Reengaging Blues Narratives: Alan Lomax, Jelly Roll Morton and W.C. Handy ©
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REENGAGING BLUES NARRATIVES: ALAN LOMAX, JELLY ROLL MORTON AND W.C. HANDY By Vic Hobson A dissertation submitted to the School of Music, In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of East Anglia (March 2008) Copyright 2008 All rights reserved © This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that no quotation from the thesis, nor any information derived therefrom, may be published without the author’s prior, written consent. i Acknowledgments This for me has been a voyage of discovery and I count myself fortunate to have enjoyed the process. This has been due, in no small part, to the support, help and encouragement that I have received along the way. People who, in the early days of my research, had been only names on the covers of books are now real; all have been helpful, most have been enthusiastic and some I now count as friends. The School of Music at the University of East Anglia is a small school in a rapidly expanding university which was led for many years by David Chadd who sadly died before the completion of this work. Fortunately the foundations he laid are secure and I have benefited from the knowledge and experience of all of the staff of the school, in particular my supervisor Jonathan Impett. Among Jonathan’s contributions, above and beyond the normal duties of a PhD supervisor is to have shown faith in a thesis that initially must have seemed rather unlikely. I am also grateful to Nanette Nielsen, who inherited the role of deputy supervisor from Anthony Gritten, to Sharon Choa, Simon Waters, Maiko Kawabata, Richard Lewis, Susanne Francis and Vanessa Hawes of the University of East Anglia for time spent working through drafts and for their thoughts and encouragement and to Anita Grimwood for her support throughout. I am also grateful to Richard Middleton whose advice in relation to my upgrade was most useful. For the last three years I have enjoyed the financial support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which along with Roberts Funding has enabled me to travel extensively to conduct my research and to also attend conferences both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Without this funding I would have been severely limited in the scope of my research. In November 2005 I attended the Historic Brass Society Conference, jointly sponsored by the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University. I was grateful for the interest shown by Trevor Herbert (Open University), David Sager (Library of Congress, Washington D.C.) and Ed Berger (Rutgers University, New Jersey). This conference set in motion a series of events that has been central to this work; including making contact with Bruce Raeburn, (Hogan Jazz Archive). The 2005 conference took place within months of Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans; fortunately the Archive had sustained little damage and plans were made to visit the Archive the following spring. Bruce very generously allowed me to scan the oral history files of more than one hundred interviews conducted with early New Orleans jazz musicians for my research. ii Bruce also advised me to contact Lawrence Gushee, who although we have not met, has exercised a considerable influence over this work. His generosity in sharing his own unpublished findings assisted me significantly in my work. Through Bruce I met Lynn Abbott of the Hogan Jazz Archive, whose published work, in conjunction with Doug Seroff, on the commercial blues and vaudeville, had already caused me to significantly rethink my earlier work. Lynn’s importance to this dissertation is difficult to overstate. He has read draft chapters and given critical advice, he has kept me supplied with research material, shared his own research notes and encouraged me to write for the Jazz Archivist. Through the Rutgers conference in 2005, I met Lewis Porter (Rutgers University). Lewis has encouraged me to write for Jazz Perspectives and it is good that Lewis will be available to examine the finished work. The proceedings of the 2005 Rutgers conference are to be published in 2008 edited by Howard Weiner. I am grateful to both Howard and Jeff Nussbaum (President of the Historic Brass Society) for enabling my fledgling efforts (which now seem hopelessly naive) to be included in the book. In February 2007 I attended the Southern American Studies Conference (Oxford, Mississippi) on the recommendation of Michael P. Bibler, (University of Mary Washington), who I had met the previous year. The Mississippi