“They stopped at a gas station in Andalusia, Alabama, and found a justice of the peace who had a Bible and the right forms to fill out and on top of that was sober.” Hiram “Hank” Williams was born on a tenant farm in Mt. Olive, Alabama, in 1923. His daddy Lon was a Great »
In Memoriam Sidney A. Seidenberg, a prominent manager in the music business for many years, passed away on May 3, 2006, after a long illness. He was eighty-one. He began as a music business accountant, and, during a career that spanned thirty-five years, he managed the careers of B.B. King, Gladys Knight and the Pips, »
“‘Oh, wake up in the mornin’ ’bout the break of day.’” I think this is how the blues actually started. During slavery, they didn’t always think in terms of God freeing them because they were being sold and separated from their families. Many things of that sort were happening to them, and singing to God »
“I almost lost my life trying to save my guitar.” B.B. King’s name is synonymous with the blues. At the age of eighty-one, the blues patriarch maintains a rigorous schedule of performances throughout the nation and overseas that would exhaust a much younger artist. King’s performances and recordings have shaped the blues for more than »
“Little about the South has meant more to southerners than their tunes.” Spirituals, blues, Dixieland, jazz. Ballads, old-time, hillbilly, bluegrass. Country, Cajun, zydeco. Sacred Harp, gospel, Christian rock. R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly, “southern rock.” Nashville, honky-tonk, alt-country, progressive country. The list of southern musical varieties and hybrids goes on and on. It’s hard to »
Essay
Historians rely on documents from the past that have been preserved in archives, museums, libraries, sometimes basements and attics. What gets saved and what gets tossed out is often a matter of luck or circumstance. One of the more interesting cases is the fate of the tobacco industry’s internal documents. Long considered the most secretive »
“Stories about Alan Lomax and his exploits are legendary. While doing research in the Library of Congress Music Division, Lomax was sitting at a table across from a student who was reading his classic Folksongs of North America. At one point the student looked across the table and asked, ‘Is Alan Lomax still alive?’ Lomax »
“Bill Monroe had seen a lot of troubles in his days, but nothing could have prepared him for this. Whe he entered his home, he found his 1923 Gibson F-5 mandolin, built by craftsman Lloyd Loar, smashed into several pieces, a fireplace poker lying nearby.” Bill Monroe had seen a lot of troubles in his »
“Lavishly illustrated ads told of broken love affairs, loneliness, violence, and jail, in concert with travel to and from the South–by train and boat, on foot and in memory.” In January of 1926, a record advertisement for Bessie Smith’s “Florida Bound Blues” appeared in the Chicago Defender‘s entertainment section, showing the blues queen wrapped in »
“One Cajun woman who grew up in the 1960s was convinced that the AM/FM options on her radio referred to the distinction between American Music and French Music.” Until the 1960s, southwest Louisianans did not categorize their music as Cajun, Creole, or zydeco. Instead, they referred to it as musique française, or French music, without »
“‘A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard,’ blared the headline of a late-summer special edition of the Memphis Press-Scimitar. ‘The King is Dead.’” A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard,” blared the headline of a late-summer special edition of the Memphis Press-Scimitar. “The King is Dead.” Much like his explosive ascent nearly a »
“In 1961 Bob Koester, a producer with Chicago-based Delmark Records, made an amazing discovery. Sleepy John Estes, a bluesman who had achieved fame on the race record labels during the interwar years, was found to be still alive and residing on the outskirts of the small western Tennessee town of Brownsville.” Just over one hundred »