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Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs & Hidden Histories

Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs & Hidden Histories

From the beginning of the recording industry, many voices have been suppressed and significant cultural history has been lost to prudery and censorship.
by Steve Provizer via Syncopated Times on April 1, 2024
Hank Williams Jr.

Whose Country?

It is impossible to talk about the blues and country without talking about race, authenticity, and contemporary America’s relationship to its past.
by Geoff Mann via New York Review of Books on November 2, 2023
Cover of "Playing for the Man at the Door" album.

Smithsonian Releases an Unheard Treasure Trove of Blues Music

A Smithsonian curator John Troutman and a blues musician discuss a new folk album, "Playing for the Man at the Door," from late chronicler Mack McCormick's collection.
by Dom Flemons, John Troutman, Scott Detrow via NPR on August 5, 2023
The cover of a book, titled "Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey", written by Robert "Mack" McCormick.

Delta Force

A look at "Biography Of A Phantom", Robert McCormick's book about blues legend Robert Johnson.
by Dominic Green via The Washington Free Beacon on July 30, 2023
Mural depicting bluesman John Dee Holeman and friends playing on the front porch of a house.

The Living Legacy of the Piedmont Blues

The music that grew out of Durham's tobacco manufacturing plants influenced some of the most widely recorded musicians of the last 65 years—and still does.
by Marc Farinella via The Assembly on July 14, 2023
The Ferguson Unit Rhythmeer Band plays at the Jim Ferguson Unit in Madison County, Texas.

The Blues Behind Bars: How Southern Prisons Shaped American Music

Incarcerated musicians have crafted some of the most iconic songs in American music history while prisons reap the profits.
by Zeb Larson via Scalawag on June 8, 2023
A mural of a Black musician wearing a pinstripe suit, hat, and playing guitar.

The Devil, the Delta, and the City

In search of the mythical blues—and their real urban origins.
by Alan Pell Crawford via Modern Age on October 17, 2022
Advertisment for 1947 performance by singers and musicians Billie Holiday & Louis Armstrong

Did the Blues Originate in New Orleans?

Something unusual happened in New Orleans music around 1895. Was it the birth of the blues?
by Ted Gioia via The Honest Broker on April 18, 2022
A "High Water" sign mirrored in front of a black and white portrait of two Black men standing in front of a boat on the water

Songs for a South Underwater

After the 1927 Great Flood, Black musicians from the Delta produced an outpour of songs testifying to the destruction. The same is true today.
by Sergio Lopez via Scalawag on February 11, 2022
Album cover featuring a sketch of Buck Hammer playing the piano with a cigar in his mouth.

The Discovery of Buck Hammer

A remarkable blues musician emerged from obscurity in 1959, but something about him just didn’t seem right.
by Ted Gioia via The Honest Broker on January 17, 2022
Abstract picture of Robert Johnson

The Devil Had Nothing to Do With It

“Robert Johnson was one of the most inventive geniuses of all time,” wrote Bob Dylan. “We still haven’t caught up with him.”
by Greil Marcus via New York Review of Books on November 13, 2020
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Coronavirus Has a Playlist. Songs About Disease Go Way Back.

Coronavirus songwriting has gone as global as the pandemic itself, creating a new genre called pandemic pop. It’s a tradition with a long history.
by Anthony DeCurtis via Retro Report on April 17, 2020

Tornado Groan: On Black (Blues) Ecologies

How early blues musicians processed the toll taken by tornadoes, floods, and other disasters that displaced them from their communities.
by J. T. Roane via Black Perspectives on March 16, 2020
The sun shining through the crown of a lone tree in an agricultural field.

What The Mississippi Delta Teaches Me About Home—And Hope

Finding struggle and resilience on a road trip through the birthplace of the blues.
by Wright Thompson via Fellow Travelers on January 6, 2020

The Historical Roots of Blues Music

The blues is not "slave music," but the music of freed African Americans.
by Lamont Pearley Sr. via Black Perspectives on May 9, 2018
Guitar Shorty sitting on a bench outside of a house, and playing guitar while smoking a cigar.

