Jr., Been Here and Gone (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1960); Samuel Charters, The Country Blues (New York: Rinehart, 1959); and Charters, The Poetry of the Blues (New York: Oak Publications, 1963).
27. Representative of the musicologists’ studies of the blues are Jeff Todd Titon, Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977); and David Evans, Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Folk Blues (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).
28. See Adam Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Bruce Jackson, Wake Up Dead Man: Hard Labor and Southern Blues (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999); Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism; Jon Spencer, Blues and Evil (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993); Bill McCulloch and Barry Lee Pearson, Robert Johnson: Lost and Found (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003); Julio Finn, The Bluesman: The Musical Heritage of Black Men and Women in the Americas (New York: Quartet Books, 1986), 210-14; and Fred Hay and George Davidson, Goin’ Back to Sweet Memphis: Conversations with the Blues (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001); Wald, Escaping the Delta, xxiii.
29. Gerhard Kubik, “Bourdon, Blue Notes, and Pentatonism in the Blues: An Africanist Perspective,” in Evans, Ramblin on My Mind, 15; Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 102; and John Miller Chernoff, African Rhythm and A
frican Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 39-42.
30. John Lomax and Alan Lomax, American Ballads and Folksongs (New York: Macmillan, 1934); Newman White, American Negro Folk Songs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929); and John Work, American Negro Songs: A Comprehensive Collection of 230 Folk Songs, Religious and Secular (New York: Howell, Soskin and Co., 1940).
31. B. A. Botkin, “Folklore as a Neglected Source of Social History,” in Caroline Ware, ed., The Cultural Approach to History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), 312. See also Hortense Powdermaker, After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South (New York: Viking, 1939; citations are to 2nd ed., New York: Russell and Russell, 1968), 333.
32. Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning, 269-73; and Charters, The Poetry of the Blues, 9, 107-8. Willie Dixon quoted in Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 3.
33. Paul Garon, Blues and the Poetic Spirit (New York: Da Capo, 1979), 30; John Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest (New York: Octagon, 1970), vii-x; and Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, 119-22. See also Edna Edet, “100 Years of Black Protest Music,” Black Scholar 7 (July-August 1976): 38-48; Baraka, Blues People, 60-80; Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 159.
34. Antomn Dvorak quoted in A. H. Lawrence, Duke Ellington and His World: A Biography (New York: Routledge, 2001), 53.
35. Jeff Todd Titon, review of Blues and the Poetic Spirit, by Paul Garon, Ethnomusicology 27 (January 1983): 130.
36. Little Milton quoted in Wald, Escaping the Delta, 9.
37. From “Folk Singing,” Time, November 23, 1962, 60.
38. Keil, Urban Blues, 73-74. The following works inform this discussion of black cultural patterns: Shane White and Graham White, Styliri: African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998); Gena Dagel Caponi, “Introduction: The Case for an African American Aesthetic” in Caponi, ed., Signifyin(g), Sanctifyiri, and Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 1-41; Clyde Woods, Development Arrested: The Blues Tradition and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta (London: Verso, 1998); and Brian Ward, Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998).
Jim Crow's Counterculture Page 29
