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From International Socialism, No. 63, Mid-October 1973, p. 31.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Story of the Blues
Paul Oliver
Penguin 75p.
PAUL OLIVER’S book covers the whole range of blues musicians, with a brief history of each one, from the earliest singers up to the latest ‘R and B’ sound.
Had he wanted, the author could have said much more about the social origins of the blues, and how they became so much a part of the everyday life of the American negro. There can be no doubt that the conditions in which the negro people lived – slavery, then dire poverty, oppression and desperate hunger after emancipation at the end of the Civil War – had a great deal to do with the music they played and sang.
The blues provide the heart of jazz, which emerged from a mixture of work songs or field hollers and the adaptation of pieces of religious music to describe the everyday life of the negro. The book is extremely well illustrated, but I cannot avoid the impression that the pictures show what the text unfortunately does not describe. Likewise, I would have preferred a much more detailed history of the more famous artists, characters like Bessie Smith, Jimmy Rushing, Jimmy Witherspoon and Sonny Boy Williamson.
There is an excellent chapter on periodicals, books and records, which will be of great assistance to anyone who wishes to improve his knowledge – or record collection – of the blues. Well produced and illustrated, this book has an additional advantage in being within the range of most workers’ pockets.
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Last updated on 14.9.2013