Reading the Civil War: “Patriotic Gore”–And More

Posted on June 16, 2012 by georgelamplugh

In the Fall of 1969, I took a grad school course on the Civil War.  During a discussion of historiography, someone asked our professor his opinion of Shelby Foote’s history of the conflict, the first two volumes of which were then in print. Dr. Wiley allowed that, because Foote was a novelist by profession, his account of the War would undoubtedly be well-written, but he wondered whether it would be a work of which “real” historians would approve.

The final volume in Foote’s series appeared in 1974; the other day I finished reading it, and, thus, the trilogy. Foote did a fine job, on balance, even if the series lacks footnotes and a detailed bibliography. It “reads like a novel,” no mean feat considering its length.  Structurally, especially in transitions from one perspective to another during a battle, it’s a marvel.  Moreover, having watched Foote in Ken Burns’s epic “Civil War” documentary, for which he served as the principal on-camera narrator, I could hear his rich Southern voice as I read his words.  Of course, the work is not perfect.  Foote gives nicknames to major characters (usually generals), and, after a few repetitions, this begins to cloy.  He is biased, but his bias is clear and doesn’t get in the way of his narrative very often.

What I found interesting was not his pro-Confederate leanings, which I expected, but rather his perspective on the war, which tends to be through the eyes of military and political leaders, rather than the common soldiers.  Although Foote was a great admirer of Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee, he also appreciated the manifold political contributions of Abraham Lincoln to the War’s outcome, as well as the martial virtues of Union generals Grant,  Sherman, and Sheridan.  Fascinated by the efforts of Presidents Davis and Lincoln to coax a victory out of the messy, costly conflict, Foote gives short shrift to non-military affairs.  He very skillfully narrates events from the general’s perch above or behind the battlefront, and from the executive offices in Washington and Richmond.  There are anecdotes reflecting the views of the men in the ranks, just not as many as I had expected to find. Maps in each volume help the reader navigate the terrain during major campaigns.  Although the trilogy lacks photographs, Foote describes major actors with a skilled novelist’s ease and clarity.  On balance, Shelby Foote’s The Civil War:  A Narrative, is worth reading, even–perhaps especially–if you come to it a little fuzzy on the details of various military engagements.

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Finishing Foote’s magnum opus got me thinking about my lifelong engagement with the conflict that has stood for decades at the center of the American History survey course, even, reluctantly, my own.

The Civil War Centennial got under way when I was in high school, and I was ready for it:  as a youngster I had encountered a wonderful series of  novels about the War by Joseph Altsheler (8 volumes, 1914-1916; now available online at http://www.online-literature.com/joseph-altsheler/).  The stories concerned two cousins and their families in the border state of Kentucky and how the War split the clan asunder, taking the principal actors, one with the Union forces and the other the Confederates, to virtually every important campaign, from The Guns of Bull Run through The Tree of Appomattox. 

During the Centennial, my appetite for reading about “the War” could accurately be described as voracious.  First of all, I subscribed to a new magazine, Civil War Times, and read each issue from cover to cover.  The Centennial occurred when the “paperback revolution” in publishing had begun to reach beyond the production of cheap mysteries and westerns to encompass more staid volumes, including reprints of what literary critic Edmund Wilson once memorably described as “Patriotic Gore,” autobiographies and memoirs produced by Civil War participants during the late nineteenth century.  I bought a surprising number of these titles and read them all, even if the prose struck me as stodgy and romanticized, which a lot of it did. I began reading Bruce Catton’s Army of the Potomac trilogy and virtually anything else I encountered, even including Civil War-themed fiction in the Saturday Evening Post.

As a result of all this reading, before I graduated from high school in 1962, I had acquired a lot of knowledge about the conflict, much of it from works that I call “drum and trumpet history,” where heroic generals lead faceless masses of men in immaculate uniforms into combat that, at least to my adolescent mind, seemed surprisingly bloodless and devoid of any meaning beyond individual heroism.  The down side of this early exposure to “the War” was that I had so immersed myself in it that I suffered a serious case of Civil War “burnout.”

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As a History major in college, I did not take a Civil War course, so I was able to avoid the topic for four years, once I got through the obligatory American History survey. Then, thanks to Advanced ROTC, I got to experience military life up close and personal, though not in Vietnam.  Instead, I followed the conflict, like most Americans did, as a “living room war,” which came to us with our dinner each night. However, I was able to supplement my understanding of ‘Nam with stories collected from officers and enlisted men stationed at my post who had been to Southeast Asia.  The result of this exposure to the Vietnam conflict was that, as I’ve explained elsewhere, I became disillusioned, not only with the war in Southeast Asia but also with war in general.

Given the prevalence of warfare over the millennia, my growing disgust with humankind’s penchant for self-destruction was probably not an asset as I prepared to teach history. When I entered grad school in September 1968, I was not considering the Civil War as an area of study.  A year later, though, I found myself under Dr. Bell Wiley’s tutelage in his extremely popular Civil War course.  Since I was preparing for preliminary examinations, required before one could begin research on a dissertation topic, I used the course bibliography to sample major works that might appear on the “prelim” question(s) Wiley submitted.

By and large, the “battles” I studied were historiographical ones, because Emory’s History Department believed its graduates should be thoroughly familiar with “conflicting interpretations.” Occasionally, the “human side” of the War broke through, despite my best efforts, as when I read The Diary of George Templeton Strong and Mary Chesnut’s A Diary from Dixie. While I certainly enjoyed this reading, none of it inclined me to specialize in the Civil War Era for my dissertation.  Instead, I spent the next three years researching and writing about the American Revolution and the Early Republic in a single southern state, having finally put the Civil War behind me, or so I thought.

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Once I began to teach at a “prep school” in Atlanta,  the capital of the “New South” and home of Margaret Mitchell, whose Gone with the Wind (in both book and movie versions) was revered as the last word on “the War,” I was in a quandary:  I knew the conflict had been integral to the nation’s past (Dr. Wiley frequently referred to it as the “watershed” in our development), but I did not want to jump on that particular bandwagon, especially with the war in Vietnam still raging.  So, I did my best to get across the significance of the War, but I refused to trot out the “glamorous” view of the conflict I had acquired during the Centennial and had been struggling with against the backdrop of Vietnam.

Over time, I employed this approach in discussing all major wars, ancient and modern, in the various courses I taught:  I required my students to understand the causes of a conflict; the short- and long-term consequences; and the most important turning point(s), military or diplomatic.  In other words, the study of war, absent the “drums and trumpets.”

And yet, when I eventually joined the History Book Club, I could not resist, as my “membership bonus,” Allan Nevins’ epic on the Civil War era, comprising The Ordeal of the Union (volumes 1-2); The Emergence of Lincoln (volumes 3-4); and  The War for the Union (volumes 5-8).  Eventually I read the whole set, but Nevins had very little impact on my treatment of the War in AP U. S. History.

Somewhere along the way, while teaching an elective course in the history of the modern South, I finally read Gone With the Wind.  Having done so, I could see why southerners (and their sympathizers) liked Mitchell’s book, but I could not share their fondness for the work.  To me, it was just “much ado about [practically] nothing,” entertaining enough but wrongheaded in its portrayal of the Old South and missing things I believed were important to know about the War itself.

So, for a time, I more or less reduced coverage of the Civil War era to the events of the 1850s, AKA “the road to war,” stressing the centrality of the slavery issue; the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg as political and military turning points; and the conflicting plans of Lincoln and the Radical Republicans for “reconstruction” at war’s end.  Eventually, I created a lecture juxtaposing treatment of “the War” in the diaries of Mary Chesnut and George Templeton Strong.  And, to show my students (and myself) that I could do it and would not allow all my Civil War knowledge to go completely to waste, I even put together a “Civil War in Fifty Minutes” lecture (go here and here).  As supplementary material in the AP course, I used Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” for years. Through trial and error, I came to focus on two episodes:  “The Cause,” covering the Antebellum period through the firing on Fort Sumter; and “The Universe of Battle, 1863,”  on Gettysburg, which concludes with Sam Waterston’s moving recitation of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

In recent years, I have limited my Civil War reading to topics that drew my interest, even though I knew they could not be shoehorned into the already jam-packed AP U.S. History course:  for example, Phillip Shaw Paludan, Victims:  A True Story of the Civil War; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering:  Death and the American Civil War; Orville Vernon Burton, The Age of Lincoln (which he extends to the end of the 19th century); Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial:  Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery; Gore Vidal’s novel, Lincoln; Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg:  The Words That Remade America; and Edmund Wilson’s Patriotic Gore:  Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War.

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I retired from the “trenches” (sorry, couldn’t resist) in 2010, just as the Sesquicentennial was beginning to pick up steam.  I don’t believe this particular celebration will be as pervasive as the one half a century ago, though perhaps that’s more a reflection of my attitude toward it than of reality.  Currently, believe it or not, I am revisiting the Civil War Centennial, courtesy of David Blight’s American Oracle, an intellectual history of the earlier celebration’s impact on an America caught in the throes of the Cold War and the Civil Rights revolution.  It’s a great premise, and, thus far, a terrific read.

By the way, once I finish Blight, I may turn to yet another “big book” on the War that’s been gathering dust in my basement for a long time:  the four-volume “popular edition” of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, which originated as articles in the Century Magazine in the 1880s and was reissued in 1956, during the run-up to the Civil War Centennial.  It was undoubtedly the source of some of Shelby Foote’s anecdotes and represents the sort of “Patriotic Gore” analyzed by Edmund Wilson.  And then there’s our upcoming trip to the “Great White North,” via the Shenandoah Valley, during which I hope to visit a few Civil War battle sites.  At the risk of sounding like that guy in “The Sopranos,” let me say, about studying the Civil War, that “just when you think you’ve gotten out, it pulls you back in.”

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For those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to my books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)

Posted in American History, Civil War, History, Research, Retirement, Shelby Foote, Southern (Georgia) History, Southern History, Teaching, Vietnam War | Tagged | 9 Comments

20th-Century Blues Men (Blues Stories, 5)

Posted on June 1, 2012 by georgelamplugh

[Note:  This post is the companion piece to “20th-Century Blues Women.”  A slightly different format this time, without an introductory essay (for those interested in one, go here.); instead, I offer biographical sketches of some favorite 20th-century Blues men and a song or two that capture the essence of each performer’s approach to the Blues.  Songs mentioned will be found on the cds listed in the “Discography.” For suggested reading, go here and here.]

