H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman Series

Voices of the Mississippi Blues

William Ferris

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780807898529
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, folklorist William Ferris toured his home state of Mississippi, documenting the voices of African Americans as they spoke about and performed the diverse musical traditions that form the authentic roots of the blues. Now, Give My Poor Heart Ease puts front and center a searing selection of the artistically and emotionally rich voices from this invaluable documentary record. Illustrated with Ferris's photographs of the musicians and their communities and including a CD of original music, the book features more than twenty interviews relating frank, dramatic, and engaging narratives about black life and blues music in the heart of the American South. Here are the stories of artists who have long memories and speak eloquently about their lives, blues musicians who represent a wide range of musical traditions--from one-strand instruments, bottle-blowing, and banjo to spirituals, hymns, and prison work chants. Celebrities such as B. B. King and Willie Dixon, along with performers known best in their neighborhoods, express the full range of human and artistic experience--joyful and gritty, raw and painful. In an autobiographical introduction, Ferris reflects on how he fell in love with the vibrant musical culture that was all around him but was considered off limits to a white Mississippian during a troubled era. This magnificent volume illuminates blues music, the broader African American experience, and indeed the history and culture of America itself.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY, DISCOGRAPHY, FILMOGRAPHY, AND WEBSITES

When I began to study the blues in the late sixties, I found few books on the subject. With the exception of Howard Odum and Guy Johnson's The Negro and His Songs (1925) and Negro Workaday Songs (1926) and W. C. Handy's A Treasury of the Blues (1949) and Father of the Blues (1941), the pioneering studies of the blues were published in the sixties in England by Paul Oliver, Mike Leadbitter, and Neil Slaven and in the United States by William “Big Bill” Broonzy, Samuel Charters, Charles Keil, Harry Oster, and Frederick Ramsey Jr. In 1970 my book Blues from the Delta appeared in a series of blues studies edited by Paul Oliver and Tony Russell and published in England by Studio Vista.

Since that time, the number of books published on the blues in the United States has grown dramatically. Blues scholar David Evans has edited over seventy-three volumes—many of which deal with the blues—in his American Made Music Series at the University Press of Mississippi. Today the rich array of books listed below treat topics as varied as fife and drum music, work songs, the blues and jazz, regional blues styles, blues artists, black radio, the blues as literature, and the blues, rock and roll, and soul.

The number of sound recordings has undergone a similar explosion since the sixties. At that time, the Library of Congress and labels like Arhoolie, Atlantic, Belzona, Delmark, Folkways, Origin Jazz Label, Takoma, Testament, and Yazoo provided the only access to traditional blues recordings. Today major anthologies of field recordings done in Mississippi by David Evans, Alan and John Lomax, and George Mitchell are available. There are also many fine commercial recordings by blues artists like Willie Dixon and B. B. King.

In the sixties, virtually no films were available on blues. Since that time, numerous films on the subject have been produced. These range from documentaries by Les Blank and Alan Lomax to commercial productions like Walter Hill's Crossroads (1986) and Martin Scorsese's blues series, The Blues: A Musical Journey (2003). Many of these films are available for viewing on the Folkstreams website.

Websites that feature the blues are a dramatic new resource for the music. With over 219 million hits on the internet for the word “blues,” there is virtually no limit to the information, musical recordings, and films that are now accessible. The websites listed below are important resources for the study of the blues and its artists, and they include the sites of archival collections at the Columbia College Center for Black Music Research, the Center for Southern Folklore, the Delta Blues Museum, the Library of Congress, Living Blues magazine, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Mississippi Blues Archive, and the University of North Carolina Documenting the American South project.

Suffice it to say, when the recordings, photographs, and films in this book were made, neither the speakers nor I could have imagined that so much attention would one day focus on their music and culture. What follows is a selection of the print sources, sound recordings, films, and internet resources that help frame this work.

Aaron Smithers provided invaluable assistance in compiling these resources.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

BLUES AND JAZZ

Abbott, Lynn, and Doug Seroff. Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.

Buerkle, Jack V., and Danny Barker. Bourbon Street Black. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Hentoff, Nat. Jazz Country. New York: Dell, 1967.

Hodier, Andre. Jazz: Its Evolution and Its Essence. New York: Grove Press, 1956.

Jones, Le Roi. Black Music. New York: William Morrow, 1968.

———. Blues People. New York: William Morrow, 1963.

Lomax, Alan. Mister Jelly Roll. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1950.

Mezzrow, Mezz, and Bernard Wolfe. Really the Blues. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.

Sargeant, Winthrop. Jazz, Hot and Hybrid. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975.

Schuller, Gunther. Early Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.

Shapiro, Nat, and Nat Hentoff, eds. Hear Me Talkin' to Ya. New York: Dover, 1966.

Stearns, Marshall. The Story of Jazz. New York: New American Library, 1958.

Stearns, Marshall, and Jean Stearns. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. New York: Schirmer, 1964.

Wilmer, Valerie. Jazz People. London: Allison & Busby, 1970.

BLUES AND WHITE MUSIC

Baraka, Imamu Amiri. Blues People: Negro Music in White America. New York: William Morrow, 1999.

Groom, Bob. The Blues Revival. London: Studio Vista, 1971.

Malone, Bill C. Country Music, U.S.A. Rev. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.

Malone, Bill, and Judith McCulloh. Stars of Country Music. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1975.

McIrney, Jay. “White Man at the Door: One Man's Mission to Record the ‘Dirty Blues’—Before Everyone Dies.” New Yorker, February 4, 2002, 54–63.

Otto, John Solomon, and Augustus M. Burns. “The Use of Race and Hillbilly Recordings as Sources for Historical Research: The Problem of Color Hierarchy among Afro Americans in the Early Twentieth Century.” Journal of American Folklore 85 (October– December 1972): 344–55.

Russell, Tony. Blacks, Whites, and Blues. New York: Stein & Day, 1970.

Walton, Ortiz M. Music: Black, White, and Blue. New York: William Morrow, 1972.

BLUES AND WOMEN

Albee, Edward. The Death of Bessie Smith. New York: Coward-McCann, 1960.

Albertson, Chris. Bessie. New York: Stein & Day, 1972.

Bourgeois, Anna Stong. Blueswomen: Profiles of 37 Early Performers, with an Anthology of Lyrics, 1920–1945. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996.

Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.

Freeland, David. Ladies of Soul. American Made Music Series. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.

Harrison, Daphne Duval. Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Jackson, Buzzy. A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.

Lieb, Sandra R. Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981.

Moore, Carman. Somebody's Angel Child: The Story of Bessie Smith. New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1969.

Stewart-Baxter, Derrick. Ma Rainey and the Classic Blues Singers. New York: Stein & Day, 1970.

BLUES ARTISTS

Broonzy, William (as written to Yannick Bruyoghe). Big Bill Blues: William Broonzy's Story. New York: Macmillan, 1955.

Calt, Stephen, and Gayle Wardlow. King of the Delta Blues: The Life and Music of Charley Pat...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• GIVE MY POOR HEART EASE
• GIVE MY POOR HEART EASE VOICES OF THE MISSISSIPPI BLUES
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• BLUES ROOTS
• BLUES TOWNS AND CITIES
• LOOKING BACK
• SACRED AND SECULAR WORLDS
• EPILOGUE
• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY, DISCOGRAPHY, FILMOGRAPHY, AND WEBSITES
• INDEX