The Construction of the Blues Tradition
I don’t mean to boast, but I got a rare gig on Saturday, and my blues three-piece got to come out of the lounge room and play in front of an actual audience of actual people. Actually, we were supporting a 50s-60s covers band who were doing a fund-raiser for the local church’s Girl Brigade group, so the presence of a lot of impressionable nine-year-old girls in the audience was slightly amusing considering the songs in our set:
“Undercover Agent for the Blues”, Tony Joe White (“I was blinded by the blackness of her long silk stockings”; “She kept on getting kinkier”)
“I’m a Stranger Babe”, John Lee Hooker (“Don’t drive me from your door / Let me stay the night with you”)
“In the Midnight Hour”, Wilson Pickett (“Oh babe I’m gonna hold you / Do all the things I told you”)
OK, unlike a lot of blues, these are suggestive rather than overt, and I’m sure no one could understand my vocals anyway, but an old bluesman (I can’t remember who it was, but he was interviewed in one of the PBS documentaries introduced by Martin Scorsese) claims that the only real blues songs are about “S. E. X.”
This intersected nicely with an article I was reading the day before, which had the thesis that what we understand as the blues tradition was carefully shaped by blues scholars to elide the raunchy, explicit songs that were popular at the time:
The 1920s and 1930s saw the release of hundreds of raunchy blues recordings by male as well as female singers: ‘Handy Man’, recorded by Victoria Spivey and Alberta Hunter; ‘Kitchen Man’, recorded by Bessie Smith and Sara Martin; ‘I Got the Best Jelly Roll in Town’, recorded by Lonnie Johnson; ‘Tight Like That’, recorded by just about everybody. All those songs found a ready audience, but none more sensationally than ‘Empty Bed Blues’. By virtually everyone’s reckoning, it was one of the biggest hits of Bessie Smith’s career, and, given Smith’s central place for the era’s blues audience, it must be ranked as one of the definitive blues hits of the inter-war years. (133)
However this “commercial” music was an embarrassment to the scholars who saw it as “‘a burlesque of African-American sexuality’, more minstrel-show caricature than authentic blues” (134). Preferable was an obscure itinerant bluesman who was little known outside the Mississippi delta, and only managed a handful of recordings before his death in 1938 aged 27. That was of course Robert Johnson, whose short life is now the subject of much mythology; inductee into the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” and named among Rolling Stone’s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
All this isn’t really surprising to anyone who has looked at the hypocritical constructions of authenticity that surround most genres of popular music, but it is interesting that in spite of Johnson’s undoubted genius as a guitarist, it took the prudish disapproval of the scholars, who wanted to suppress what they dismissed as inauthentic, to elevate him to the legendary status that he now enjoys:
With its unabashed appeal to audience laughter, its salacious delight in sheer physicality, Smith’s song fairly trumpets its inauthenticity at least in the eyes of blues commentators since the late l950s, the opening years of the blues revival, when white Americans and Europeans discovered the music, and, through blues festivals, LP anthologies, specialist magazines and book-length blues histories, gradually reclaimed a music that African-Americans were leaving behind. (134)
It is important to remember that all genres and periods are constructed retrospectively, and that there is always a hidden agenda—even if it is only a taste issue. And it was probably good for rock music that Robert Johnson’s reputation outgrew Bessie Smith’s, because his influence led directly to people like Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and gave us bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin.
And I can’t imagine what I would have ended up singing to the little girls if modern blues had owed its heritage to Bessie Smith…
Reference: Hamilton, Marybeth. “Sexuality, Authenticity and the Making of the Blues Tradition.” Past & Present 169 (2000): 132-160.
Your Comments
dogpossum writes:
This is an interesting post, John.
I’m sorry this comment is so long and rambly and confusing. It’s my enthusiasm speaking, not my brains!
I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading about the history of jazz and the construction of the history of jazz, and found similar themes.
There’s a really good book about blues women and the lyrics of their songs – ‘Blues Legacies and Black Feminism’ by Angela Y. Davis – which offers quite a different history.