Buddy Guy (1936-)–Born in Lettsworth, Louisiana, Buddy Guy become one of the most accomplished Blues guitarists, acclaimed by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Eric Clapton. Guy developed his unique style by listening to records by T-Bone Walker and Lightnin’ Hopkins.  He moved to Chicago in 1958, where his guitar-playing talent soon brought him to the attention of older Blues men like Muddy Waters and Freddie King.  Guy has been recording since 1958, and his “brash vocals and incendiary guitar work epitomize the contemporary Chicago blues tradition.”  (Bill Dahl, liner notes, “The Very Best of Buddy Guy,” p.9)  A fine example of Buddy Guy’s atmospheric “Bayou Blues” style is “Feels Like Rain,” set in New Orleans.

Buddy Guy

John Lee Hooker (c.1917-2001)–Born near Clarksdale, Mississippi, Hooker learned guitar from his stepfather, who had performed with Charley Patton.  Hooker left home in his teens, moving to Memphis and then to Cincinnati before settling in Detroit in 1943.  He cut his first record in 1948, launching a recording career that lasted for more than half a century.  From the beginning, Hooker’s urban Blues retained a country Blues feel.  Not one to worry about rhyme schemes or consistent rhythms, he hardly ever performed a song the same way twice.  Most of his songs deal with that archetypal Blues trio–money, whiskey, and, especially, women.  As Hooker said, “If it weren’t for women, there wouldn’t be no blues.” (Quoted in Tom Pomposello, liner notes to “Sittin’ Here Thinkin’,” p.7)  Like most Blues performers, Hooker saw his career suffer during the heyday of rock ‘n’ roll, but, unlike a number of his contemporaries, he was not “rediscovered” in old age.  Rather, his career revived with the release in 1989 of The Healer, featuring duets between Hooker and a number of his “fans,”  including Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, and Robert Cray. My favorite Hooker song is “I Cover the Waterfront,” especially the long, lush duet version with Van Morrison, on Mr. Lucky, but no Blues fan should miss Hooker’s signature tune, “Boogie Chillen,” delivered in a style that earned him nicknames such as “Father of the Boogie” and the “Boogie Man.” Finally, listen to Hooker at his grimmest, in “Never Get Out of These Blues Alive.”

“John Lee Hooker”

Son House (1902-1988)—Born near Clarksdale, Mississippi, but his family soon moved to New Orleans. House returned to the Delta twenty years later. Around 1927, he began to learn the guitar on a broken down model he’d purchased for $1.50. A fast learner, House recorded his first sides in 1929. He drove a tractor in the 1930s while singing and playing the Blues in his off hours. House was “discovered” not once but twice: in 1942, while still in Mississippi, by Alan Lomax; and, after he’d given up music and moved to Rochester, N.Y., during the Blues revival of the 1960s. As a result, House hit the concert trail and began recording again, one of the last of the original Delta Blues men. Try “Levee Camp Moan,” followed by Son at his cynical best, in “Preachin’ Blues.”

Son House

Robert Johnson (1911-1938)–Born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, but bounced all around the Delta with his family before finally settling in the northern Mississippi cotton town of Robinsonville.  Johnson took up the harmonica in his teens, then switched to the guitar, studying the techniques of performers like Charley Patton and Son House, while eking out a living as a sharecropper.  Johnson liked to say that he got both his song-writing ability and guitar prowess after making a deal with the Devil while “standin’ at the crossroads.”  Johnson’s early death meant that his recorded output was small, but his influence on later generations of Blues and rock ‘n’ roll performers is incalculable.  Moreover, “searching for Robert Johnson” has become a cottage industry for generations of Blues scholars. By all means, listen to “Cross Road Blues,” but don’t miss the even eerier “Hellhound on My Trail.”

Robert Johnson

B.B. King (1925-)–Born on a plantation between Itta Bena and Indianola, Mississippi, Riley B. King honed his musical skills while working as a farm hand.  He moved to Memphis in 1948, where he performed and worked as a DJ, the “Beale Street Blues Boy” (eventually shortened to “B.B.”), on radio station WDIA.  His first big record, “Three O’Clock Blues,” in 1950, enabled him to concentrate on music fulltime.  For the next two decades, he did some three hundred one-night stands a year, along with occasional week-long engagements in large urban theaters.  By the early 1960s, his career was in a slump, from which he was rescued when rock ‘n’ roll groups like the Rolling Stones proclaimed him one of their idols.  Since that time, King and his almost equally famous guitar, “Lucille,” have recorded and performed at an astonishing rate, though his advancing age has slowed that pace in recent years.  Of course you should listen to “The Thrill is Gone,” King’s signature song, but my favorite is “Why I Sing the Blues,” which explores a much broader question than the title suggests.

B.B. King

Mississippi Fred McDowell (1905-1972)–A native of Rossville, Tennessee, Fred McDowell began teaching himself the guitar when he was about twelve years old.  He was inspired by an uncle to use the slide technique to extract a variety of whines and twangs from his instrument.  Beginning with a smoothed down beef bone his uncle gave him, McDowell experimented with other types of slides, finally settling on an inch-long lip of a Gordon’s Gin bottle.  In 1940, McDowell moved to Como, Mississippi, where he continued to farm during the day and entertain his friends and neighbors at night.  Somehow, the talent scouts who prowled the Delta before World War II searching for Blues performers overlooked McDowell.  Like a number of others, though, he eventually was “discovered” by the peripatetic Alan Lomax, during a swing through the Delta in 1959 for Atlantic Records.  Although McDowell stated emphatically that “I do not play no rock ‘n’ roll,” his fantastic slide guitar work was admired by many rock groups in the 1960s, including the Rolling Stones.  When he was buried in 1972, according to one account, McDowell wore a lime green leisure suit the Stones had given him when he performed with them on a European tour.  For a fine example of McDowell’s talent as both a guitarist and a story teller, try “Baby Please Don’t Go,” a Blues standard that opens with a wonderful introductory monologue combining autobiography and a lesson in playing the slide guitar.

Fred McDowell

Blind Willie McTell (1898-1959)–A native of McDuffie County, Georgia, Willie McTell was blind at birth.  Despite his disability, he traveled throughout the Southeast playing his twelve-string guitar.  He recorded regularly between the 1920s and the mid-1950s, becoming perhaps the leading performer of  “Piedmont Blues,” and he played on the streets of Atlanta after that.  I’m a big fan of “story songs,” and McTell recorded one of the best, “Dying Crapshooter’s Blues.”  And, speaking of great story songs, check out the best Bob Dylan song most people have never heard, the powerful “Blind Willie McTell,” where the ’60s icon ponders the question of what made Blind Willie such a great Blues artist–and answers it as only Dylan can.

Blind Willie McTell

Charley Patton (c.1887-1934)–Charley Patton grew up on the huge Dockery Plantation near Cleveland, Mississippi. He was not interested in farm work, and, once he had begun to record (1929), he was fired from his day job and spent the rest of his life as a professional Blues man. Patton’s voice, while gruff and plaintive enough to suit the purist, presents problems to newcomers, because many of his recorded lyrics seem unintelligible at first, the result of primitive recording techniques and Patton’s deep Delta accent.  Despite this difficulty, even the tinny recordings that have survived still manage to convey the power of his guitar work and the mesmerizing sound of “his whiskey-and cigarette-scarred voice.”  (Cub Koda, in Michael Erlewine, et al., eds., All Music Guide to the Blues [1996 ed.], p.209)  Check out Patton’s two-part epic “story song” about the terrible Mississippi River flood of 1927, “High Water Everywhere”; another great tune is “Dry Well Blues,” about a drought in Lula, Mississippi, where Patton was living in 1930.

Charley Patton

 Muddy Waters (1915-1983)–Born McKinley Morganfield in Rolling Fork, Mississippi; taught himself to play guitar and harmonica as a youngster.  By the early 1940s, he drove a tractor during the day and performed at night as “Muddy Waters, Stovall’s Famous Guitar Picker.”  He too was “discovered” by Alan Lomax, who recorded him at Stovall in 1941 and again in 1942.  Encouraged by Lomax’s enthusiasm, Muddy left for Chicago in 1943 . He purchased his first electric guitar in 1944, and, perhaps more than any other performer, was responsible for introducing the “electric Blues,” which in turn exerted a major influence on rock ‘n’ roll.  To get an idea of how he grew as a performer and of what a difference the electric guitar made to the Blues, listen to three versions of the same song:  the first, “I Be’s Troubled,” was recorded by Alan Lomax at Stovall Plantation in the summer of 1941, and Muddy played it on a borrowed acoustic guitar; the second version, now called “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” was recorded in 1948, early in his career; finally, listen to the 1977 version, from Muddy’s comeback album, Hard Again, with backing from an all-star aggregation of Blues men who are clearly having a whole lot more fun than should be legal.

Muddy Waters

Howlin’ Wolf  (1910-1976)—Born Chester Burnett in West Point, Mississippi.  Among Wolf’s early teachers was the “Father of the Delta Blues,” Charley Patton.  Like many Blues men, Wolf gave up farming and left the Delta, moving first to Memphis and then to Chicago, where Muddy Waters helped him get established.  Physically imposing, Wolf in performance was flamboyant and energetic.  He was not a particularly accomplished musician; what made him memorable and endeared him to audiences was his voice: in the words of historian Francis Davis, he “didn’t so much sing as cackle with malevolent glee.”  (Davis, The History of the Blues, p.193)  Only have one chance to listen to the Wolf?  Then, make it his signature song, “Smokestack Lightnin,'” perhaps garnished with a sidedish of “Evil.”

