I finished this before last Christmas, and really like Daphne Duval Harrison's Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (Rutgers University Press, 1988). It covers somewhat lesser known 20s blues singers (i.e. beyond Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith) and looks to dovetail nicely with an Angela Davis book in the pipeline that proceeds from Rainey and Smith through Billie Holiday.
For now, here's how the contents break down. This'll give an idea of Harrison's focal points:
Riding "Toby" to the Big Time
"Crazy Blues" Starts a New Craze
"Wild Women Don't Have the Blues": Blues from the Black Woman's Perspective
"Up the Country. . ." and Still Singing the Blues: Sippie Wallace
Blues Was Her Business: Victoria Spivey
"He Used to Be Your Man . . ." But He's Edith Wilson's Now
"She's Got a Mind to Ramble: Alberta Hunter . . .
Other Blues Singers [including Chippie Hill, sampled below with Louis Armstrong]
Today's Rune: Signals.
2 comments:
That was a pleasure to hear this early morning...I only wish I had been out drinking all night in a back woods honky tonk.
Mark, I'm wishing the same thing. But for different reasons!
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