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Most recent posts
- – The blackface lumpenproletariat and American popular culture
- – African American Music – A survival or an actual creative force in today’s culture?
- – Christmas is when the greedy give to the needy
- – The blues, they are no art
- – How criticism helped the vaudeville: The spotlight on Franklin “Baby” Seals
- – Wagner, Beethoven & Negro Folksongs, and … baseball
- – The Whitman Sisters: why we may never silence them.
- – Catfish & Cotton & Caffeine
- – Marketing Patent Medicine Folk and Blues
- – Blues from the circus tent
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Category Archives: – Artists
– How criticism helped the vaudeville: The spotlight on Franklin “Baby” Seals
Read the print-friendly version here I have always had a soft spot for persons and events which for whatever reason have fallen out of grace in history books. Often, their story discloses much more of their environment than the historic relics which have been promoted on a pedestal, for the historic aura of the […]
– The Whitman Sisters: why we may never silence them.
For the colored PDF-version, click here _______________________________ “Black Voices, White Visions.” Such was the subtitle Marybeth Hamilton (2007) reserved for her book “In Search of the Blues”, in which she argues that the concept of the Delta Blues emerged in the late twentieth century mainly as the product of a longstanding white fascination with the […]
Posted in - Pre Blues era, The Whitman SIsters, Vaudeville
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– The preacher they called the “Blues King”
Read the article in e-format here Acknowledgement: The bulk of the information comes from Dr. David Evans (°) who traced Ruben Lacy in 1966. I sincerely thank Dr. Evans for reading a draft of this essay and formulating very useful comments to it. The final version with its shortcomings remains of course my sole responsibility. […]
Posted in - Blues history, Rubin Lacy
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“Ragtime Texas”: a hobo songster goin’ up the country… A tribute to Henry Thomas
In 1993, the Scottish pop band Deacon Blue issued their CD “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” that contained as its sixth track : “Last night I dreamed of Henry Thomas”. None of us will probably ever have dreamed of Henry Thomas. How could we? We hardly have an idea how Henry Thomas looked like. All […]
Posted in - Blues history, Henry Thomas
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– They all know me and all want to hear the same tune
In his biography on Deford Bailey, D.C. Morton quotes the former: “”A white barber asked me one time how I could mix them (eb : white and black customers) up in my shoeshine shop and using the same seat. He said they’d run him out of town if he did that. Well I said, ‘They […]
Posted in Deford Bailey, Jaybird Coleman
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