Howlin Wolf

DISCOGRAPHY

Buddy’s Baddest:  The Best of Buddy Guy. Silvertone (J1 1677)

John Lee Hooker, Mr. Lucky.  Charisma/Point Blank (91724-2); The Healer.  Chameleon (D2-74808); The Very Best of John Lee Hooker.  Rhino (R2 71915); The Best of John Lee Hooker. MCA  (MCD 19507) 

Son House, Father of the Delta Blues:  The Complete 1965 Sessions.  Columbia (C2K 48867)

Robert Johnson:  The Complete Recordings.  Columbia (C2K 46222)

B.B. King, Why I Sing the Blues.  MCA (MCAD–20256)

Mississippi Fred McDowell, I do not play no rock ‘n’ roll.  Fuel 2000 (302 061 158 2)

Blind Willie McTell, Atlanta Twelve String.  Atlantic (792366-2); Bob Dylan, “Blind Willie McTell,” The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3. Columbia (C3K 47382)

Charlie Patton:  Father of the Delta Blues.  Yazoo (2020)

Muddy Waters:  The Complete Plantation Recordings. Chess/MCA (CHD-9344); Muddy Waters: His Best, 1947 to 1955. Chess/MCA (CHD-9370); Hard Again. Blue Sky (ZK 34449)

Howlin’ Wolf:  His Best. Chess/MCA (CHD-9375)

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For those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to my books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)

Posted in "Charley Patton", Alan Lomax, American History, Blind Willie McTell, Chicago Blues, Delta Blues, History, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Piedmont Blues, Research, Robert Johnson, Son House, Southern (Georgia) History, Southern History, The Blues | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Past Personal: Teaching the Vietnam War as History

Posted on May 1, 2012 by georgelamplugh

[Note:  This piece originated as a talk to a group of history teachers; it explains the genesis of the series, already posted here, “Growing Up With Vietnam.” (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4]

* * * * *

When I began my prep school teaching career in the autumn of 1973, the Vietnam War was not quite history:  What President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger hailed as “peace with honor” had taken hold, most American troops had left Vietnam, and, thanks to Nixon’s policy of “Vietnamization,” only the Vietnamese were dying; but the war was not yet over.  So, I didn’t worry about teaching the war as history, nor could I if I had wanted to.  After five years in graduate school, I was convinced that only with the perspective provided by the passage of time could a “good historian” hope to approach such a controversial issue with “objectivity.”  Moreover, I wasn’t particularly interested in modern American history, since most of my time in grad school had been spent immersed in the politics of late 18th- and early 19th-century Georgia.

During my first seven years on the faculty, I literally could not teach about the war in Vietnam.  This presented a problem each spring, because I was obliged to “finish the textbook” in my Advanced Placement United States History (APUSH) course, which included a fairly superficial treatment of ‘Nam.  I surmounted this difficulty at first by lapsing into “anecdotage”:  I told my students about ROTC and spun a few yarns about my time in the U.S. Army (1966-1968), but, since I had not been to Vietnam, I could tell no first-hand “war stories.”  I could share some stories I had picked up from friends in the service, but these were related without much effort on my part to establish any sort of context for them or speculate on their veracity.

The one Vietnam-related activity I had participated in was also the only worthwhile thing I did in twenty-four months on active duty:  I arranged for the burial in Arlington National Cemetery of an Army officer who’d been killed in Saigon during the 1968 Tet Offensive, and I spent the last six months of my service working with the man’s family.  I also talked about this each spring but avoided drawing any “conclusions” or “lessons” from it.

Even though I wasn’t much interested at first in most aspects of modern American history, in grad school I had become fascinated with the impact of war on the American homefront.  Once I started my teaching career, I continued to read about how the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean conflict had affected those Americans who had not fought in them and even included some of that in my APUSH course.  Since I had experienced  at least some of Vietnam’s impact on the homefront first-hand, I felt that there was a lecture there as well, but I also knew that I couldn’t write it until I understood better how we’d gotten involved in the conflict in the first place.

By the summer of 1980, I was ready to try to explain to myself the chronology of our Vietnam involvement.  After dismissing my morning summer school class, I spent several afternoons in my sweltering classroom (the school turned off the air conditioning at the end of the summer school day), poring over Thomas Bailey’s The American Pageant (the summer school text)and his companion book of primary sources, The American Spirit.  This exercise in scholarly “sweat equity” resulted in three lectures tracing the trajectory of America’s foray into Southeast Asia.  They served to bring a more objective, less anecdotal tone to my treatment of Vietnam but failed to generate much discussion or enthusiasm.  Either I seemed to my students to be handing down unassailable truth, or my attempt at “objectivity” had bleached all of the human interest from the story.

About this time, the APUSH teachers began searching for a monograph on Vietnam to add to the spring reading list.  Our initial choice, George C. Herring’s diplomatic history, America’s Longest War:  The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (New York, 1979), was solid and objective but pretty dry for high school seniors.  The next year, we selected Al Santoli’s Everything We Had:  An Oral History of the Vietnam War (New York, 1981).  This went over much better with our students because of its autobiographical emphasis, but Santoli gave little attention to the events, decisions, or blunders that had hurled his witnesses into the maelstrom of war.

Also in the early 1980s, we found a documentary that brought the war home powerfully to our students, a chronological compilation of CBS news coverage.  In addition to showing the course of the conflict, “Vietnam:  Chronicle of a War” conveyed clearly the important shift over the years in reporting style, from the Cold War “flag-waving” of the 1950s to the skepticism and cynicism of the 1960s.  As color film replaced black-and-white, and as technology made it possible for correspondents to accompany troops into combat, news footage became much more graphic.  I found myself reminding my students, as we settled back to watch, that what they would see was merely a small sampling of material Americans had viewed nightly at dinner time, and that, unlike the latest “Rambo” flick, the wounded and the dead in the CBS documentary didn’t simply dust themselves off and head for a coffee break when the camera stopped rolling.

By the mid-1980s, our textbook included more detailed coverage of Vietnam; I had found an effective documentary and experimented with a couple of supplementary books; and I thought I understood at least the chronology of our involvement in Southeast Asia.  I was finally “teaching the Vietnam War as history,” but I still felt that, by trying to adhere to the “standard of objectivity” imbibed in grad school, I had somehow reduced a conflict that consumed vast amounts of money and more than 58,000 American (and countless Vietnamese) lives to the level of interest of the War of 1812 or the Spanish-American War.

Things began to change in the spring of 1984 as I thought about teaching the Vietnam War one more time.  I kept coming back to two things:  my desire to show the impact of the war on those who did not fight in it; and the title of George Herring’s book–Vietnam was “America’s Longest War,” and we had been involved in it in one way or another for twenty-five years.  I jotted down a series of key dates in the Vietnam conflict, from 1950, the tentative beginnings of our involvement there, through May 1975, when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese.  Next to each date I briefly noted how old I was at the time, what I was doing, and, where possible, how a particular event affected me.  This filled only half a page, but the exercise both personalized the war for me and opened an avenue to explore in a small way the domestic impact of Vietnam.  What I had produced was the sketchy odyssey of a kid from the lower middle class growing up during “America’s Longest War.”

I also realized that, if this were to be more than an ego trip, I must transcend the “What Did You Do in the War, Teacher?” angle.  So, I added to the half-page of autobiography another page-and-a-half of issues and questions I believed were raised by the coincidence of dates and by what I now perceived as the war’s impact on me.  These included possible parallels between the beginnings of our involvement in Vietnam and our growing role in Central America during the Reagan Administration; the still hotly-debated question of whether we had “won” or “lost” in Vietnam; the “lessons” of the war; and the pitfalls of trying to be “objective” about something one had lived through.  This approach worked well with my classes over the next few years, generating lots of discussion, both of my experiences and of the “lessons” I drew from them.

There was a downside to the modest success I began to enjoy with my personal approach to teaching the Vietnam War.  Each spring as I worked over my notes, adding or deleting a few things and modifying others, I became angry all over again.  Clearly, the war was not yet over for me, and it would not be, as I’ve explained elsewhere, until the summer of 1988, when my family and I visited the Vietnam Memorial.  The following spring, I had the opportunity to share my views of the war in Vietnam with a larger audience, when my school inaugurated a “Senior Lecture Series,” wherein members of the History, English, and Bible departments took turns presenting talks to our assembled twelfth-graders on topics of interest (to the teachers, but not necessarily to the students).

It was one thing for me to offer a highly personal interpretation of the Vietnam experience to a class or two of APUSH students who had been with me for the whole year, but quite another to do so before 180 seniors, many of whom I had not taught.  To prepare for this lecture, I fleshed out the chronology I had devised and called attention to conflicting interpretations of key events in the conflict.  Since I left the account of my own activities pretty much as it had been earlier, my role for most of the lecture was that of occasional commentator.  However, I dropped all pretense of “objectivity” in the final section of the talk, on the “lessons” of the war and what I saw as its continuing impact on this country.  Not surprisingly, my view of the Vietnam War and its legacy did not set well with some in my audience, teenagers who had grown up amid the shallow patriotism of the Reagan years, the cinematic derring-do of Sylvester Stallone as “Rambo,” the “heroism” of Colonel Oliver North, and, eventually, televised coverage of Operation Desert Storm.

Is what I have described really “teaching the Vietnam War as history”?  I think so, but I must admit that in my talk to the seniors I skirted the issue by describing it as a “meditation” on the title of Herring’s book.  It may not be the sort of history I was taught to do in grad school, but I believe it is a valid approach to a controversial–and significant–topic in this nation’s modern story. Those of you old enough to remember Vietnam (or one of our more recent conflicts) have your own stories to tell, however different they may be from mine, and I encourage you to share them with your students.  If you are uncomfortable with a first-person approach, there are other options.  You could, for instance, have your students interview parents or other relatives about their memories of Vietnam (or Desert Storm, or Iraq, or Afghanistan) and share these experiences in either oral or written form.  Another possibility would be to use local history to relate the impact of the war on the city or town in which your school is located (you could do the research yourself or have your students do it as a class project, using oral history, newspapers, or other resources).  Or, you might invite a few guest speakers to present their views of the war to your classes, either individually or in a panel discussion or debate format.

Treating the Vietnam (or other modern American) War in personal terms is risky, but it is a risk worth taking.  As historian David Thelan wrote, by reducing the scale of a narrative about war to a personal level, one can in some measure “join life as people experienced it then with history as professionals practice it now.  The process of creating history is joined with the experience of living life.”  (“A Round Table:  The Living and Reliving of World War II,” Journal of American History, 77 [September 1990], 592)  And that’s what history is–or should be:  conveying to the present generation the triumphs and tragedies of life in the past.

