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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
– The blues in CSI (Crime Scene Investigation)
The 22nd episode of the ninth season of the popular CBS-series CSI, Crime Scene Investigation was called “The Gone Dead Train”. The title refers to a blues song recorded by King Solomon Hill for Paramount in 1932, a song which is also played in the episode. I’m puzzled by the relation (if any) between the […]
Posted in King Solomon Hill
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– Two poor boys : black or white?
For the regular visitors of my blog, it is no news that I consider the blues more or less as an artificial term that has been invented (or at least served well) for marketing reasons. Don’t let me be misunderstood: I adore this type of music that is traditionally labelled as the ‘blues’, but I […]
Posted in Joe Evans and Arthur McCain
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– Let me play with your poodle
“Let me play with your poodle”. Tampa Red has asked this in 1942, Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins reiterated the question some ten years later, and more recently in 1997 the Texan female blues singer Marcia Ball even dedicated a complete CD to this irksome plea. So both male and female liked to play with the other […]
Posted in Blind Boy Fuller
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– This has been a long time coming
In February 2011, Mavis Staples received her first Grammy Award for her americana album ‘You are not alone‘. She cried and said : “This has been a long time coming“. And did she deserve it, finally at the age of 71 ! I will have the honour and the pleasure to hear and see this […]
Posted in Mavis Staples
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– The Sparks
One of the characteristics of blues is that is draws largely from a common repertoire of basic tunes. A new song was very often not more than a change of some lines to an existing tune either in a live performance or during a studio session, quite frequently just by improvization inspired by the mood […]