Abstract: Pioneers of the Blues Revival. By Steve Cushing. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. 377pp (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-252-03833-4. $75 Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78 RPM Records. By Amanda Petrusich. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. 260pp (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-4516-6705-9. $25 The 1960s was a decade of rediscovery of elder blues musicians and the records they had made before World War II. The era could be said to have ended upon the deaths of Nehemiah Skip James in 1969 and Fred McDowell in 1972, and with the completion of the last British tour of Eddie Son House in 1970. A short contemporary report was written by Bob Groom and published as The Blues Revival (Studio Vista, 1971). Despite a second revival occurring during the 1990s upon the reissue of pre-WWII blues on CDs, the first revival still has a great allure for journalists, academics, and blues fans and collectors. Steve Cushing's Pioneers of the Blues Revival is a long-needed collection of primary-source interviews with the key figures of the first revival. As host of the blues radio show Blues Before Sunrise, Cushing acquired much experience in conducting fruitful conversations with singers and instrumentalists, as may be read in transcription in his previous book Blues Before Sunrise: The Radio Interviews (University of Illinois Press, 2010). In the present volume, he talks with seventeen white pioneers who during the 1960s established the practices still prevailing for commerce and research in the blues. The first two conversations are with Paul Oliver and Samuel Charters, who with their respective books Blues Fell This Morning (Cassell, 1960) and The Country Blues (Rhinehart, 1959) inspired the other men Cushing interviewed (there are no women, or African-Americans). Those involved with record labels, whether as reissues or of newly-recorded performances, are Pete Whelan (Origin Jazz Library), Bob Koester (Delmark), Dick Spottswood (Piedmont), David Evans (High Water), and Chris Strachwitz (Arhoolie). For photography, there are Ray Flerlage (interviewed two years before his 2002 death) and Dick Waterman, the latter also discussing his activities in artist management. Journalism investigative experiences are shared by Gayle Wardlow, Jacques Demetre, Phil Spiro, and Jim O'Neal. Englishmen John Broven and Mike Rowe speak about the researches towards their books on the music of Louisiana and Chicago, respectively. The remaining two informants provide unique (among the book's interviews) perspectives, Robert M.W. Dixon as a discographer, and Chris Barber as a bandleader. In the interviews there are frequent mentions of various pivotal figures long dead: writers Pete Welding and Mike Leadbitter, and musicians John Fahey and Al Wilson. I tried to think of living people who should have been included in this book, but those who came to my mind played much greater roles in the second revival of the 1990s. All of the interviewees speak quite frankly to Cushing about their experiences and opinions. The transcriptions are arranged more or less in the order of when the subjects were most active during the first revival. Hence a kind of chronology emerges when one reads the book from cover to cover. But Pioneers is not a history. Rather, it is a sourcebook that may send the historiographers (celebrants and second-guessers alike) to reconsider their assumptions about the rediscovery era. An introduction by Barry Lee Pearson and an index round out the volume. However, I wish that a bibliography of selected publications by the interviewees could have been included. For citations to them, the reader should consult Robert Ford's second edition of The Blues Bibliography (Routledge, 2007). Don't let the high academic-book price of $75 deter you. The volume is hardcover, bound sturdily but not stiffly, and should withstand the frequent uses and many re-readings it well deserves. Nowadays, the blues is described by many writers as the roots of today's styles, especially of rock. …
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-03-22
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 33
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