* * * * * *

For those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to my books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)

Posted in American History, Cold War, Current Events, History, Research, Retirement, Teaching, Vietnam War | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Unflattering Glimpses of the Georgia Legislature, 2012 and 1817

Posted on April 4, 2012 by georgelamplugh

[Note:A huge sigh of relief can be heard all round the greater Atlanta area; wives and daughters are once again permitted to leave their homes unaccompanied by a heavily armed escort; the family silver has been retrieved from its hiding place and restored to the place of honor in the dining room display cabinet.  Yes, friends, the Georgia legislature has finally packed up our troubles in its ol’ kit bag and hit the road for home, after doing as much damage to the state, its citizens, and its economy as was humanly possible, at least during this legislative session.  (Not as much damage as they perhaps originally intended, of course, but still. . . .)

Now, in fairness, not everyone was happy to see our solons decamp:  they will be sorely missed by the National Rifle Association, Georgia Right to Life, some elements of our many-sided “tea party” movement, and more lobbyists than you can shake a stick at.  “We’re Number 50!  We’re Number 50!”–in effective ethics in government laws, that is, according to a recent survey.  To which our legislative “leaders” replied by either, a) attacking the group that took the survey; or, b) repeating their mantra, “Our current ethics laws are quite sufficient, no matter what anyone thinks, thank you very much. . . .”

To help speed these dedicated public servants on their way (and to confirm once more the adage that “the more things change, the more they stay the same”), here’s a glimpse of a group of their predecessors, offered by a traveler in Georgia 195 years ago.  Peter A. Remsen, a New Yorker on his way to Alabama, visited Milledgeville on December 20-21, 1817, just as the legislative session was winding down, and recorded his impressions.]

The Legislature of this State closed its sitting on the morning of the 20th inst.  I did not visit the state house. Some 20 boarders [who were members of the legislature] put up at the house we stoped [sic] at.  But alas!  What would New Yorkers say to see them [?]  I certainly do not hesitate to say that their conduct was beneath that of any crew of sailors that was ever seen.  Cursing, quarrelling, hollowing [sic], drinking, getting drunk.  Disputing landlords [sic] bill.  Drunken men hugging sober ones.  Illiterate, mean appearances, readiness for rasseling [sic] etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc..  On the night of the 18th inst. (a thing at the close of all their meetings) the Governor [William Rabun] at the head, with a horse visited all boarding houses of members [of the legislature].  Draged [sic] them out of bed.  Marched the square and streets, and from report the noise excelled that of wild beasts.  Its [sic] well the North knows not what the South does.  Vice Versa.  [SOURCE:  William B. Hesseltine and Larry Gara, eds., “Across Georgia and Into Alabama, 1817-1818,” GHQ 37 (1953), 332]

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For those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to my books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)

Posted in American History, Current Events, Georgia History, History, Research, Southern (Georgia) History, Southern History | 4 Comments

20th-Century Blues Women (Blues Stories, 4)

Posted on April 1, 2012 by georgelamplugh

A funny thing happened when I researched the role of women in developing the Blues in the twentieth century:  I found an alternative narrative that contained a few surprises.  For example, the year 2003 was designated by Congress as “The Year of the Blues” to commemorate W.C. Handy’s first encounter with the music, in a railroad station in Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1903.  Well, it turns out that one of the “Blues divas” of the 1920s, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, had a similar experience a year before Handy’s epiphany.  According to folklorist John Work, Ma Rainey was performing in a tent show in a small Missouri town in 1902, when “a girl from the town . . . came to the tent one morning and began to sing about the ‘man’ who had left her.”  Ma Rainey was so taken by the “strange and poignant” song that she learned it and incorporated it into her act, usually as an encore.  Work reported that “Many times [Rainey] was asked what kind of song it was, and, one day she replied, in a moment of inspiration, ‘It’s the Blues.'”  (Francis Davis, The History of the Blues, p.28)

Moreover, for most Blues fans, the stereotypical early Blues performer is a black man, playing and singing in a rural setting, perhaps the Mississippi Delta.  Yet, the first Blues song ever recorded was “Crazy Blues,” by Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds, in 1920.  In fact, the 1920s, the “classic era” of recorded Blues, was dominated by women who lived, performed, and recorded in the cities. The decade of the the 1920s is also called the “Jazz Age.”  Most of the Blues divas of the ’20s came from a vaudeville or cabaret background; since few of them could play instruments, the members of their backup bands tended to be jazz musicians. The line between jazz and the Blues was fuzzy at best, in other words.  Moreover, as a modern scholar points out, “In the 1920s, . . . women blues singers had been extremely successful, but many people had regarded them simply as popular entertainers and had associated them with sexuality and working-class urban vices more than with technical skill or acquired artistry.”  (Ruth Feldstein, “‘I Don’t Trust You Anymore’:  Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s,” Journal of American History 91 (March, 2005), 1356) 

The era of the “Classic Blues” ended in 1929, when the Stock Market Crash and the ensuing Great Depression dealt a devastating one-two punch to record labels and recording contracts.  As the demand for the Blues dried up in the 1930s, some Blues women returned to southern tent shows, small northern clubs, or began to sing jazz, swing, or big band music.  A few women, of whom Memphis Minnie is the best example, began to perform with combos in cities like Chicago, “which would sow the seeds for the electric-blues-band revolution of the 1950s.”  (Peter Guralnick, et al., eds., Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues:  A Musical Journey, p.24)  Other singers abandoned pure Blues for the more popular “rhythm ‘n’ blues” (R&B) in the 1940s and 1950s.  And still others got out of music altogether and into lines of work that, while perhaps less exciting, promised a more regular paycheck.

Ironically, a few of these elderly former “Blues Queens” found themselves back in demand during the Blues revival of the 1960s, as covers of their old songs by performers like Janis Joplin and Bonnie Raitt revived interest in their original work.  So, those who could, hit the performing and recording trails again.  To a great extent, this revival of interest in the Blues during the ’60s helped to ensure its survival for the rest of the twentieth century, as American groups and rock and R&B performers joined “British invasion” bands like the Rolling Stones and the Animals in playing and singing the Blues.  As the century ended, moreover, there were a number of younger women working hard to keep the Blues alive.

* * * * *

MAMIE SMITH (1883-1946)–Born in Cincinnati.  Began in vaudeville as a dancer, moved to New York City in 1913, later worked as a singer in Harlem.  In August 1920, an African American composer, Perry Bradford, who was also Smith’s agent, talked Okeh Records into letting her record “Crazy Blues,” a song he had already published with other companies under at least three different names.  The record sold 75,000 copies in the first month, 1,000,000 the first year, and a total of 2,000,000.  This convinced record companies that African Americans would buy records, made recorded Blues the next big thing, and launched Mamie Smith’s career.  Smith made a lot of money in the first three years or so after recording “Crazy Blues,” but she spent it as fast as she made it.  Not even several movie appearances in the ’30s and ’40s could salvage her career, and she died penniless in 1946.

Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds

GERTRUDE “MA” RAINEY (1886-1939)–known as the “Mother of the Blues,” she was born Gertrude Pridgett to minstrel parents in Columbus, Georgia. While Mamie Smith might have recorded the first Blues song, Ma Rainey was probably the first artist to include a Blues tune in her act.  She worked most of her early life in tent shows and minstrel troupes that traveled throughout the South.  Beginning in 1923, Rainey recorded 90 songs over a period of five years.  In the costumes she wore in her elaborate shows, Rainey made up in gold, jewelry, and expensive gowns what she lacked in conventional physical beauty.  Because she invested her earnings, Rainey was able to retire comfortably to Columbus, beginning in 1934.

BESSIE SMITH (1894-1937)–born in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Her first stage appearance was at the age of 9; as a teenager, she sang and danced in traveling minstrel shows, including one that also featured Ma Rainey.  When she first tried to land a recording contract, she was deemed to have a voice that was “too rural,”  but she eventually signed with Columbia in 1923.  Her first single, “Downhearted Blues,” sold almost 800,000 copies.  Over the next decade, Smith recorded 160 sides that blended vaudeville pop, country blues, and jazz.  Her stage presence earned her the nickname “Empress of the Blues,” and she possessed a formidable personality. In 1937, Bessie Smith died as the result of a traffic accident outside Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Bessie Smith

MEMPHIS MINNIE (1897-1973)–born Lizzie Douglas, just outside New Orleans.  Her father bought her a guitar when she was eight, which she quickly learned to play, and, at the age of 13, she left home to tour the South with the Ringling Brothers Circus.  She was another strong-minded Blues woman; one acquaintance claimed that Minnie was “tougher than a man,” and part of her reputation was that she “played the guitar like a man.”  Veteran Blues performer Big Bill Broonzy, whom Minnie is reputed to have bested in a guitar-playing contest in 1933, said that she could “make a guitar speak words, she can make a guitar cry, moan, talk, and whistle the blues.”  (Christopher John Farley, “Memphis Minnie and the Cutting Contest,” in Guralnick, et al., Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues, p.199)  Memphis Minnie began recording in 1929 and remained perhaps the biggest female Blues star through World War II.

Memphis Minnie

RORY BLOCK (1949-)–born in Princeton, N.J., Rory Block was raised in New York City’s Greenwich Village during the folk revival of the early 1960s.  She began to play the guitar as a youngster; then, as a teenager, she had an epiphany of sorts:  “One day in 1964 I heard an album called ‘Really The Country Blues,’ and from that moment on my life was dedicated to learning how to play blues.”  (Rory Block, “Life Story,” official web site)  Over the next several years, she spent time honing her craft with such Blues masters as Reverend Gary Davis and Son House.  Block has since been acclaimed for her mastery of Country and Delta Blues, but she also can “walk the fine line of being a traditionalist, . . . while incorporating the experiences of modern life into her sound.” (Sue Foley, liner notes, Blues Guitar Women cd)  Blues historian Francis Davis describes Block as “an accomplished slide guitarist–one of the best contemporary interpreters of Robert Johnson and other legends of years gone by.”  (Davis, The History of the Blues, p. 249)  These qualities are especially evident on two of her cds, The Lady and Mr. Johnson and Blues Walkin’ Like a Man:  A Tribute to Son House.

