Blues Unlimited consists mainly of interviews conducted with more than twenty blues singers and recording industry figures, chiefly from the post-WW2 blues era. The material was originally published, sometimes in abbreviated form, in the pioneering British blues magazine, Blues Unlimited (hereafter BU), during the 1970s and 1980s. The musicians run the gamut from the well known (Albert Collins, Freddie King, Arthur Crudup) to the obscure. They represent not only the postwar downhome blues sound of Chicago (Louis Myers, James Cotton, Floyd Jones) and Detroit (Baby Boy Warren) but also St. Louis, Mississippi, Texas, and the West Coast. This geographical arrangement goes back to the early days of the blues revival (1950s) when record collectors and blues researchers heard regional styles expressive of folk cultures in the pre-WW2 and early post-war blues centers, reflecting African American settlement and migration patterns. A brief introductory essay by Mike Rowe on “Regional Blues” explains the rationale and suggests that despite media-induced style homogenization, it is still useful to think in terms of regional sounds, partly due to marketing, tourism, and audience expectations today. Industry figures interviewed include Johnny Otis, Henry Glover, and Ralph Bass. Rhythm ’n’ blues musicians are included, reflecting the growing recognition at BU, and among blues fans in general, that the clear distinction between blues and r ’n’ b was not something that the musicians themselves made. Otis is the only non-African American interviewed, in line with BU’s belief in blues as a primarily African American music.
The interviews focus on the musicians’ musical lives and careers, tangentially touching on their early upbringing, family life, and related issues. A pervasive theme is the difficulty, if not impossibility, of making a career as a blues musician. Humor, irony, and human foibles lace the descriptions of the personalities and hard times. Almost all of the interview material here is meant to be factual and to help answer basic historical questions—who sang and played and recorded with whom, where, and when. This reflects the researchers’ fan-discographical orientation. Very seldom under discussion are questions such as why the musicians sing, how they learn songs and musical skills, why they persisted in their careers despite many obstacles, how they feel when performing music, the impact of technology on blues, and so forth. Racism is present chiefly by implication rather than as a subject of discussion; nor are class and gender issues addressed directly, even though they too are present by implication. Instead, the oral histories offer portraits of blues “scenes” consisting of people, places, personalities, and resources such as nightclubs and recording companies.
The heyday of those revivals occurred between the late 1950s and early 1970s. Only BU (and Blues World) were magazines devoted exclusively to blues then, and both were published in Great Britain. Bill Greensmith has a fine introductory essay in this volume explaining the history of BU in the 1960s and discussing the vision of its original editors, Simon Napier and Mike Leadbitter. In fact, it was during this period, when I was a graduate student, that I corresponded with Simon and Mike; and they published some interviews I conducted with blues singers and a photo-spread from the Ann Arbor Blues Festival. A few of the more intrepid British blues fans became field researchers and visited the US then in search of blues; in the process, they interviewed musicians and reported in BU on their field trips. It was an exciting time for blues. Much of this research became the basis for a previous book culled from the pages of BU, Nothing But the Blues (1972), edited by Mike Leadbitter. This book under review may be regarded as a follow-up, the research bravely undertaken during a period when blues had seemingly lost its mojo in the popular culture, the period between the 1971 Ann Arbor Blues Festival and the 1989 release of the film, The Blues Brothers. During this period BU (which ceased publication in 1987) gradually lost most of its readership and today it is difficult to find the magazines themselves, as few libraries subscribed and meanwhile the fans disposed of theirs. To be sure, other blues magazines such as Living Blues emerged then and featured in-depth interviews; one hopes that similar compilations from its pages will be published as well. The University of Illinois Press is to be commended for making this material available once more, this time in permanent form.
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[Review length: 729 words • Review posted on January 12, 2016]