THE BRITISH ‘BLUESMAN’ PAUL OLIVER AND THE NATURE OF TRANSATLANTIC BLUES SCHOLARSHIP CHRISTIAN O’CONNELL A thesis submitted to The University of Gloucestershire In accordance with the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the Faculty of Media, Arts and Technology January 2013 Abstract Recent revisionist studies have argued that much of what is known about music known as the blues’ has been 'invented' by the writing of enthusiasts far removed from the African American culture that created the music. Elijah Wald and Marybeth Hamilton in particular have attempted to sift through the clouds of romanticism, and tried to unveil more empirical histories that were previously obscured by the fallacious genre distinctions conjured up during the 1960s blues revival. While this revisionist scholarship has shed light on some previously ignored historical facts, writers have tended to concentrate on the romanticism of blues writing strictly from an American perspective, failing to acknowledge the genesis and influence of transatlantic scholarship, and therefore ignoring the work of the most prolific and influential blues scholar of the twentieth century, British writer Paul Oliver. By examining the core of Oliver’s research and writing during the 1950s and 1960s, this study aims to place Oliver in his rightful place at the centre of blues historiography. His scholarship allows a more detailed appreciation of the manner in which the blues was studied, through lyrics, recordings, oral histories, photography and African American literature. These historical sources were interpreted in accordance with the author’s attitudes to the commercial popular music, which allowed the ‘reconstruction’ of an African American ‘folk’ culture in which the blues became the antithesis of pop. Importantly, this study seeks to transcend dominant discourses of national cultural ownership or ethnocentrism, and demonstrate that representations of African American music and culture were constructed within a transatlantic context. The blues is music with roots in the African American experience within the United States; however, as Paul Oliver’s writing shows, its reception and representation were not limited by the same national, cultural or racial boundaries. 2 Author’s Declaration I declare that the work in this thesis was carried out in accordance with the regulations of the University of Gloucestershire and is original except where indicated by specific reference in the text. No part of the thesis has been submitted as part of any other academic award. The thesis has not been presented to any other education institution in the United Kingdom or overseas. Any views expressed in the thesis are those of the author and in no way represent those of the University. Signed …………………………………………….. Date …………15/02/2013 3 Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to thank my doctoral supervisor Prof. Neil Wynn for his role in my development as a researcher and a budding historian. His words of wisdom and interest in the subject have contributed a great deal to the final thesis. I would also like to thank the staff in the History department at University of Gloucestershire, who have always been very supportive of this project, and have helped in obtaining further funding for the research. My sincerest thanks also go to my second supervisor Joe Wilson; Lorna Scott at the Archives at the University of Gloucestershire; Michael Roach at the European Blues Association in Gloucester; Tom McGuiness and Bob Groom for agreeing to be interviewed and providing some fascinating background information; the editors at Popular Music; for their funding and support: the Eccles Centre at the British Library, the British Association of American Studies, the Royal Historical Society; Helen Kirby at Devon Transcription for her speedy services and infinite patience; and Prof. Brian Ward for his support at academic conferences where parts of this study were presented. My last acknowledgement is to Paul Oliver himself, who opened up his home and gave a lot of his time to the interviews for this study. I hope that the study will contribute to his reputation as a leading authority on African American music. 4 Contents Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Distance Learning: Paul Oliver’s Blues Writing in the 1950s 42 Chapter 2: Blues Fell This Morning: Record Collecting and the Analysis of 87 Lyrics in the Reconstruction of the Blues Chapter 3: ‘You Asked Me So I’m Telling You:’ The Use of Oral History and 135 Photography in Conversation with the Blues (1965) Chapter 4: History, Tradition and Invention: Screening the Blues (1968) 199 Chapter 5: The Rise and Fall: The Story of the Blues (1969) 235 Conclusion 289 Appendices: Interviews 301 Bibliography 437 5 Introduction In the nineteen-fifties and sixties African American music emerged as one of the major influences in white popular music on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the most remarkable aspects of this movement was the place and significance of music known as the blues in providing inspiration for groups and individuals such as the Rolling Stones, Alexis Korner, The Animals, The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall. This musical ‘revival’ was accompanied, but also preceded by the development of a body of writing that also focussed on the blues. One of the most prominent and influential writers is the Englishman Paul Oliver, who over a period of sixty years has written some of the best-known and widely referenced books on the subject from Blues Fell This Morning: the Meaning of the Blues (1960), Conversation with the Blues (1965), and The Story of the Blues (1969). This study will examine Oliver’s work in order to assess the nature and significance of transatlantic blues scholarship. In reconsidering the representations of the music in these works, this project will follow in the footsteps of a strand of revisionist scholarship on blues historiography. Writers such as Elijah Wald and Marybeth Hamilton have claimed that blues scholarship during the fifties, sixties and beyond, has been as much about ‘invention’ as it has been about discovery.1 They argue that since the revival the blues has been repeatedly represented as an authentic African American folk culture at odds with popular music and the commercialism of the music industry. Blues singers such as Robert Johnson have 1 Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (Amistad: New York, 2004); Marybeth Hamilton, In Search of the Blues: black voices, white visions (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) 6 been idolized as noble rebels that renounced the worldly benefits of commercial success in favour of their art. In essence, revisionist writers have emphasized that the blues was a form of popular music in its time, part of the music industry and therefore much more modern in character. Revivalist blues writers however, reframed the music and the musicians based on what they wanted to see: a ‘folk’ form which was opposed aesthetically and philosophically to commercialism and any notion of industry. However, so far these writers have only told an American story, and focused on the role of notable American folklorists, collectors and scholars involved in defining representations of the blues such as Alan Lomax, Frederic Ramsey, Samuel Charters and James McKune. The blues is American music with origins firmly rooted within the African American experience of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the story of its journey through the public consciousness and its reverberations within popular memory since World War II has not been limited by the same physical and cultural boundaries. Therefore, this study will attempt to move away from nationally or ethnocentrically based discourses of blues historiography by acknowledging the transatlantic character of blues appreciation and writing in the post-war era. Oliver’s seminal scholarship demonstrates that the music existed within a much more fluid context of cultural intermixture, permitted by the increasing availability of music through mass media and transatlantic interactions during the fifties and sixties. By undertaking a textual analysis influenced by deconstructionist approaches to historiography, an in-depth analysis of Oliver’s work will allow a more detailed understanding of how the blues was interpreted and reconstituted through a range of methods such as the analysis of lyrics, oral history, photography, and the process of constructing an historical narrative. This 7 introduction will begin by placing the topic within the context of the current revisionist emphasis on the invention of the blues, and demonstrate the need for a detailed consideration of the role of Paul Oliver. The ‘Invention’ of the Blues: origins and debates Traditionally, written interpretations of the blues and blues history have been pervaded by what George Lipsitz has defined as one of the main problems of popular culture studies: the subjective aesthetic criteria driving the analysis of cultural texts.2 The music has been framed within the context of a binary opposition between white mainstream culture and black folk culture, which has led to an idealization of blues singers as folk heroes, outsiders and rebels against the consumerism of the fickle entertainment industry. The fact that the blues emerged amid the harsh realities of racial segregation and social deprivation augmented the sense that the music represented distinct human qualities of heroic dignity and resilience. This is best exemplified by the music journalist Robert Palmer in his famous history Deep Blues (1981): ‘[i]t’s the story of a small and deprived group of people who created, against tremendous odds, something that has enriched us all.’3 The tendency has been to envision the most deprived and those most distant from mainstream culture as the most representative of the blues idiom, giving rise to the popular conception of the “bluesman,” 2 George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (London & Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990[sic]1994), p.