Rory Block

RUTH BROWN (1928-2006)–born in Portsmouth, Virginia, as Ruth Weston.  After overcoming the opposition of her father, a church choir director, to her singing pop tunes, she signed with an R&B outfit, Atlantic Records, in 1948.  Over the next decade, she turned out a series of hits that earned for her the nickname “Miss Rhythm” and her record company that of “the House that Ruth Built.”  After three disastrous marriages, however, her career dried up in the 1960s, and, to support herself and her two sons, Brown worked as a maid, a school bus driver, and a teacher’s aide, singing only on weekends.  Her career revived in the mid-1970s, when she began to record jazz and Blues songs.

Ruth Brown

WILLIE MAE (“BIG MAMA”) THORNTON (1926-1984)–born in Montgomery, Alabama.  After winning an amateur singing contest, Willlie Mae Thornton was signed to sing in a show called “Hot Harlem Review.”  Following a stint in Houston, Texas, Thornton moved to New York City, where she earned her nickname “Big Mama” for her work in a show at the Apollo Theater in 1952.  She recorded “Hound Dog” for Peacock Records in 1953.  It sold 2,000,000 copies, from which Big Mama received only a single check, for $500, despite the fact that Elvis Presley would make the song a rock ‘n’ roll classic in 1956.  A decade later, Janis Joplin covered another Thornton song, “Ball and Chain,” and it became a big hit.  The success of Joplin’s “Ball and Chain” also revived Thornton’s career, and she began touring again.  Her overpowering stage presence endeared her to fans everywhere.

Big Mama Thornton

SIPPIE WALLACE (1898-1986)–Sippie Wallace was born Beulah Thomas in Houston, Texas.  By her teens, she was performing with other family members in New Orleans’ notorious Storyville District.  After the authorities closed Storyville in 1917, Sippie went back to tent shows.  She was one of the female vocalists who cashed in on recorded Blues, in the wake of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues.”  Signed by Smith’s label, Okey Records, Wallace soon became the company’s top-grossing singer.  She not only wrote many of her songs, but she also played piano on some of her records.  Like most of the Blues divas of the 1920s, Wallace stopped recording after 1929.  Following a few years organizing her own tours of dance halls and gin joints, Wallace retired to a career teaching and performing church music.  Ron Harwood, a 16-year old Blues researcher, brought Sippie out of retirement in 1965 and acted as her agent and manager for the next 22 years.  One of those who admired–and covered–several of Wallace’s songs was Bonnie Raitt; in fact, one of those tunes, “Woman Be Wise,” became Raitt’s first major hit, and Wallace toured with Raitt between 1972 and 1985.

Bonnie & Sippie

FRANCINE REED (1947-)–born in Chicago, Reed has been singing professionally since she was a child, when she was a member of her family’s gospel group.  A broken marriage forced her to put her ambitions for a singing career on hold until her children were grown.  She rose to prominence in the jazz clubs of her adopted hometown of Phoenix, Arizona.  In 1985, Reed met the then unknown Lyle Lovett, and she became the back-up singer for his Large Band.  She relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, and since then her solo career as a Blues performer has really taken off.

Francine Reed

 SUGGESTED READING

1.  Charters, Samuel.  The Blues Makers.  DaCapo, 1991.

2.  Davis, Francis.  The History of the Blues.  Hyperion, 1995.

3.  Feldstein, Ruth.  “‘I Don’t Trust You Anymore’:  Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s,” Journal of American History 91 (March, 2005), 1349-1379.

4.  Guralnick, Peter, et al., eds.  Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues:  A Musical Journey.  Amistad, 2003.

5.  Harrison, Daphne Duval.  Black Pearls:  Blues Queens of the 1920s.  Rutgers University Press, 1993.

6.  Lomax, Alan.  The Land Where the Blues Began.  Pantheon Books, 1993.

7.  McKee, Margaret, and Fred Chisenhall.  Beale Black & Blue:  Life and Music on Black America’s Main Street.  LSU Press, 1981.

DISCOGRAPHY

1.  Francine Reed,  I Got a Right! . . . to some of my best.  CMO Records (CMO 1010)

2.  Rory Block, The Lady and Mr. Johnson.  Rykodisc (RCD 10872); Blues Walkin’ Like a Man.  Stony Plain (SPCD 1329)

3.  Blues Masters, Vol. 1: Classic Blues Women.  Rhino (R2 71134)

4.  The Bonnie Raitt Collection.  Warner Brothers (9 26242-2)

5.  Essential Women in Blues.  House of Blues (5146 1257 2)

6.  Ladies Sing the Blues.  Academy Sound and Vision Ltd. (CD AJA 5092)

7.  Men Are Like Street Cars. . . Women Blues Singers, 1928-1969  MCA (MCAD2-11788)

8.  Blues Guitar Women.  Ruf Records (RUF 1110)

9. Roots of the Blues.  Vanguard (208/10-2)

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For those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to my books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)

 

Posted in American History, Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton, Billie Holiday, Blues Women, Chicago Blues, Delta Blues, Francine Reed, History, Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Memphis Minnie, Ruth Brown, Sippie Wallace and Bonnie Raitt, Southern History, The Blues | 3 Comments

Blues Geography (Blues Stories, 3)

Posted on March 10, 2012 by georgelamplugh

Any discussion of geographical variations in the Blues, while important in developing some understanding of the music, is also problematic, because those labels can be slippery.  As Francis Davis points out, “the widespread availability of country blues records quickly blurred regional distinctions that were fuzzy to begin with, on account of the nomadic existence of most blues performers.”  (Davis, The History of the Blues, p. 116)  Sometimes, a regional label was attached to a performer simply because he/she came from an area, regardless of the type of music the performer played or sang.  So, keep this in mind as we look briefly at several different “geographical” types of Blues and at a select few of the people who played them.

Delta Blues

The Blues arose in the Mississippi Delta, as I’ve discussed in an earlier post and shall return to in another post,in more detail.  Suffice to say here that biographies of Delta Blues men usually include sharecropping (e.g., on the Dockery and Stovall plantations in Mississippi), as well as at least occasional sojourns in prison farms (e.g., at Parchman in Mississippi and Angola in Louisiana) and levee camps.  As Robert Palmer said, the Delta Blues originated “as a turn-of-the-century innovation, accommodating the vocal traditions of work songs and field hollers to the expressive capabilities of a newly popular stringed instrument, the guitar.” (Quoted in Erlewine, et al, eds., All Music Guide To The Blues, p. 354–hereafter, AMGTB)

Blues men moved from place to place to entertain, which put a premium on traveling light and made the acoustic guitar a favorite instrument.  It was the Delta Blues that furnished the stereotypical image of the soulful but tormented Blues man,  “hunched over his acoustic guitar, exorcising the demons from the depths of his soul, his rhythmic force often accentuated by thrilling slide guitar.”  (AMGTB, p 353; cf. Davis, p. 115, for a similar view)

Charley Patton (1891-1934) is generally acknowledged as the “Father of the Delta Blues.”  Patton’s voice, while gruff and plaintive enough to suit the purist, presents problems to newcomers, because many of his recorded lyrics are unintelligible to the novice, the result of primitive recording techniques and Patton’s deep Delta accent.  (There are web sites out there that feature printed lyrics to Blues songs, including Patton’s, though these efforts are far from perfect.) Despite this difficulty in understanding what Patton is singing, even the tinny recordings that have survived still manage to convey the power of his guitar work.

Charley Patton

Son House (1902-1988)—House recorded his first sides in 1929, at about the age of 27. He drove a tractor in the 1930s while singing and playing the Blues in his off hours.  House was “discovered” not once but twice:  in 1942, while still in Mississippi, by Alan Lomax, who was recording folksongs for the Library of Congress; and in 1965, after he’d moved to Rochester, N.Y., and given up music, by three eager fans during the rebirth of interest in the Blues created by the impact of African American music on various “British invasion” rock bands. As a result, House hit the concert trail and began recording again, one of the last survivors of the original Delta Blues men.

Son House

The most elusive of the Delta Blues men is Robert Johnson (1911-1938).  A child of the Delta, Johnson honed his guitar skills by studying the techniques of performers like Charley Patton and Son House, but, according to Johnson himself, he received both his song-writing ability and guitar-playing prowess after making a pact with the Devil while “standin’ at the crossroads.”  He died an agonizing death under mysterious circumstances in 1938, apparently poisoned by the angry husband of a woman he’d been flirting with.  Because of his early demise, Johnson’s recorded output was small, a total of 41 sides produced between November 1936 and June 1937, but his influence on later generations of Blues and rock ‘n’ roll performers has been tremendous.

Robert Johnson

The link between the Delta and Chicago Blues styles was Muddy Waters (1915-1983), born McKinley Morganfield in Rolling Fork, Mississippi.  By the early 1940s, Morganfield was a tractor driver during the day and performed at night as “Muddy Waters, Stovall’s Famous Guitar Picker” in local juke joints.  He too was “discovered” by Alan Lomax, who recorded him at the Stovall Plantation in 1941 and 1942.  As Muddy described the experience, “[W]hen Mr. Lomax played me the record [of his 1941-1942 songs] I thought, man, this boy can sing the blues.” (Liner notes, “Muddy Waters:  The Complete Plantation Recordings”)  He left the Delta in 1943 for Chicago.

Muddy Waters

Highways 49 and 61, as well as the railroads that ran through the Delta, led to Chicago, and many African Americans, including a number of talented Blues performers, joined Muddy Waters along this escape route. (Davis, The History of the Blues, p. 116) The lure of war work and reports of a freer environment set off the “Great Migration” during World War I; over the next three decades, thousands of African Americans left the South for the industrial cities of the Midwest and Northeast.

