Book Review: Broadcasting The Blues: Black Music In The Segregation Era - Page 2

Did you ever wonder why the British Invasion of rock bands happened in the early sixties? American music was Neil Sedaka, Paul Anka (I know he's Canadian, but you can have him), and Pat Boone. All of sudden these British kids show up playing this down and dirty blues from the American Deep South. Listen to early songs by the Animals, the Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, and Led Zeppelin. Tell me you don't hear the Mississippi River lapping at their feet.

Unlike their American contemporaries, they were listening to people like Lightning John Hopkins, Muddy Watters, and Howling Wolf. Of course some of the American musicians were listening as well, but they postdated their British contemporaries by six or seven years. Remember, the Rolling Stones were playing music and doing their versions of Delta blues before they hit America. The blues were being broadcast in England and Europe ever since the twenties when American black musicians were finding a home in Paris, France, on the radio, and through sales of records in the shops.

Paul Oliver espouses the idea that perhaps, because the music was removed from its social context and brought into a new environment, it was allowed to be judged on its own merits and not by the colour of the performer's skin. What else could explain, that in spite of there being radio stations broadcasting the blues in the 1950's in the United States (Blues Boy King had a very successful show at radio station WDIA in Memphis before his equally successful career as a blues performer under the name B.B. King), there wasn't the widespread dissemination of the music like there was in England and Europe?

Paul Oliver, for lack of a better description, is a blues scholar. He describes how, in the 1940s when he was living in Suffolk, England, he watched and listened to two Black American soldiers setting up a base and singing the work songs of their field-working ancestors. He was lucky enough to have a friend at the time that had a collection of old 78rpm recordings of the blues, many of which had been produced in England.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the forthcoming book What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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