MUSI 005F. Black Popular Music: From "Race Music" to the Mainstream (SC)

2017. An excellent annotated bibliography with sections on General Overviews and History,
Biographies, Textbooks, Reference Works, Bibliographies and Literature Reviews, Anthologies, Journals, Regional Studies, Music Theory, Analysis, and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, Magazines, Discographies, Printed Gospel Music, Documentary and Concert Films

2016. An excellent bibliography with sections on Reference Works, Primary Sources, Blues History and General Overviews, Africa and the Blues, Structure and Form
Regional Blues, Biographies of Male Singers, Biographies of Female Singers, Record Labels
Magazines, Blues and Other Musical Genres,
Blues and Literature, Blues and Culture

2010. The Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music is a comprehensive reference source covering all aspects of both African American and white gospel from history and performers to recording techniques and styles, as well as the influence of gospel on different musical genres and cultural trends. Now available in paperback, this work is a valuable reference for both scholars and the general reader. Organized alphabetically to facilitate searching, this encyclopedia also contains many reference tools to aid the user such as bibliographic and references at the end of entries, a thorough and analytical index, and black-and-white illustrations. Entries include: biographical profiles of numerous performers, such as Andrae Crouch, and influential figures in the development of gospel music, such as Isaac Watts important events in the history of gospel such as the Azusa Street Revival broadcasting outlets, such as radio station WLAC AM, and record companies, such as Canaan Records, that were prominent in gospel's history publications, such as The Singing News, significant songbooks, such as Gospel Pearls, and noteworthy publishing companies, such as Lillenas, all of which helped popularize some of the best-known gospel songs topics ranging from instruments frequently used by gospel performers to types of performing groups, such as gospel quartets and gospel choirs, to the unique qualities of gospel as it is composed and performed in different regions around the United States, to the globalization of gospel.

2006. A full-length, authoritative encyclopaedia on the Blues as a musical form, this A-Z resource covers not only the performers, but also musical styles, regions, record labels and cultural aspects of the blues, including race and gender issues. Special attention is paid to discographies and bibliographies.

2017. With this volume, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff complete their groundbreaking trilogy on the development of African American popular music. Fortified by decades of research, the authors bring to life the performers, entrepreneurs, critics, venues, and institutions that were most crucial to the emergence of the blues in black southern vaudeville theaters; the shadowy prehistory and early development of the blues is illuminated, detailed, and given substance. At the end of the nineteenth century, vaudeville began to replace minstrelsy as America's favorite form of stage entertainment. Segregation necessitated the creation of discrete African American vaudeville theaters. When these venues first gained popularity ragtime coon songs were the standard fare. Insular black southern theaters provided a safe haven, where coon songs underwent rehabilitation and blues songs suitable for the professional stage were formulated. The process was energized by dynamic interaction between the performers and their racially-exclusive audience. The first blues star of black vaudeville was Butler "String Beans" May, a blackface comedian from Montgomery, Alabama. Before his bizarre, senseless death in 1917, String Beans was recognized as the "blues master piano player of the world." His musical legacy, elusive and previously unacknowledged, is preserved in the repertoire of country blues singer-guitarists and pianists of the race recording era. While male blues singers remained tethered to the role of blackface comedian, female "coon shouters" acquired a more dignified aura in the emergent persona of the "blues queen." Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and most of their contemporaries came through this portal; while others, such as forgotten blues heroine Ora Criswell and her protégé Trixie Smith, ingeniously reconfigured the blackface mask for their own subversive purposes. In 1921 black vaudeville activity was effectively nationalized by the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.). In collaboration with the emergent race record industry, T.O.B.A. theaters featured touring companies headed by blues queens with records to sell. By this time the blues had moved beyond the confines of entertainment for an exclusively black audience. Small-time black vaudeville became something it had never been before--a gateway to big-time white vaudeville circuits, burlesque wheels, and fancy metropolitan cabarets. While the 1920s was the most glamorous and remunerative period of vaudeville blues, the prior decade was arguably even more creative, having witnessed the emergence, popularization, and early development of the original blues on the African American vaudeville stage.

2015. Since the early 1900s, blues and the guitar have traveled side by side. This book tells the story of their pairing from the first reported sightings of blues musicians, to the rise of nationally known stars, to the onset of the Great Depression, when blues recording virtually came to a halt. Like the best music documentaries, Early Blues: The First Stars of Blues Guitar interweaves musical history, quotes from celebrated musicians (B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Ry Cooder, and Johnny Winter, to name a few), and a spellbinding array of life stories to illustrate the early days of blues guitar in rich and resounding detail. In these chapters, you'll meet Sylvester Weaver, who recorded the world's first guitar solos, and Paramount Records artists Papa Charlie Jackson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Blind Blake, the "King of Ragtime Blues Guitar." Blind Willie McTell, the Southeast's superlative twelve-string guitar player, and Blind Willie Johnson, street-corner evangelist of sublime gospel blues, also get their due, as do Lonnie Johnson, the era's most influential blues guitarist; Mississippi John Hurt, with his gentle, guileless voice and syncopated fingerpicking sty≤ and slide guitarist Tampa Red, "the Guitar Wizard." Drawing on a deep archive of documents, photographs, record company ads, complete discographies, and up-to-date findings of leading researchers, this is the most comprehensive and complete account ever written of the early stars of blues guitar--an essential chapter in the history of American music.

2014. The first of two volumes chronicling the history and role of music in the African American experience, Nothing but Love in God's Water explores how songs and singers helped African Americans challenge and overcome slavery, subjugation, and suppression. From the spirituals of southern fields and the ringing chords of black gospel to the protest songs that changed the landscape of labor and the cadences sung before dogs and water cannons in Birmingham, sacred song has stood center stage in the African American drama. Myriad interviews, one-of-a-kind sources, and rare or lost recordings are used to examine this enormously persuasive facet of the movement. Nothing but Love in God's Water explains the historical significance of song and helps us understand how music enabled the civil rights movement to challenge the most powerful nation on the planet.

2008. In When the Church Becomes Your Party, author Deborah Smith Pollard assesses contemporary gospel music as the genre enters the twenty-first century. She argues that although the flashy clothing, informal language, and elaborate stage presentation found in some of the newest gospel music might not be what some worshippers expect, this new aesthetic rests on the same Christian principles as more traditional forms and actually extends its message to a wider and younger audience. In this volume Pollard looks at contemporary gospel music with the insider's perspective she has acquired as a regular participant in praise and worship services in the Detroit area and through her work as a successful gospel concert producer (The Motor City Praisefest and the McDonald's GospelFest) and host of a popular Sunday morning gospel show on Detroit's FM 98 WJLB. Among the topics she considers in When the Church Becomes Your Party are praise and worship music, gospel musical stage plays, the changing dress code of gospel performance, women gospel announcers, and holy hip hop. She draws on Detroit's thriving gospel scene as well as her knowledge of the national gospel music industry to identify important trends in each area and trace the cultural transformations that brought them about. In addition, Pollard includes interviews with contemporary gospel artists, allowing them to explain why they rap, make particular choices in attire, or participate in gospel radio, praise and worship, or gospel musical plays. While other studies address some of the subtopics included in this volume, When the Church Becomes Your Party offers a comprehensive picture of the history and future of contemporary gospel music. Scholars of music and African American cultural studies will enjoy this intriguing volume.