Chicago Blues

Before Muddy Waters arrived in Chicago, the Blues scene there was heavily influenced by one producer, Lester Melrose, who developed talent for two major record labels, Columbia and Victor.  Melrose’s chief contribution was creating a sound with full band arrangements—“ensemble playing, a rhythm section, and even some electricity.” (AMGTB, p.356)

One of the most important of the pre-Muddy Chicago Blues figures was Memphis Minnie [AKA Minnie Douglas McCoy] (1897-1973), who quickly learned to play the guitar and, rather than work as a sharecropper with the rest of her family, she—and her guitar—left home at the age of 13.  She toured the South with the Ringling Brothers Circus, wowing crowds with the many creative ways she could play her guitar (e.g., across the back of her head).  She was a woman who took no guff from anyone. Part of her reputation was based on how she supposedly “played the guitar like a man,” and one story, perhaps apocryphal, described how she bested veteran Chicago Blues man Big Bill Broonzy in a guitar-playing contest in 1933. Memphis Minnie began recording in 1929 and remained one of the best-known female Blues performers through World War II. (Christopher John Farley, “Memphis Minnie and the Cutting Contest,” in Guralnik, et al,  Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues, pp.198-201)

Memphis Minnie

Newly-arrived in Chicago, Muddy Waters purchased his first electric guitar in 1944.  More than any other performer, Muddy was responsible for introducing the “electric Blues” in Chicago, which would exert a major influence on rock ‘n’ roll.  As he worked house parties and clubs on the South Side, Muddy realized that he needed more volume than was produced by the acoustic guitar in order to cut through the noise generated by the large, enthusiastic Chicago audiences.  Using a thumb pick and a bottleneck slide with his electric guitar was a first step in increasing the volume of his performances, even as he built a band around a second electric guitar, an amplified harmonica, a bass, drums, and a piano.  Nevertheless, his bosses at Chess Records, where he began to record in 1948, insisted that Muddy try to achieve a spare “Mississippi sound,” and they paired him only with a bass player on his earliest recordings.

Howlin’ Wolf [Chester Burnett] (1910-1976)—Among Wolf’s early teachers was Charley Patton.  Like most Blues men, Wolf gave up farming and left the Delta, migrating first to Memphis and then, in 1953, to Chicago, where Muddy Waters helped him get established.  Physically imposing, Wolf turned into a flamboyant performer who was, in the words of Blues historian Francis Davis, “given to simulating sexual ecstasy or epileptic seizures (difficult to know which it was supposed to be) by writhing on stage floors and treating his audience to the spectacle of a three hundred-pound man skipping while shaking his ass to the beat.” (Davis, The History of the Blues, p.192)  Wolf was not a particularly accomplished musician, either on guitar or harmonica; what carries his records, and what made him a favorite of British rock groups like the Rolling Stones, was his voice.  Again according to Francis Davis, Wolf “didn’t so much sing as cackle with malevolent glee.”  (ibid., 193)

Howlin’ Wolf

Texas Blues 

As developed in the 1920s, acoustic Texas Blues was noted for “drawing heavily from country, but leaving out the twang,” a laid-back rhythm known as the “Texas Shuffle,” and lyrics with not as many “cryin’-in-my-beer themes.”   (Davis, The History of the Blues, p. 116)

A formative influence on the acoustic Texas Blues style was Blind Lemon Jefferson (1897?-1929), sometimes called the “Father of the Texas Blues” and the most famous bluesman of the Roaring ‘20s.  According to Blues historian Jas Obrecht, Jefferson was a man who “lived the rough-and-tumble themes that dominate his songs. . . .[H]is lyrics create a unique body of poetry. . . , a stunning view of society from the perspective of someone at the bottom.” [AMGTB, p.135]

Blind Lemon Jefferson

The Texas Blues went electric after World War II.  A leading figure from that era was  Aaron Thibeaux (“T-Bone”) Walker (1910-1975).  According to Blues historian Bill Dahl, “Modern electric blues can be traced directly back to”  Walker, whose efforts in that direction began around 1940, a few years before Muddy Waters arrived in Chicago. (AMGTB, p.261)

T-Bone Walker

Piedmont/East Coast Blues 

Piedmont/East Coast Blues was characterized by a complex, finger-picking guitar method that integrated earlier types of music like ragtime and country dance songs into the Blues.  These tunes blended both black and white, rural and urban song elements, perhaps because, according to one writer, there were fewer restrictions on black mobility in Georgia and the Carolinas than in other parts of the musical South.  (Davis, p. 116)  The Piedmont Blues arose between the Appalachian Mountains and the coastal plain, roughly from Richmond, Virginia, to Atlanta.  African American musicians in the Piedmont migrated from rural to urban areas along the eastern seaboard.  As a result, cities “became fertile areas for black musicians to both perform and influence each other”:  Durham, N.C., the center of tobacco industry, was a gathering place for Piedmont Blues men, while Atlanta “wasn’t merely an urban center but a pipeline to the North.”  (http://facstaff.unca.edu/sinclair/piedmontblues/Default.htm; Davis, pp. 119-120)

According to Francis Davis, Piedmont Blues tunes were “more genuinely songlike” than Delta or Texas blues, and their most striking characteristics were “wistfulness and instrumental virtuosity.” For example, he characterizes the recordings of Georgia native Willie Samuel (“Blind Willie”) McTell (1901-1959), as having “the charm of a man singing to himself, strictly for his own amusement.”  (Davis, pp. 119, 122)

Blind Willie McTell

A more recent practitioner of the Piedmont Blues  was Walter (“Brownie”) McGhee (1915-1996), who was at his death “still the leading Piedmont-style bluesman” and  known both for his solo work and for his collaborations with Sonny Terry, a blind harmonica player famous in his own right. [AMGTB, p.186]  Moreover, according to several British performers interviewed in Mike Figgis’s documentary, “Red, White, & Blues,” McGhee was one of the first African American Blues men to tour in Great Britain in the 1960s and, thus, one of the earliest influences on the rising generation of white English Blues and rock guitarists, who, in their turn, proved crucial in creating an appreciation of the Blues among white American teenagers and college students.

Brownie McGhee

FURTHER READING

1. Davis, Francis.  The History of the Blues (New York, 1995)

2. Erlewine, Michael, et al., editors.  All Music Guide to The Blues (San Francisco, 1996)

3.  Gioia, Ted.  Delta Blues:  The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music (New York and London, 2008)

4. Guralnick, Peter, et al., editors.  Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues (New York, 2003)

5.  __________.  Searching for Robert Johnson (New York, 1998)

6.  Wald, Elijah.  Escaping the Delta:  Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (New York, 2004)

DISCOGRAPHY

1.  Blues Masters:  The Essential Blues Collection, Volume 8: Mississippi Delta Blues. Rhino R2 71130 (1993)

2.  East Coast Blues.  Catfish KATCD178 (2001)

3.  The Best There Ever Was:  The Legendary Early Blues Performers.  Yazoo 3002 (2003)

4.  Back to the Crossroads:  The Roots of Robert Johnson.  Yazoo 2070 (2004)

5.  Muddy Waters:  The Complete Plantation Recordings.  Chess/MCA CHD 9344 (1993)

6.  Muddy & The Wolf .  Chess/MCA CHD-9100 (1983)

7.  Southern Country Blues, Volume 1 (3 cds).  Starsounds 37122-1, 37122-2, 37122-3 (1997)

* * * * * *

For those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to my books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)

Posted in "Charley Patton", Alan Lomax, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie McTell, Brownie McGee, Chicago Blues, Delta Blues, Howlin' Wolf, Memphis Minnie, Memphis Minnie, Muddy Waters, Piedmont Blues, Robert Johnson, Son House, Southern (Georgia) History, Southern History, TBone Walker, Texas Blues, The Blues, Uncategorized | Tagged | 3 Comments

Thoughts on a First Draft

Posted on March 1, 2012 by georgelamplugh

Recently, I completed a first draft of the “Project,” after about eight months of effort (which, of course, followed fifteen years of research, most of it over long school vacations, but who’s counting!).  The text (including notes, which at this point are embedded in the body parenthetically) comes in at almost 400 single-spaced pages, which strikes me as long for a publishable manuscript but OK for a first draft.

My first book on political party development in the state of Georgia covered 23 years (1783-1806) during a period in the state’s history when only a few towns had even one newspaper, and for which other sorts of primary sources, especially personal letters, were relatively scarce.  The current project, on the other hand, looks at developments over a longer time span (1807-1845), in an era when there were more towns and, thus, many more newspapers, including several towns with at least two papers, a surprising number of which are still available in one form or another. Moreover, some types of primary sources for those four decades are more plentiful than for the earlier period, especially governmental records, though, once again, personal correspondence is not as plentiful as I’d like (chalk this up, not to illiteracy, but to the damages wrought on the state by the Civil War).  Still, much like the previous volume, the value of this one will probably rest on how well I’ve mined the surviving newspapers.

* * * * *

Another question for the next stage in this project concerns how much research in secondary sources still remains to be done.  Parts I-IV cover 1807-37 (chapters 1-11), and in them I have already incorporated material from a variety of secondary sources (i.e., books and articles), especially in dealing with such difficult subjects as Georgia’s relations with the Creeks and the Cherokees.  On the other hand, Part V, 1838-45 (chapters 12-14) was an extensive “add-on,” because I had planned to stop with the year 1837, but eventually realized that doing so would not answer the original question I had posed those many years ago (when, why, and how did party development in Georgia come to resemble that occurring in other states?).  And that section, those three chapters covering eight years, rests at this point heavily on research in newspapers.  Oh, and by adding those years to the study, I was able to answer, to my own satisfaction anyway, that nagging question, though, I must admit, without stumbling upon a smoking gun along the way.

For the second draft I plan to review all my notes from secondary sources and incorporate useful material into the first draft.  As I said above, I  have already done some of this, at least for the years 1807-37.  So, it looks like I’ll be bringing in a little additional material from secondary sources for the chapters covering 1806-1837, and quite a bit more for the those treating the last eight years.  And, the more material I add to those last few chapters, which are already the longest in the text, the more ruthless the revision of those chapters will need to be.

* * * * *

In addition to revising the contents in the second draft, there is also the matter of structure.  First of all, should I keep the division into “parts”?  It’s a logical approach, because each “part” embodies a slightly different phase of political party development in Georgia between 1807 and 1845.  But, looked at another way, separating the time period into “parts” might be artificial and, thus, not helpful.  So, a point to ponder. . . .  And, whether or not the “parts” survive, the number of chapters will surely be reduced.  In fact, as I began working on the second draft, one of the first things I did was combine  the four relatively short chapters in Part I (1806-17) into two, thereby cutting the chapters to twelve.  After the War of 1812, the number of newspapers in Georgia mushroomed, as did the length of each of the chapters:  Part II (1817-28; three chapters), 86 pages; Part III (1829-32; two chapters), 51 pages; Part IV (1833-37; two chapters), 64 pages; Part V (1838-45; three chapters), 120 pages.  Once more, the length of those “add-on” chapters seems to cry out for paring.

