Due to recent issues between myself and GoDaddy (my host for this website) and other issues with Youtube, this blog will be my last contribution. Please accept my humble apologies. My books can still be bought and downloaded from Amazon.com. Thanks for your support and have a merry holiday despite the ongoing Covid crisis. Crooners croon and moaners moan. Dictionaries define a “moaner” as a person who complains a lot, such as a movie critic. A thesaurus lists at least 22 words that are similar in meaning, including bellyacher, fussbudget, kvetcher, sniveler and whiner. The Urban Dictionary, i ..read more

Prior to the Civil War, sugar and cotton were the dominant commodities in the Southern states. So was slave labor. New Orleans then had the largest slave market in the United States. But it was also the only place where slaves were allowed to use drums and to sing in the plantations. Throughout the 18th century, slaves gathered in the Congo Square in the French Quarter, where the Louis Armstrong Park now stands. On Sundays, or their days off, they formed circles and practiced the dance and drumming tradition, which was reminiscent of African culture. Jazz started there, from the widespread us ..read more

Ever since Mamie Smith recorded “Crazy Blues” in 1920, the recording industry for blues music expanded and has been the pathway to fame for most blues artists. Since commercial radio began to develop during the same period, such musicians depended on cutting a record and getting it played on the radio to get their names known regionally and, more importantly, nationally. Yes, I know that many blues historians will argue that blues recordings started years before Mamie’s breakthrough recording, but that is not the point here. Now, digital recording and the Internet have opened up a large inter ..read more

Swamp Blues Sandwiched in between Mississippi to the east and Texas to the west, one does not necessarily associate the state of Louisiana with a blues tradition. In terms of music, most observers would point to New Orleans and its jazz history. However, that would eliminate other areas (and cities) of the swampy state which do have a blues tradition. Of course, it would be more natural to associate the southwestern area of Louisiana with the sport of college football as Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge won the national championship in the 2019 season. The music that evolved fro ..read more

Memphis Minnie Categorically speaking, the blues can be divided into urban and rural styles. This is an important distinction when discussing female blues singers in the early days of blues recordings, starting in the 1920s. Performers like Mamie Smith, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey belonged to the former category. They sold lots of records as they were based in large cities, near the centers of musical production. Lesser known black female recording artists such as Katie Crippen, Edith Wilson, and Esther Bigeou did not get as many headlines, but many were just as talented. Blues historians tend ..read more

In studying the historical development of the blues, it would be easy to assume that all blues came directly from the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta and the river bottoms of the Brazos Valley in Texas. That would be a mistake because cotton was not the only plant that contributed to the blues tradition. The other was tobacco, grown in the Piedmont region along the East Coast, which stretches from the Appalachian Mountains, down through Virginia, the Carolinas all the way to Alabama and Georgia. The region’s style of guitar picking, using only the thumb and index finger on the right ha ..read more

The blues has many roots, one of which is gospel music that has been sung in white and black churches around the nation for hundreds of years. Mahalia Jackson, the great gospel singer, recalled those church-going days of her youth: “Everybody in there sang, and they clapped and stomped their feet, and sang with their whole bodies. They had a beat, a rhythm we held onto from slavery days, and their music was so strong and expressive. It used to bring tears to my eyes.” Blues was a natural outgrowth of this tradition of such emotional outbursts. In my opinion, some of Elvis Presley’s greatest h ..read more

What is a good definition of radio? According to an old saying: “Radio is the theater of the mind; television is the theater of the mindless.” Radio became a reality shortly after the turn of the century. However, commercial development of radio was set back during WWI as the American Navy commandeered the technology for use in the war, i.e. sending messages to and from naval ships. It is telling that the U.S. Navy press sent its final dispatch of the war, announcing armistice on November 11, 1918, via radio transmission. Radio experienced monumental growth after the first commercial station ..read more

Trivia question: What early 1900s dance became a blues song, then a play and finally a movie, which is due out later this year? If you answered “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” you would be correct. This is an upcoming American drama film directed by George C. Wolfe, based on the play of the same name by black poet, playwright and author August Wilson (1945-2005). The film stars Viola Davis (“How to Get Away with Murder,” “Fences”) and  Chadwick Boseman (“42,” “Black Panther”) in his final film role prior to his death in August 2020. It centers on a fateful recording session of ..read more

Sometimes one is caught on the horns of a verbal dilemma: Is it better to tell the truth and face the consequences or tell a lie and live with the pain of that deception? Or some opt for a middle ground of “spinning,” i.e., cloaking a lie in the misdirection of truth, or vice-versa. Government officials in particular seem to excel at this “skill” of talking without actually saying anything and/or wrapping truth in a veil of lies. In World War II, Winston Churchill made his now-famous statement: “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard ..read more