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Interviewer's Name: Brendan Toussaint Interviewer’s name: Brendan Toussaint Interviewee’s Name: Jay Summerour Instructors Name: Mr. Glenn Whitman 2/17/09 Toussaint 1 Table of Contents Release Forms Pgs 2-3 Statement of Purpose Pg 4 Biography Pg 5-6 Nothing But The Blues: History Definitely Pg7-14 Does Not Get Any Better Than This! Pg15-35 Transcription Pg 36 Time Indexing Log Pg 37-45 Analysis Pg 46-47 Works Consulted Toussaint 2 Toussaint2 Toussaint 3 Toussaint 4 Toussaint2 Statement of Purpose The purpose of this project is to show Blues music in a new light. Blues is not a highly covered topic in history today. The oral history interview with Mr. Summerour will show a musician struggle and greatest moments in his career. The goal of this project is to show a new perspective on the Blues which is not shown in history books today. Toussaint 5 BIOGRAPHY Jay Summerour was born February 16, 1950 in Bethesda Maryland. Mr. Summerour’s father was in the military when Jay was a youth. His mother was a private duty nurse. Since Jay’s parents were in a difficult career to spend time with their son, Jay had to be raised by his grandparents his whole life. Jay then began to pick up the Blues from his grandfather, who taught Jay all about this type of music. Jay’s grandparents were a big influence on him when it came to Blues music. His grandparents played Blues music around him all the time. When Jay first came into Blues his grandfather gave him his first harmonica. Jay’s real goal wasn’t Blues at the time though. Jay Toussaint 6 wanted to be a baseball player. When Jay was a teenager he got into a serious car accident that crushed his legs, his chest, punctured his lung, broke his jaw in three places, fractured his skull, Toussaint2 knocked his eye out and gashed his eye. This was a serious blow for Jay, because this meant he could not play baseball anymore. Jay did not look at this situation as a bad time; instead he thought this helped his decision to becoming a Blues musician. Jay began to first play at open mic nights. His group, with Warner Williams band, got many gigs by playing at open mic nights. Then he was discovered by a man named Nick Spitzer. Nick Spitzer is a promoter for the Smithsonian record label. With all the touring Jay Summerour realized he should try to find a balance with his family and his job as a Blues musician. Jay then decided to work as a bus driver in Maryland. Jay currently performs weekend gigs with his band at local spots in Maryland. Toussaint 7 Nothing But The Blues: History Definitely Does Not Get Any Better Than This! It’s hard to explain, describe, or write about the Blues. Like listening to the sound of sex through a thin motel wall, you know the Blues when you hear it, even if you would be hard pressed to describe exactly what is going on. What do you know is that stirs you and that keeps you up at night -- Alex Gibney, a producer (Scorsese 8). No one really knows when or where Blues music started. It grew out of African- American slave songs. Historian Colin a Palmer once said “A type of African American musical art that was first developed in the Mississippi Delta region at the end of the nineteenth century, the Blues, like many musical expressions, is difficult to define. Some people think of the Blues as an emotion; others regard it primarily as a musical genre characterized by a special Blues scale containing twelve bars and three chords in a particular order” (297). Slaves were freed in 1865 because of the thirteenth amendment which guaranteed their freedom. Many slaves remained in the south as sharecroppers for white landowners. The ex-slaves were just doing the job that they were just freed from over again. They sang songs of sorrow to express their raw pain and emotion. The songs they sung helped many of the ex-slaves get through their hard and difficult moments. An example of an early Blues song is in the early 1900’s from a Blues Mamie Desdoumes who played in the Garden District of New Orleans. Desdoumes is down on her luck and is telling a tale of poverty. The song does not have a name; it was just a song Desdoumes performed on the spot. This is the lyrics from Desdoumes song: “I stood on the corner, my feet was dripping wet,/I asked every man I met/Can’t give me a dollar, give me a lousy dime,/ Just to feed that hungry man of mine.” Blues and the black experience are highly related to each other. Toussaint 8 If blacks did not have a hard time in America Blues would have never been created. Blacks used Blues as way to show and express their emotions. Therefore, in order to understand the perspectives of someone who is a Blues musician and a teacher of the Blues, it is important to Toussaint2 first examine the history of the Blues, and what makes it important historically and relevant to music today. In 1853, when American journalist Frederick Olmsted first heard the Blues it came to him as a surprise. Olmsted said, One raised such a sound as I had never heard before, a long, loud, musical shout, rising, and falling, and breaking into falsetto, his voice ringing through the woods in the clear, frosty night air, like a bugle call. As he finished, the melody was caught up by another, and then by several in chorus. (Olmsted 35) Olmsted is describing his encounter with a gang of South Carolina slaves who were hired on a railroad company. The music is the African American slave’s raw emotion and pain. They are screaming to show their pain. After the emancipation of slaves, most freedmen worked in isolation, but there are many who sang songs in a group. As historian Colin A Palmer once said By singing about frustration, mistreatment, and misfortune, and often overcoming it with irony, Blues singer helped themselves and their listeners to deal with the problems of life, whether frustrated and angered by cheating lovers, ignorant bosses, hypocritical churchgoers, crooked shopkeepers, an unjust legal system, racism, and prejudice, police brutality, inadequate pay, unemployment, or the meaninglessness of menial labor(298). Toussaint 9 This quote describes what the Blues covers and describes what a musician has gone through. Around the turn of the century, W.C. Handy (1905) and others popularized a new genre of music called the Blues. Supposedly, Handy was waiting for a train that was late and all of a sudden a stranger with a guitar approaches him. W.C. Handy noticed the guitar player played the instrument in a different manner and sang in an unusual way. The guitar player used a pocket knife to slide the guitar strings, the guitar player had a wailing voice which goes back to the idea of Blues telling stories of pain and sorrow. Also the guitar player repetition of his lyrics was interesting to Handy. All of this was new to Handy who thought he could market this idea. The guitar player had an emotional honesty with his music. This gave W.C. Handy a brilliant idea and it was to market the Blues, but the Blues did not become popular until the 1920’s. Blues had to become well known and appreciated for it to become popular. Newspapers of the day describe Handy’s skill with a performance of his hit song Memphis Blues. Like every form of music it takes time for it to become a well known genre. As the New York Times said, “W.C. Handy was called from the floor to lead his Memphis Blues a rare example of ragtime”(Clef Club In Lively Music 1). Like every form of music it takes time for it to become a well known genre. The Blues had to become well known for others to appreciate it and play it. Like any other form of music it takes time for Blues to develop into its adult years. The first Blues artist came to the scene on 1920 with help from a man named Perry Bradford. Perry Bradford had to convince Okeh Records to let him record a track he wrote called “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith. In the 1920’s, it was believed that blacks would not purchase records for various reasons. One reason is because Blacks could not afford records at the time. Even though this was true, Bradford’s record still sold seventy-five thousands copies in its first Toussaint 10 couple of months. This is when other record labels noticed that they should keep an eye on this type of music. Toussaint2 When the record industry noticed Blues music taking off, labels began to sign female artist. One female artist stood out in 1923, this diva artist name was Bessie Smith. Director Martin Scorsese said “Smith, no relation to Mamie, didn’t just sing the Blues-she made you believe the music was the blood running through her veins. A tall hefty woman, she delivered full bodied stories of despair and vivid lyrical description of a world where misery was no stranger to the downtrodden” (Scorses19). Bessie Smith kept her music emotional by expressing her true emotions about life. Smith used her music as a way for her fans to connect to her physically and emotionally. In ten years, Bessie Smith recorded over 160 records for Columbia records.
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