* * * * *

Then there is the matter of an epilogue.  If I write one, it should of course summarize the main points made in the study.  I’m also thinking about including some treatment of the years 1849-1853, when, in the wake of the Mexican War and the furor over the Wilmot Proviso and the question of slavery in the newly-acquired territory, political parties in Georgia underwent yet another re-organization. I think it might be instructive to compare and contrast that later shift with the earlier ones. For the time being, however, I’ll focus on completing the second draft, then approach the question of whether the inclusion of an Epilogue would clarify “what it all means,” and, if so, what shape it should take.

* * * * *

In sum, I am relieved to have completed the first draft, but much work lies ahead.  The more I think about this whole process, in fact, the more surprised I am at how (relatively) smoothly it has gone to this point.  Over the past decade and a half, as I’ve tried to find time to do the research, I sometimes wondered if I was being too careful in the kinds–and quantity–of notes I was taking;  how I was organizing them for storage and retrieval; the number of newspapers I’ve consulted; and the number of secondary sources I’ve used.  But, at least when writing the first draft, every time I needed to lay my hands on information squirreled away in my notes I was able to do so quickly and easily. I guess I was doing something right during the research phase, even without quite realizing what it was.

Then there’s the beauty of word processing–correcting mistakes and even shifting blocks of text to create a smoother narrative flow are so much less of a hassle than they were back in the antediluvian period of the early 1970s when I was typing my dissertation, 20 pages a day for a solid month, on a portable electric typewriter (bonus points if you remember what that was!), while puffing away on so many cheap cigars that the white curtains in our bedroom turned yellow(ish).  Ah, those were the days. . . .

* * * * *

A final point, which I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, is the added convenience for the researcher of having so many primary sources available on the Internet, especially, in my case, antebellum Georgia newspapers (most at the University of Georgia-based “Digital Library of Georgia,” part of the “Galileo” web site) and congressional records (at the Library of Congress’s marvelous “American Memory” site).  While this certainly doesn’t mean that one can write a scholarly work without leaving one’s home computer station, it does tend to make research trips more manageable, and it also simplifies the process of re-checking a source, even when you’re in the middle of revising a sentence or a paragraph.  Gee, if I drag this process out for another five or ten years I’ll bet online resources will proliferate to the point that I’d never have to leave home. . . .

* * * * * *

For those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to my books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)

Posted in American History, Georgia History, History, Research, Retirement, Southern History | 2 Comments

The Birth of the Blues (Blues Stories, 2)

Posted on February 1, 2012 by georgelamplugh

                                           [Another in a series of posts about the history of the Blues and about some of those who sang and played the Blues.]

In one sense, the generation after Emancipation represented the lowest point in the history of African Americans.  Their freedom, American citizenship, and civil rights ostensibly defined and protected by three amendments recently added to the Constitution as the result of the Civil War, blacks nevertheless watched helplessly as these same rights were gradually stripped away, with few protests from their white fellow Americans and with a shrug of indifference from the federal government.  The “Age of Jim Crow,” which would dictate race relations in the United States until the middle of the twentieth century, had arrived with a vengeance.

The situation was especially bleak for African Americans in the South, who were trapped in an increasingly rigid system of segregation and in other ways reduced by state and local laws to a status reminiscent of slavery.  Yet, it was during this same period that Southern blacks made an important contribution to American popular culture, one that grew out of the deplorable situation in which they found themselves.  The link between the legal, economic, and social oppression of African Americans during the last generation in the nineteenth century can be seen most clearly in the music produced in the rural areas and small towns of the South, the Blues.

The Blues has had a tremendous impact on a broad spectrum of American music, including jazz, country, rhythm and blues, gospel, rap, and, perhaps most importantly, on the musical style formed by the union of country and rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’ roll.  On this point, I cite no less an authority than the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” himself, Elvis Presley, who said in a 1956 interview that “The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doing now, man, for more years than I know.  They played it like that in the shanties and in their juke joints, and [almost] nobody [white!] paid it no mind ‘til I goosed it up.  I got it from them.”  (Quoted in Geoffrey O’Brien, “Rock of Ages,” New York Review of Books, Dec. 16, 1999, p. 44–bracketed words added by present author.)

The Blues arose in those parts of the Deep South dominated by large plantations (e.g., the Mississippi Delta) or by industries that required heavy manual labor, such as mining, logging, levee and railroad construction, and freight loading.  These jobs were part of the new exploitation of the South’s raw materials and its people by Northern industrialists and by their conservative white Southern allies, the “Redeemers”; they were, in other words, an integral part of what historian Paul Gaston has called the “New South Creed,” which promised to remake the conquered South economically in the image of the victorious North.  Despite the outcome of the Civil War, or perhaps because of it, Southern whites found it impossible to see their former slaves in any other role than that of “heavy lifters” in this new economy.

While some African Americans sought these labor-intensive, but relatively lucrative, jobs as a way to escape from sharecropping, others were forced to work in them because they fell victim to a penal system stacked in favor of the vested interests:  prison farms, convict leasing, chain gangs, vagrancy and contract laws–all were mechanisms used by southern states and localities to exploit black laborers unwilling to accept such backbreaking work voluntarily, thereby creating what Douglas A. Blackmon has called “slavery by another name.” Thus, it isn’t too surprising to learn that a number of prominent early Blues singers honed their musical skills while serving time in various southern levee camps, chain gangs, and prison farms.  (For example, Huddie Ledbetter, the talented, gravel-voiced guitarist better known to Blues fans as Leadbelly, was serving a sentence for murder in Louisiana’s notorious Angola Prison Farm when he was “discovered” and freed through the efforts of a Blues researcher and folklorist named John Lomax in 1933.)

“With little education or property, and no political power in a completely segregated society, [Southern blacks] often encountered intolerable working conditions and moved frequently from one plantation job to another.” (David Evans, “The Blues,” Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, p. 995)  From the end of Reconstruction to the outbreak of World War I, most of this migration was from rural areas to cities within the South (includingWashington,D.C.).  Beginning in 1915 or so, this black search for economic opportunity set off the so-called “Great Migration” that carried African Americans in waves out of the South and into the larger industrial cities of the North and Midwest, places like New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.  Between 1910 and 1940, the net out-migration of blacks from the South was 1,750,000.  (Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, p. 183)  Among these migrants were a number of talented Blues performers who took their skills to a more receptive, and, they hoped, a more lucrative, environment.  (E.g., Muddy Waters to Chicago, John Lee Hooker to Detroit.)

In short, the Blues arose out of the dissatisfaction of blacks with life in the post-Civil War South.  The Blues “reflected not only the social isolation and lack of formal training of its creators but also their ability to make do with the most basic resources and to survive under the most adverse, oppressive circumstances.”  (Evans, “The Blues,” p. 995) Or, as Bluesman Big Bill Broonzy once said, “It takes a man who’s had the Blues to play the Blues.” (Booklet, “Blues in theMississippi Night”)

* * * * *

To me, the best source for hearing about “the birth of the Blues” is a compact disc produced by Alan Lomax, “Blues in the Mississippi Night,” originally recorded in 1946.  Lomax, a white folklorist/musicologist of decidedly left-wing political views (and son of folklorist John Lomax, who had “discovered” Leadbelly in 1933), made a career of traveling throughout the South–and, later, Africa–trying to preserve on record or tape the musical culture of rural blacks.   In a New York City recording studio in 1946, Lomax brought together three veteran Bluesmen who had been born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, the area south and west of Memphis,Tennessee, along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, “the land where the Blues began.”  They were:  Big Bill Broonzy (1893-1958)—guitar

Big Bill Broonzy

Memphis Slim (1915-1988)—piano

Memphis Slim

and Sonny Boy Williamson [I] (1914-1948)—harmonica

Sonny Boy Williamson 1

Lomax primed the pump as the session began by saying to the three Bluesmen, “Listen, you all have lived with the blues all your life, but nobody here [in New York City] understands them.  Tell me what the blues are all about.” That was practically the last thing Lomax said for the next two hours, as his guests talked, sang, laughed, and cried, fueled by memories and alcohol, trying to answer his question.

When the session had ended and Lomax played the recording back, the three Bluesmen suddenly were terrified.  They begged him never to tell anyone they had made the recording, pleading that “You don’t understand, Alan.  If these records came out on us, they’d take it out on our folks down home; they’d burn them out and Lord knows what else.” (Booklet, “Blues in the Mississippi Night”)  Lomax also claimed that, when he played the tape for Hodding Carter, a “crusading editor” in Greenville, Mississippi, Carter “was moved and astounded by what he heard, but he also warned ‘Alan, I want to give you one piece of advice.  Lock those tapes in the trunk of your car and head for the Mississippi line, because if they catch you with them here I don’t know what I would be able to do for you.'”

And so, for the next forty-five years, whenever Lomax made use of this recorded material in radio broadcasts, articles, and even on a record produced by United Artists, he disguised the location of the session and gave the participants fictitious names.  Not until 1990, two years after the last of the three Bluesmen had died, when he released a new version of the recordings, entitled “Blues in the Mississippi Night”(Rykodisc, RCD 90155), did Lomax set the historical record straight.  It’s also important to remember that, as Lomax reminds us in the booklet accompanying the Rykodisc edition, “Certainly some of their yarns are the stuff of legend, but they contain an inner core of truth, which lights up the southern Black experience in the first years of this century.”

The booklet accompanying the cd has, in addition to the introductory essay by Alan Lomax from which I’ve quoted, the text of the conversation among Big Bill, Sonny Boy, and Memphis Slim.  Moreover, there is another version of this same conversation, with some interesting differences in organization and wording, in Chapter 10 of Lomax’s fine book, The Land Where the Blues Began (New York, 1993). [NOTE:  According to amazon.com, the currently available version of the “Blues in the Mississippi Night” cd is from Rounder Select (ASIN–B00009WVTH)]  Whether you lay your hands on the Rykodisc version or the newer one from Rounder, to paraphrase Karl Malden in the old American Express commercials, if you are a Blues fan, “don’t leave home without” Lomax’s “Blues in the Mississippi Night.”

