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Centering the electric bass in popular music history
While all music genres incorporate religious imagery, the blues has its origin in the soil of the church. In its infancy, the blues was often dismissed as undermining the church’s gospel songbook. The initial resistance, however, could not suppress the organic development of a genre of music born from suffering. The great Mississippi Delta bluesman, Muddy Waters, once said, "The blues was born behind a mule." Behind a beast of burden, the working man found in the blues a way to console the everyday experiences of struggle, sin, loss, despair, love, grief, sin, death, and the fear and hope of crossing the River Jordan into eternal life. The church's gospel songbook explores doctrinal foundations set to music, but the blues dares to uncover insight into the lived experiences of spiritual journeys. Theology and the Blues showcases theological themes inherent within the organic and expressive genre of the blues.
Wasn’t That a Mighty Day: African American Blues and Gospel Songs on Disaster takes a comprehensive look at sacred and secular disaster songs, shining a spotlight on their historical and cultural importance. Featuring newly transcribed lyrics, the book offers sustained attention to how both Black and white communities responded to many of the tragic events that occurred before the mid-1950s. Through detailed textual analysis, Luigi Monge explores songs on natural disasters (hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes); accidental disasters (sinkings, fires, train wrecks, explosions, and air disasters); and infestations, epidemics, and diseases (the boll weevil, the jake leg, and influen...
A chronicle of the rise and development of a unique musical form. Inducted into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame under its original title Walking to New Orleans, this fascinating history focuses on the music of major R&B artists and the crucial contributions of the New Orleans music industry. Newly revised for this edition, much of the material comes firsthand from those who helped create the genre, including Fats Domino, Ray Charles, and Wardell Quezergue.
Born 130 years ago in the heart of Mississippi, Charlie Patton (c. 1891–1934) is considered by many to be a father of the Delta blues. With his bullish baritone voice and his fluid slide guitar touch, Patton established songs like “Pony Blues,” “A Spoonful Blues,” and “High Water Everywhere” in the blues lexicon and, through his imitators, in American music. But over the decades, his contributions to blues music have been overshadowed in popularity by those of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and other mid-century bluesmen and women who’ve experienced a resurgence in their music. King of the Delta Blues Singers, originally published in 1988, began a small renaissance in Patton a...
Booker “Bukka” White (1905–1977) was one of the most important blues musicians of the twentieth century. The twelve songs he recorded in Chicago in 1940 are considered to be among the finest in country blues. In The Life and Music of Booker “Bukka” White: Recalling the Blues, David W. Johnson traces the trajectory of White’s life from his early years in Chickasaw and Grenada Counties, Mississippi, through his imprisonment in the notorious Mississippi State Penal Farm in the late 1930s, to making a new life for himself in Memphis, Tennessee. For years only a name on old 78 records—and believed by some to be dead—White was “rediscovered” by John Fahey and ED Denson in the s...
Indianapolis has long been steeped in important moments in African American history, from businesswoman Madame C. J. Walker's success to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan to the founding of Crispus Attucks High School, which remained segregated through the 1960s. In African Americans in Indianapolis, author and historian David Leander Williams explores this history by examining the daunting and horrendous historical events African Americans living in Indianapolis encountered between 1820 and 1970, as well as the community's determination to overcome these challenges. Revealing many events that have yet to be recorded in history books, textbooks, or literature, Williams chronicles the lives and careers of many influential individuals and the organizations that worked tirelessly to open doors of opportunity to the entire African American community. African Americans in Indianapolis serves as a reminder of the advancements that Black midwestern ancestors made toward freedom and equality, as well as the continual struggle against inequalities that must be overcome.
Health is defined as “the state of the organism when it functions optimally without evidence of disease”. Surprisingly, the words “microbes” or “microorganism” are missing in this definition. The regulation of gut microbiota is mediated by an enormous quantity of aspects, such as microbiological factors, host characteristics, diet patterns, and environmental variables. Some protective, structural, and metabolic functions have been reported for gut microbiota, and these functions are related to the regulation of homeostasis and host health. Host defense against pathogens is, in part, mediated through gut microbiota action and requires intimate interpretation of the current microen...
Listen to the Blues! Exploring A Musical Genre provides an overview of this distinctly American musical genre for fans of the blues and curious readers alike, with a focus on 50 must-hear artists, albums, and subgenres. Unlike other books on the blues, which tend to focus on musician biographies, Listen to the Blues! devotes time to the compositions, recordings, and musical legacies of blues musicians from the early 20th century to the present. Although the author references musical structure, harmony, form, and other musical concepts, the volume avoids technical language; therefore, it is a volume that should be of interest to the casual blues fan, to students of blues music and its history...