Folklorist, musicologist, and performing artist, David Evans wears many hats. Although his publications range from folktales to toasts, he is best known as a blues scholar and advocate whose work ranges from the stringently scholarly to the popular, including books, Grammy-award winning liner notes, a user-friendly guide to the blues, and a column in a leading popular blues magazine. This collection, however, lists towards the scholarly with a decidedly musicological cast. Four of the essays were previously published in American Music. The collection covers a cross section of intriguing blues-related topics; moreover, it has an international flavor with a third of the contributors working out of Europe.
The ten essays are 1) Gerhard Kubick, “Bourdon, Blue Notes, and Pentatonism in the Blues: An Africanist Perspective”; 2) Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, “They Cert’ly Sound Good to Me: Sheet Music, Southern Vaudeville, and the Commercial Ascendancy of the Blues”; 3) Elliott Hurwitt, “Abbe Niles, Blues Advocate”; 4) Andrew Cohen, “The Hands of Blues Guitarists”; 5) David Evans, “From Bumble Bee Slim to Black Boy Shine: Nicknames of Blues Singers”; 6) Luigi Monge, “Preachin’ the Blues: A Textual Linguistic Analysis of Son House’s “’Dry Spell Blues’”; 7) James Bennighoff, “Some Ramblings on Robert Johnson’s Mind: Critical Analysis and Aesthetic Value in Delta Blues”; 8) Katharine Cartwright, “Guess Those People Wonder What I’m Singing: Quotation and Reference in Ella Fitzgerald’s “’St. Louis Blues’”; 9) Bob Groom, “Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: A Decade of Disillusion in Black Blues and Gospel Song”; 10) John Minton, “Houston Creoles and Zydeco: The Emergence of an African American Urban Popular Style.”
Four of the essays are historical. Relying heavily on archival materials, sheet music, and black newspaper accounts, Lynn Abbot’s and Doug Seroff’s revisionist work pushes back the parameters of blues history, portraying a vibrant blues presence in early black southern vaudeville. Looking to artists including Butler “String Bean” Mays and Baby Seals, the authors bring them to life as much more than names, showing their influential presence on the black show business circuit. Elliott Hurwitt helps resurrect an equally important figure in blues history. Although he was not a performer, Abbe Niles, best known as W.C. Handy’s collaborator, was also a major early blues advocate, interpreter, and critic. Using an approach popularized by Guido Van Rijn, Bob Groom looks to selected blues and gospel recordings issued from the end of World War II through the Korean conflict that he sees as reflecting a theme of disillusionment. Essentially, this approach views historical events through a blues filter (for example, Uncle Sam taking your man, or leaving your woman behind to cheat with Jody), leading one to ask how much of what is presented relates to blues in general rather than reflecting a historically specific African American mood. One could also question the selection process. Could one, for example, assemble a more upbeat collection of songs from the same era? Of these four essays, John Minton’s discussion of Houston’s zydeco tradition is most in line with folklore methods. He is, after all, a folklorist and, like the Abbot and Seroff essay, his work actually offers a new perspective expanding our understanding of a regional urban music culture. Along with the work of fellow folklorist Roger Wood, Minton is helping push blues scholarship beyond the Delta-to-Chicago continuum.
The collection also includes three of what the editor refers to as “broader more scientific surveys.” Extending ideas put forward in the important book Africa and the Blues, Gerhard Kubik’s essay provides a new point of view not because of its Africanist lens, but rather because of its pan-Africanist perspective. His research gets far beyond the traditional West African Savannah region and is based on remarkably extensive fieldwork. The essay discusses “Bourdon, Blue Notes, and Pentatonism,” looking to Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman” as an example. Cohen demonstrates how an extensive sample of guitarists can be categorized according to hand posture to help us better understand such concepts as regional style. Evans’ essay on musician “nom de blues” addresses another challenging topic. His exhaustive effort results in a reasonable, useful typology.
Finally, three essays are song studies. Luigi Monge’s work looks to Son House’s “Dry Spell Blues” “to study the dichotomy between sacred and secular profane in the blues and in the life and music of Son House in light of statements, interviews, notes and general observations pertaining to the subject treating the topic as exhaustingly as possible” (224). A thought-provoking act of interpretation, the author does the song justice. James Bennighof applies a more Eurocentric analytical apparatus to Robert Johnson’s “Rambling on my Mind.” Finally, Katherine Cartwright looks to multiple performances of Ella Fitzgerald’s rendering of “St. Louis Blues,” showing the remarkable number of ways she quotes and references other songs to show her command of the jazz and blues idioms. Of all the essays, this offers the most gender-related perspective.
In conclusion, the ten essays in the book make for intriguing, if at times challenging, reading. Just how much of a new perspective they offer varies from piece to piece, but then diversity is the book’s strength as well as its weakness. However, if one is willing to put in the effort, the results are generally rewarding. This applies especially to graduate students who should find plenty of grist for their academic mills in this serious and carefully annotated collection.
--------
[Review length: 891 words • Review posted on July 29, 2008]