In addition to the works cited above, the following books provide further background and historical context for “the birth of the Blues”:

Barry, John M.  Rising Tide:  The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America (New York, 1997)

Blackmon, Douglas A.  Slavery By Another Name:  The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York, 2009)

Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth:  The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity (New York, 1992)

Cohn, David L.   The Mississippi Delta and the World: The Memoirs of David L. Cohn (Editor, James C. Cobb; Baton Rouge, 1995)

Davis, Francis.  The History of the Blues (New York, 1995)

Gaston, Paul M.  The New South Creed:  A Study in Southern Mythmaking (New York, 1970)

Geoia, Ted.  Delta Blues (New York, 2008)

Percy, William Alexander.  Lanterns on the Levee:  Recollections of a Planter’s Son (Baton Rouge, 1998)

Wald, Elijah.  Escaping the Delta:  Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (New York, 2004)

Woodruff, Nan Elizabeth.  American Congo:  The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2003)

* * * * * *

For those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to my books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)

Posted in Alan Lomax, American History, Delta Blues, History, Southern History, The Blues | 6 Comments

2011 in review

Posted on January 1, 2012 by georgelamplugh

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,000 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 17 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

* * * * * *

For those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to my books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

POTP Cover

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Civil Rights–And Wrongs: Personal Reflections on Dr. King and His Legacy

Posted on January 1, 2012 by georgelamplugh

As my former American History students will tell you, I am a great admirer of the modern civil rights movement in the United States, and, especially, of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the greatest Americans of the twentieth century.  I wish I could say I came to this conclusion only after years of reading, study, and reflection on the Movement and on Dr. King’s role in it, and to some extent that’s true, as you’ll see a bit later.  However, I must begin with the admission that I first “learned” about the African-American struggle for civil rights when I was growing up, and the “lessons” I learned were taught to me by–what else?–television.  The epochal Brown decision was handed down by the Supreme Court in May, 1954, three days before my tenth birthday; the legislative highlights of the “heroic phase” of the civil rights movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, became realities while I was in college.  And, until I entered college in the fall of 1962, my largest window on the world was our black and white  TV set, and the fuzzy images I saw every night on the newscasts we watched with dinner.

I was a very young “news junkie” in 1954–for instance, I still remember watching some of the Army-McCarthy hearings in the afternoons, postponing my homework so I could catch what I would later learn to call “great political theater.”  And, when those hearings eventually ran their course, and I had to find a new excuse to put off the night’s school assignments, the drama–and, thanks to television, the images–accompanying the civil rights movement seemed never-ending.  I also must confess that I was quite naive about what I was watching.  To me, it all seemed very clear-cut, a matter of black-and-white, just like the TV I watched and the daily newspaper I read–but with the traditional symbolism of black-and-white reversed:  it was the (Southern) white folks who were the villains and the black people who were the heroes.  Oh, and I also was certain that, as a resident of the great state of Maryland (and, later, of Delaware), I didn’t live where there were any race problems, no siree!  Although my view of the world has changed over the past five decades, with the clarity of black-and-white evolving into shades of gray, one aspect has not been altered by time–my conviction of the centrality of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to the successes–and the failures–of the modern civil rights movement.

I still recall vividly a Saturday afternoon, probably during the Little Rock crisis, standing outside my church, waiting for a ride home, when suddenly my fascination with the on-going epic of the Movement collided with a burgeoning interest in the American Civil War, and I began to ponder, as only a 13 year-old can, whether we were on the verge of a new Civil War, this one over the demands of an oppressed minority for the same basic civil rights and economic and social opportunities the rest of us took for granted.

* * * * *

On the afternoon of April 4, 1968, my wife and I emerged from a movie theater on a military post in Maryland to learn that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee.  At the time, I was a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army finishing an undistinguished two-year tour of active duty.

We had gone to the matinee because that night I was scheduled to be the post’s Staff Duty Officer, which meant that a sergeant and I were to stay in the headquarters building overnight just in case any important messages arrived for the post commander.  When my wife and I took our seats in the post theater a couple of hours earlier, I had been looking forward to the assignment; by the time we drove home, I was no longer anticipating the night ahead.

At the post headquarters building, I was told that, if things got out of hand in nearby Baltimore, as appeared likely, our headquarters company would be alerted to travel to the metropolis to assist in “riot control.”  Then the sergeant and I were left alone in a small room equipped with a portable black-and-white television set and an increasingly ominous telephone.  My mood was not improved when I called my wife, who told me that her boss, and our landlord (we lived above his shop), planned to stay up all night, garden hose at the ready, in case “they” came marching down the main street of our little town and stopped to burn down his business on the way.

With little to do unless the phone rang, I turned my attention to television news coverage of the roiling civil unrest in the nation’s cities in the wake of Dr. King’s assassination.  Two incidents from that coverage remain with me to this day:  an African-American celebrity (it might have been soul singer James Brown), against the backdrop of the smoke-filled Washington, D.C., skyline, pleading with viewers not to dishonor Dr. King’s memory by going on a rampage of violence and looting; and the increasingly frantic voice of a frightened reporter phoning in details to his employers while an angry crowd rocked, and eventually overturned, the telephone booth in which he had taken refuge.

Evidently, the combined efforts of local law enforcement and the National Guard kept a lid on things in Baltimore, because the sergeant and I never got that telephone call.  I drove off the post the next morning relieved that the alert had not come but also feeling that somehow, with the death of Dr. King, the civil rights movement and the nation had been irrevocably changed, though in ways none of us could yet fathom.

* * * * *

Although I became a “Southern historian” in graduate school, my dissertation topic was narrow: a study of one aspect of life in a single southern state, over a thirty-year period. That’s when fate took a hand:  unable to find a college teaching post but still determined to teach History, I eagerly sought, and finally found, a job at a “prep school” in Atlanta.  (For more on this, look here)  Because I was teaching on the secondary level, I had neither the opportunity nor the incentive to become narrowly specialized, and this eventually brought me back to the civil rights movement.

One of my bread-and-butter courses was the American History survey, and, while the lecture notes from my days as a grad school teaching assistant stood me in good stead for many topics, they were quite sparse for the years following World War II.  Thus, I needed to teach the key events of more recent decades to myself before I could hope to impart them to others.  Not surprisingly, given my early “education” in the “school of television,” one of the themes I chose to focus on was the movement for African American civil rights.  An early product of this labor was an elective course on the “image” of the modern South in movies and television, an offering that lasted a few years before my school jettisoned most electives in order to scramble onto the “back-to-basics” bandwagon.  That course eventually was followed by a unit on the Civil Rights Movement each spring in my Advanced Placement U.S. History course. Finally, perhaps a decade ago, I inherited a one-semester elective course, the Modern Civil Rights Movement, which I taught several times before retirement.  This teaching assignment necessitated a lot of additional reading on the Movement, reading I have continued to do since leaving the classroom almost two years ago.

* * * * *

Since 1968, those of us who remember Dr. King when he was alive have witnessed the making, unmaking, and remaking of his historical reputation.  Some scholars have confirmed his all too human flaws.  Then, too, efforts to understand how the civil rights revolution operated at the grass roots have to some extent lowered Dr. King’s historical profile by raising that of the previously anonymous “foot soldiers” of the movement.  Scholars also have recognized the work of those who struggled for equality before King and his Movement contemporaries.  Other  works have highlighted the “Great Migration” between World War I and about 1970, when thousands of African Americans abandoned the Jim Crow South for the siren song of other, supposedly less racist, parts of the nation.  (For a couple of examples of books in this area, go here.)

The Race Beat, by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, examines how–and how well–the Movement was covered by the increasingly important mass media in the 1950s and 1960s, a key development for understanding both the nation’s growing awareness of its racial problems and Dr. King’s role as the face–and voice–of the Movement.  In recent years, too, revisionism has begun to shine its light on the values and beliefs of Southern whites who opposed King’s efforts.  Moreover, scholars are now taking the Black Power Movement more seriously than perhaps used to be the case. Finally, political scientists have examined the methods used to move racial politics from the realm of marches and national legislation to the creation of mundane state and local ordinances, through compromises and back room deals, measures that affect Americans, black and white, everyday.  (For a review of a pair of books on these last two topics, go here.)

While the resulting picture of the forces behind–and against–the civil rights movement is fuller and more complex now than it used to be, Martin Luther King, Jr., remains a key figure, especially in mediating between the Movement and the larger society of which it was a part.  Taylor Branch does an admirable job fitting Dr. King into the broader context of American history since the mid-1950s in his trilogy, America in the King Years, completed in 2006.  Branch balances coverage of the Movement in general, and King’s activities in particular, with treatment of the other issues facing the country during the years of King’s prominence.  In his final volume, At Canaan’s Edge, for example, the impact of the Vietnam War nearly swamps King’s efforts to push the nation along the rocky road to equality, just as it did in “real life,” at least in my memory. Overall, Branch keeps his hero at the center of things, carefully charting his course and the ways others, especially those in power, responded to King’s initiatives.  So successful is Branch in accomplishing this difficult task, that, when King is finally cut down on that motel balcony in Memphis, and Branch concludes his massive work with an epilogue of less than five pages, the reader finds himself wondering how the history of the nation might have been different had King not been assassinated.  In other words, there is no question that, in Branch’s capable hands, King becomes one of those rare figures whose life–and death–made a significant difference in the history of the United States.

* * * * *

Today, Dr. King has a national holiday and a memorial statue on the Mall in Washington.  He and his legacy are now “monumental” in every sense of the word.  Meanwhile, his children try to “protect” his image and his words, but they do so in a way that makes them seem mercenary.  And, as if that isn’t bad enough, those still opposed to government support for civil rights use Dr. King’s “content of their character” mantra to criticize efforts to advance the cause, claiming that those efforts are somehow “racist.” I watch their antics with a mixture of bemusement, cynicism, and an occasional flash of anger. In quieter moments, though, I think of that thirteen year-old waiting outside the church, pondering the possibility of a new Civil War over the issue of civil rights.  There was never any question, then, whose side he was on. . . .  And there still isn’t.

* * * * * *

For those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to my books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)

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