The idea of ‘revivalism’ has come up in the jazz lit, especially in regards to the tensions between ‘moldy figs’ (new orleans jazz fans who felt that NO jazz was the only ‘true’ and ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ jazz) and ‘modernists’ (who were into modern jazz – bebop, etc) in the 40s and 50s. Much of the more critical jazz studies work I’ve been reading talks about the ways revivalists’ and classic jazz fans’ obsession with ‘true’ jazz overlooked the politics and reality of modern jazz musicians and jazzdom.
Reading the article you listed above, I was struck by the discussion of masculinity. There’s quite a bit of talk about how musicians like Miles Davis and beboppers, with their refusal to mug for the audience, worked with civil rights politics to present a new type of black masculinity for white audiences. There’s lots of talk about trumpets and the phallus, etc, in some of the newer jazz lit. Which I think is quite interesting when you bring Bessie-I-will-kick-your-ass-Smith to the party.
Anyways, Davis’ book talks about gender and blues women’s lyrics in ways which undo all that bullshit about ‘authentic’ blues being about pain and suffering. Albert Murray’s book ‘Stomping the Blues’ talks about the way the blues aren’t just about singing sad songs about being sad; they can also be about singing songs that help you beat down or stomp out the blues.
My personal reading: ‘blues’ is a massive genre. Even in the 20s, there was so much going on, musically, it’s ridiculous to say that the only ‘true’ blues is played by a miserable bloke with a guitar. The relationship between blues and jazz in the 20s also complicates this – you hear bands playing the deepest, most sorrowful songs on one record, then playing a badass, blood-pumping dance song on the next.
I’ve recently gotten really interested in ‘hokum’ and in CW Stoneking. Stoneking, an American-born white Australian artist, sings ‘traditional’ blues and is generally touted as being ‘authentic’. This raises all sorts of issues for me – the guy lives in the Melbourne suburbs but sings about being poor in the country and sounds ‘black’. The dirty/suggestive lyrics and ‘hokum’ title make me think ‘minstrelsy/blackface’ and I feel a bit uncomfortable. I haven’t quite puzzled my way through this yet, but I have a more complicated relationship with Stoneking than I do with Bessie Smith.
I’m also interested in the relationship between Smith and Louis Armstrong. The two recorded together, and it’s interesting to think about her reputation for badass arsekicking sistahhood and his badass, blow-your-pants-off playing: what does it mean to hear these two playing ‘Reckless Blues’, where Bessie sings about being sexually precocious and Armstrong’s solos are characteristically gale-force. Even when they’re not really gelling as a group, their personalities are fighting and battling and making very little concession. They do more than just sing/play being sad, even in ‘St Louis Blues’.
—-aside: Armstrong and Bessie are consumate actors/performers who presented multilayered performances. Bessie might be singing ‘I got the St Louis Blues, just as blue as I can be’, but her delivery says ‘I am ANGRY AND SAD! and also hot and sexy’. And there’s plenty written about Armstrong’s combination of uncle Tom mugging and badass blow-you-off-the-stage virile masculinity. There’s simply more going on than just a low-down song about fucking.—-
On a slightly different tack: the comments dismissing race records as uniformly about selling cheap-and-nasty dirty blues is problematic. Highly problematic. Black Swan records, for example, was black-run and owned and was very concerned with producing music that was in ‘good taste’ and presented a cultured black identity, as part of a broader civil rights project. Black Swan didn’t do so well financially from this approach, but it wasn’t alone in having a different approach to producing records for and by the black community.
I’ve also just started getting interested in the early days of the recording industry and come across a fascinating article by Jed Rasula called ‘The Media of Memory: the seductive menace of records in jazz history’ (from Krin Gabbard’s great collection ‘Jazz Among the Discourses’). This paper basically problematises the way jazz historians use recorded music as a primary/secondary source. The jazz and blues that we can discuss is that music which was recorded; the rest is ‘lost’ (according to historians). But historians are also sceptical of using recorded music as primary sources – there’s this sense of loss or mourning for the ‘lost’ or more ‘authentic’ music which wasn’t constrained by the recording industry or by technology (the best eg is the sobbing over the ‘lost’ improvisations of songs longer than the 2-3 mins of a record).
