Book Review: Broadcasting The Blues: Black Music In The Segregation Era - Page 3

He was hooked. He began scouring Europe and England for old recordings in an attempt to listen to and learn more about this amazing music he described as "the most strange and thrilling vocal sounds that I had ever heard." From this starting point in a field in England, he began his one-person quest to "legitimize" the blues as a genre of music.

His initial broadcasts and publications were included as part of either jazz radio shows or magazines, until he was able to convince others that Blues could and should be treated as a distinct form of music. While jazz and Blues may have had some elements in common at birth, they quickly went their divergent ways, with the Blues holding on to its rural roots a lot more securely than jazz ever did.

In his 40-plus years of broadcasting, Mr. Oliver traveled the world compiling tapes and information about the music he's so devoted to. From drum circles in Africa, old recording of field hollars stashed away in dusty libraries to the radio stations and back porches of the Deep South in the early sixties, he was a man on a mission.

What he has done, in both the book and the companion triple-CD set with Broadcasting The Blues: Black Music In The Time Of Segregation, is compile a collection of radio broadcasts from throughout his career to build a history of the blues. When scanning through the book you might notice that, according to the dates of the broadcasts, there seems to be particular order or sequence. How can something recorded in 1957 come after something recorded in 1967?

What is important is the content of the broadcast. Mr. Oliver has very successfully created an oral/musical history of blues music on both the CDs and the book. I know these things are written down in a book, but I can't help thinking of them as being read aloud with the music interspersed throughout the scripts.

Having heard the music before I read the book, it's been fascinating going back and reading the scripts that were written originally for the periods covered by the music. While Oliver's style is at times, by necessity more than anything else, academic and factual, I'm sure these scripts would have been more story then lecture when read.

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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