Love The Blues
In recent years, the blues have received a great deal of media and popular attention. But it is good to know that the music and its artists have been the focus of an increasing amount of scholarly and literary focus as well. There is much to be appreciated and to be learned about American culture from a study of American "roots" music.
Samuel Charters has had a long career in recording and producing the blues and other music. He has combined this active life with an ability to reflect upon and write about music in many books, including the early 1957 study "The Country Blues". Charters's most recent book, "Walking a Blues Road" is an anthology of his writings on blues and blues performers gleaned from his long involvement with the music from 1956 -- 2004. It makes for fascinating reading. It inspired me to pick up some items from my tape and CD collection of blues that I hadn't heard for some time and rekindled my interest in hearing more blues.
In his introduction; "What we write about when we write about the Blues," Charters gives the reader a glimpse of his lifelong love of blues and of his career in promoting awareness of the music. The primary value of the music, for Charters, lies in the insight it provides in understanding the African American experience and in dispelling prejudice and hatred. Over the course of four decades, Charters has travelled throughout the United States, the South, Chicago, New York, Texas, California, and abroad to interview and record blues performers.
Althought the book includes excerpts from Charters's other published books, most notably the intriguingly named (and no longer in print) "The Poetry of the Blues", most of the selections are drawn from the innumerable body of liner notes Charters wrote for record releases. These notes are accompanied by introductions and background section that Charters wrote for this volume. As Charters states, these notes were not intended to be scholarly or critical but rather to introduce prospective record purchasers to the type of music they could expect in listening to an LP.
With that said, there is a freshness and a vitality to the way Charters presents his music. In reading these short essays, I felt drawn into the milieu, lives and works of his artists. One of the best essays is the opening discussion of the gospel/blues singer Blind Willie Johnson. Charters draws us into the life of this singer, of the effort it took to find him, and of his music. I could readily understand that a person reading Charters's notes would want to drop everything to hear Blind Willie Johnson sing and play. It is succinct, moving writing, a model of its kind and a valuable testament to a performer how doubtless is unfamiliar to many. Other essays that I particularly enjoyed covered the early days of the "Classic" blues singers -- beginning with Mamie Smith and the composer Perry Bradford, the great urban singer and guitarist Lonnie Johnson, several essays on the Texas bluesman Lightin' Hopkins, a fascinating essay on protest music, titled "Lawrence Gellert and Negro Songs of Protest", and many essays on electrified blues in the Chicago of the 1960s. Other essays I found worthwhile include an essay on women's blues on the Parchman Farm, Mississippi, discussions of zydeco, the contemporary bluesman Buddy Guy, and much else. These essays show that the blues is a rich vein of music indeed and it is instructive to see how Charters describes his subjects as the years go forward.
The focus on the book is on performers, songs, and places -- dusty back roads, shabby rooming houses, taverns tucked away in basements under tenements where the music could be heard in days not so long ago. But there is substantial discussion as well about technical details, about chord patterns, harmonies, guitar styles and tuning, and the form of the music. There is much to be learned by those readers wanting to deepen their appreciation of the blues.
This book shows that the blues deserve to be taken seriously as an important part of American culture.
Robin Friedman