Put on my Clothes and Look Like Somebody Else

The life of Guitar Shorty was a mixture of facts, lies and fantasy. He was a blues musician who lived far outside mainstream society.
by Sarah Bryan via Oxford American on April 17, 2017
Painting of "Big Mama Thornton" wearing a suit and cowboy hat, singing on stage.

The Thinning of Big Mama

"Big Mama" does what all blues greats do: she telegraphs endurance and force to whomever out there in TV land might need it. This is blues perfection.
by Cynthia Shearer via Oxford American on February 15, 2017
Book cover with the title "Baby Boy Born Birthplace Blues" superimposed on a photo of a man lying down with his cheek on the ground.

Baby Boy Born Birthplace Blues

"The blues was born on a riverboat between Louisville and New Albany, along those docks, in the 1890s. I mean, the blues was born nowhere, of course. Or it was born many places."
by John Jeremiah Sullivan via Oxford American on December 6, 2016
Photograph of Redd Velvet (born Crystal Tucker) who started her career as a classically trained singer.

Keeping The Blues Alive

Is blues music a thing of the past? A festival in Memphis featuring musicians of all ages and nationalities shouts an upbeat answer.
by Touré via Smithsonian on August 26, 2016
Photograph of blues singer Robert Johnson, playing guitar, 1936.

Searching for Robert Johnson

In the seven decades since his mysterious death, bluesman Robert Johnson’s legend has grown.
by Frank DiGiacomo via Vanity Fair on October 1, 2008
Illustration of McCormick at his desk, hunched over a typewriter.

Hellhounds on His Trail

Mack McCormick’s long, tortured quest to find the real Robert Johnson.
by Michael Hall via Texas Monthly on April 4, 2023
Illustration of Guitar, a Gun and Roses by Eric Hanson

The Bully in the Ballad

Was Mississippi John Hurt really the first person to sing the tragic tale of Louis Collins?
by Eric McHenry via The American Scholar on December 15, 2022
Black and white photo of Camp Washington Carver, opened in 1942, with a crowd of Black children standing outside the front with an American flag in the forefront.

The Forgotten History of the US's African American Coal Towns

One of the US's newest national parks has put West Virginia in the spotlight, but there's a deeper history to discover about its African American coal communities.
by Stephen Starr via BBC News on October 24, 2022
A juke joint on the circuit in Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1939

Inside the ‘Chitlin Circuit,’ a Jim Crow-Era Safe Space for Black Performers

It's where legends like Tina Turner and Ray Charles launched their careers.
by Adrian Miller via Atlas Obscura on June 28, 2022
Alberta Hunter Performing at U.S.O show

Tricksters, Biographies, and Two-Faced Archives

In 2015, precisely 31 years to the day of her death, blues and cabaret singer Alberta Hunter was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.
by K. T. Ewing via Black Perspectives on June 2, 2022
Bar chart of different musical genres on a timeline of when they were popular.

A Timeline of African American Music: 1600 to the Present

An interactive visualization of the remarkable diversity of African American music, with essays on the characteristics of each genre and style.
by Portia K. Maultsby via Carnegie Hall on May 25, 2022
Odetta sitting on a park bench playing a guitar.

How Odetta Revolutionized Folk Music

She animated the horror and emotional intensity in American labor songs by projecting them like a European opera singer.
by Sasha Frere-Jones via The New Yorker on February 24, 2022
Johnny Cash in front of a microphone.

Johnny Cash Is a Hero to Americans on the Left and Right. But His Music Took a Side.

Listen to Blood, Sweat and Tears again.
by Michael Stewart Foley via Slate on December 7, 2021
Image of B.B. King on stage playing guitar.

When Young Elvis Met the Legendary B.B. King

King recalled: “I liked his voice, though I had no idea he was getting ready to conquer the world.”
by Daniel de Visé via Literary Hub on November 16, 2021
Richard Wright.

Outcasts and Desperados

Reflections on Richard Wright’s recently published novel, "The Man Who Lived Underground."
by Adam Shatz via London Review of Books on October 4, 2021
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