conference enabled me to visit the Mississippi Blues Archive and meet its curator Greg Johnson and the editors of Living Blues. The conference also put me in contact with Paul Garon of Beasley Books, Patricia R. Schroeder of Ursinus College and Azusa Nishimoto of Aoyama Gakuin University, who took an interest in my paper to the conference. My paper to the conference went on to win the 2007 Critoph Prize and I look forward to their assistance and advice in preparing this paper for publication in American Quarterly. In the summer of 2007 I was awarded a scholarship to the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. funded by the AHRC. I am very grateful to Carolyn T. Brown and Mary Lou Reker and the other staff and scholars at the Kluge Center for making this period so rewarding. I am especially grateful to Todd Harvey of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress for guiding me through the Alan Lomax collection. Had it not have been for my time at the American Folklife Center two chapters of my thesis could never have been written. I am also grateful to Michael Taft, Jennifer Cutting, and all of the staff of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress for their help. I am also grateful to the other staff of the Library of Congress, especially those in the Music Division, the Newspapers and Periodicals Division, the Copyright Office and the Local History and Genealogy Reading Room. Thanks to Minnie Handy Hanson of Handy Brothers, I was able to obtain a copy of an interview conducted with her grandfather, W. C. Handy, held by the Library of Congress. iii I was able, during the summer of 2007 to visit the Historic New Orleans Collection, and with thanks to Siva Blake, Mark Cave, and Daniel Hammer, I look forward to working with them again on the “Fredrick Ramsey Jr. Papers.” Thanks too to Karl Koenig for access to his own archive material; his hospitality and his introduction into the mysteries of baseball. I was also greatly assisted in my research by Joseph B. Borel of the Gretna Historical Society. Thanks also to Ron Penn for his help in relation to John J. Niles (and for accepting a book review from me in American Music) and to David Nathan at the National Jazz Archive in the U.K., a resource that I am coming to realise I should have plundered rather more vigorously than I did. iv Contents Introduction 1 Part One One The Father of the Blues? 12 William Christopher Handy 15 Goin’ Where the Southern Cross’ the Dog 20 The Blues as Folk-song 32 Blues Ballads 38 The Guitar and the Blues 42 Blues Harmony and Structure 45 Was Handy the Father of the Blues? 49 Two The Land Where the Blues Began? 51 Coahoma County 53 Robert Johnson and Son House 57 The Tent Shows 61 H. C. Speir 66 Blues in the Mississippi Night 69 The Dallas Blues 79 Other Blues Regions 91 Texas 92 Louisiana 95 The Rural Narrative of the Blues 99 v Part Two Three The Original Jelly Roll Blues? 102 Mamie’s Blues 103 Game Kid and Tony Jackson 108 See See Rider 111 New Orleans Blues 113 The Jelly Roll Morton Symposium 114 Alabama Bound 116 Mister Jelly Roll 120 Kenner and Lewis 124 Memphis and W. C. Handy 126 The Tri-State Vaudeville Circuit 129 Billy Kersands 137 Tulane University 1982 142 Cantometrics 145 Four The Birth of the Blues? 147 I Got the Blues 149 One O’ Them Things! 153 Blues Harmony 155 That Barbershop Chord 157 Buddy Bolden’s Blues 161 Careless Love 163 Make Me a Pallet on the Floor 164 Funky Butt (Buddy Bolden’s Blues) 167 John Robichaux 170 Uptown and Downtown 173 R. Emmet Kennedy 180 vi Casey Jones and Steamboat Bill 182 De Ol’ Mule 184 Honey Baby 185 My Baby in a Guinea-Blue Gown 188 Reengaging Blues Narratives 193 Primary Sources 196 Bibliography 197 vii Introduction This dissertation is about the development of the blues rather than the origin of the blues, although origin is an issue that cannot be ignored. The distinction between the development of the blues and the origin of the blues may appear subtle, but I would argue that it is an important distinction. The development of the blues is knowable. The development of the blues has left its imprint in the oral histories, in newspaper reports, in sheet music and in other identifiable sources. The origin of the blues is speculative. Jazz and blues scholars have long pondered the origin (or origins) of the blues, but nobody knows where or when the blues began or for that matter whether or not the blues does have an origin. The blues appeared as sheet music, in the repertoire of emerging jazz bands, sung on the vaudeville stage and in the repertoire of rural songsters in the early years of the twentieth century.