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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
– Skip’s pain
Skip James died in 1969, he was 67 years old, at long cancer. He was already suffering from long cancer when he was (re)discovered in 1964, just before Waterman and friends knocked on House’s apartment door in Rochester. Skip James resided in a hospital, and it was not certain at all whether he was still […]
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– Let’s skip to Skip now
1902 must have been a very good blues year. Son House is recorded to be born in March. In June, the very same year, there is track of the birth of another monument in the blues : Nehemiah James, better known later on as Skip James. He was born in Bentonia, near Jackson, in the […]
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– Who was he : Son House and his music
In the coming days I’m planning to present another great early blues artist, namely Skip James. He was contemporary to Son House, but his music style was quite different from House’s. It is perhaps interesting now to see in what way Son House was typical of the blues. His music lay certainly a solid basis […]
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– Son House continues…
At the time that Son House was invited to record in April 1965 with Columbia and producer John Hammond, he had been prepared for this for almost a year by Al Wilson’s enthusiasm and skills and by medication to help him with this hand tremor and alcoholism. Before this, he had already had some stage […]
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– Son House : 1931-1964
In the previous blog, I spent some time on the figure of Son House in his period until the Grafton recording in May 1930. Not really known outside the circle of the blues die hards, his music was nevertheless innovative, and clearly reflected the origins of the blues in spirituals and field hollers. His declamatory, […]
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