Standard recording contracts screwed Bluesmen out of royalties in the early 1900s, and the system was no different when Columbia released “Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings in 1990.”
blues
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story
J.R.’s Jook and the Authenticity Mirage
When a young white musician gets invited to a house-party, the musicians he plays with show him a slice of blues culture many people assumed had died.
Posted inQuote Posts
“Give a Sister Her Due”: Why Richmond, Virginia, Should Honor the Mother of Rock ‘n’ Roll
Legendary electric guitarist and gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe chose Richmond, Virginia as her home for over a decade. It’s about time the city honored her.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quotes
How Did the Blues Become the Blues?
In one simple sentence in 1914, Columbus Bragg, an African American writer, helped codify the Blues genre, though he’s largest forgotten.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How the Blues Conquered Tokyo
I couldn’t quite figure out why Japanese listeners had come to appreciate and savor the blues in the way that they seemed to—lavishly, devotedly. Blues is still an outlier genre in Japan, but it’s revered, topical, present. I’d spent my first couple of days in Tokyo hungrily trawling the city’s many excellent record stores, marveling […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Remembering the Female Voice of the Blues
Looking at Amanda Petrusich’s 2013 Oxford American magazine story about blues singer Bessie Smith.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Buddy Guy and the Inequity of Musical Fame
Guy heads into his living room and points out some of his favorite memorabilia collected over his 60 years in the business: a photo of him grinning onstage with Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall in 1990; a thank-you note from Mick Jagger for appearing in Shine a Light. There’s a photo of Guy with his […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Surveying Sin in American Music
What a blast! But there’s danger in the air─someone on the dark floor’s got a gun, and everyone “does his best to act just right, ’cause it’s gonna be a funeral if you start a fight.” In [Billy] Hughes’s terms, folks “struggle and they shuffle” until the sun comes up, delicate diction for a Saturday […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Seeing Robert Johnson’s Face for the Third Time
In 2008, Vanity Fair published a story about a guitar salesman named Steven Schein, who found a photograph of Robert Johnson, the world’s most influential Bluesman, for sale on eBay for $25. The photo was mislabeled “Old Snapshot Blues Guitar B.B. King???”. Only two photos of Johnson had been publicly released. The article is about […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Lightnin’ Hopkins Gets Your Head Tore Up
In the summer of 1960, Dallas, Texas journalist Grover Lewis went to Houston’s Third Ward in search of Bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins. Lewis found him in an old ’54 Dodge. The resulting essay, published in the Village Voice in 1968, is a small masterpiece of personal music writing, offering a snapshot of artistic endurance, 1960s race […]