In another great article (‘Historical Context and the definition of jazz: putting more of the history in ‘jazz history’‘, also from ‘Jazz Among the Discourses’), William Howland Kenney explores the economic and social context of jazz in Chicago in the 20s. He notes that race records were much cheaper than ‘higher class’ records. There were also complicated copyright arrangements going on with labels and sheet music companies. Labels would pay royalties to sheet music producers when they recorded their songs. Labels would save high-selling sheet music songs for their ‘star’ performers (who were usually white, when it came to jazz songs). These songs would then sell like mad. And then managers would use these sales to promote the bands’ live gigs. Black bands were often left with (to quote): “Such arrangements for choosing songs left the ‘minor bands’ to record ‘only numbers with freaky ‘blues’ titles…or straight fox-trots of only local popularity or passing familiarity” (109). Additionally, segregation meant that black musicians would often play to black audiences, particularly blues singers. Though black musicians played for white audiences, they’d be playing in white-owned venues in almost every instance (in Chicago at least). But Rasula talks about how white musicians would buy these same race records and play them til the busted, learning the solos and playing along.
So there are issues of media production, distribution and consumption in that historical moment (20s/30s), as well as issues of media reception and institutionalisation in the revivalist period (the 50s etc), as well as our own biases/needs/interests inflecting any reading we might do of the texts themselves. All these sorts of issues make definitions of ‘authentic’ blues music a bit challenging.
I have lots more reading to do on this, but I guess the thing I remember is ‘it’s not simple’. I’m also finding it really difficult to read and write about that stuff from here in Australia. I’m also writing and reading from the perspective of a dancer and DJ – I usually judge a song on its value as ‘music for dancing’, which adds another layer of meaning to it all.
What I often find, when playing songs with saucy lyrics (and I often do – they’re my fave) is that most dancers don’t hear the lyrics. If a song’s about food, you can usually assume it’s actually a song about sex. I like to compare the Andrews sisters’ version of ‘Hold Tight’ with Fats Wallers’. When Fats sings ‘I want some seafood, mamma; fish is my favourite dish!’ , you know what he means. When the Andrews sisters sing the same lines, it’s a cute song about dinner.
But very few dancers hear that distinction. This is partly because they’re dancing and can’t/aren’t interested in processing the lyrics at the same time, but also because the setting/context determines how people hear the lyrics. This isn’t a group of people thinking about racial politics, gender and sexual politics. Not even when they’re blues dancers and have at least 30% of their brain thinking about sex.
Posted: 3 06 2009 - 12:22 | Permanent link to this comment
John writes:
Hey dogpossum, that raises some really interesting avenues for further discussion, which I’ll get to when I have a bit more time.
In the meantime: joint paper? Get your people to contact my people.
Posted: 3 06 2009 - 14:35 | Permanent link to this comment
dogpossum writes:
My people will indeed contact your people. First we will talk about cooking a shoulder of pork in milk (because that’s my current culinary obsessions).
Joint paper: dirty old academics play dirty music for impressionable young people: DJing and playing blooz for today’s yoof.
Lisa might perhaps be our expert witness. Or perhaps we can do a panel?
Posted: 6 06 2009 - 11:12 | Permanent link to this comment
Sam writes:
I’m going only on what is taught in music classes at school when I make this comment, but I’ve always heard that true blues music is the music that the African Americans sung about their oppressed position in society. As such true blues music was about being sad. At a classroom level at least the sexual aspect was all omitted.
Claiming that the authentic style is the sad style fits more neatly into the theory that the genre grew out of the black folk singing black folk songs in the cotton fields. Leaving out anything more complicated than that keeps everything you need to know as simple as possible, and lets you move on to talking about Elvis and The Beatles. This oversimplification is a bad thing if you are interested in the depth and complexity of the blues, but probably a good thing if you were one of the 9 year old girls in the audience that night.
Posted: 12 06 2009 - 23:55 | Permanent link to this comment