If we are going to be strictly technical, I have been working on reading for Black Music Month for about a year. I am almost done, but I am finishing up one book and some movies.
I nonetheless just posted the last of the songs.
Toward the end of Queen Sugar, Nova was talking to a class about music, and mentioned Blues artist John Lee Hooker tracing the path of modern music from the ring shout, a tradition that had just played a role in an earlier episode.
I started envisioning a month where I started with a ring shout and then had other milestones in music. I thought about things like Sister Rosetta Tharpe's influence on rock, and Robert Johnson pulling that boogie-woogie line from piano and playing it on the guitar. I thought about Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald and scat, and DJ Kool Herc and Gil Scott Herron. I had just read an article about Lara Downes and Florence Price, and I was remembering other things like "Rocket 88" and the use of distortion.
I thought there were some pretty cool things to include, though I was worried about whether I would have enough for 31 days. Two things changed my course.
First, I wanted to know more about John Lee Hooker and what he had said about the ring shout.
He made a flow chart. It was a little more complicated than I was expecting, and not quite as linear. Also, it focused on the blues, but it's not like the blues didn't influence rock or other genres.
It felt like coming up with good example songs was going to be a lot harder.
Then, in trying to understand the ring shout better, I found a book, The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History From Africa to the United States, by Samuel A. Floyd Jr.
Well, that book mentioned everything I was now wondering about, and more, but it also reminded me how much I don't know. I will need to take another crack at it, after I have read more history and more about music. Maybe in about three years.
The month I originally envisioned could still happen at one point. This time, it was just trying, and often feeling like it wasn't good enough, but that trying mattered to me.
I did let myself skip the days I was away from home without any guilt.
I am going to do more notation on this song list than I ever have before. If they are not all accurate, I tried.
6/1 “Plantation Dance Ring Shout” by Georgia Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters
(This is a ring shout, and I loved it.)
6/2 “Doin' The Shout” by John Lee Hooker
(I just liked the reference here, and getting in John Lee Hooker early.)
6/3 “Stars and Stripes Forever”
(march)
6/4 “The Entertainer”
(ragtime)
6/5 “When the Saints Go Marchin' In” by Rebirth Brass Band
(New Orleans brass band)
6/6 “Tiger Rag” by The Original Dixieland Jazz (“Jass”) Band
(New Orleans jazz)
6/7 “Bourbon Street Parade” by Louie Armstrong and the Dukes of Dixieland
(Dixieland)
~ San Diego ~
6/11 “Jesus Lover Of My Soul” by Isaiah D. Thomas
(hymn)
6/12 “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” by B.B. King
(spiritual)
6/13 “You Are Not Alone” by Mavis Staples
(gospel)
6/14 “Throw Me Anywhere Lord” by Georgia Sea Island Singers
(this was an attempt to get a ring shout plus a "cry")
6/15 “Raggy Levy” by Jake Xerxes Fussell
(work song)
6/16 “East St. Louis Blues” by William Brown
(early blues)
6/17 “Down Hearted Blues” by Bessie Smith
(the blues)
6/18 “I'm a Man” by Bo Diddley
(mainstream)
6/19 “The Virgina Reel” by The Bucket Band
(reels and jigs)
6/20 “Dipper Mouth Blues” by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
(vaudeville)
6/21 “Yellow Rose of Texas” by Lane Brody and Johnny Lee
(coon shout)
6/22 “The Crave” by Jelly Roll Morton
(minstrel)
6/23 “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” by The Carter Family
(hillbilly)
6/24 “Waiting for a Train” by Jimmie Rodgers
(hillbilly)
At this point, I thought I was done, though I see I missed dance games and jug band. That's embarrassing. Regardless, perhaps my earlier ideas influenced my choices, but the next connections made sense.
So I went from a hillbilly train to a gospel train, by someone who had a big influence on rock.
There had been a section in the book on "chariots" turning into cars in songs, and I kept remembering Dizzy Gillespie performing “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac” on The Muppet Show (though that wasn't the version I used).
Then, with the two different ring shouts, even though I thought it was more "gospel" I started remembering the end of Alvin Ailey's Revelations, and that's why I used a (different) version of "Move Members Move".
There was also quite a bit in Floyd's writing about the often sexual nature of the music, which correlated with African musical traditions. Because of that, I knew I was going to end with Hooker again, and specifically with "Boom Boom",
However, in the time I was reading this, there were two other books. One was The Wrecking Crew by Kent Hartman. While it was not specific to Black music history, it introduced me to "What'd I Say", which clearly fit, and hey, there's some call-and-response.
The book I am still reading is Black Diamond Queens by Maureen Mahon, and Big Mama Thornton had a musical influence, while herself being influenced by the blues tradition. It all fits!
6/25 “This Train” by Rosetta Tharpe
6/26 “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac” by Dizzy Gillespie
6/27 “Ball and Chain” by Big Mama Thornton
6/28 “Move Members Move” by Rosie Hibler and Family
6/29 “What'd I Say” by Ray Charles
6/30 “Boom Boom” by John Lee Hooker
There is one other thing. While things like minstrel shows and coon shouts did happen and were part of the musical evolution, I did not know if I could find anything I could bear to post that would fit that description. I at least had to look.
Jelly Roll Morton played in minstrel shows. It was actually fairly common for a lot of musicians of color at the time, often darkening their own faces. That was not the end of his career, and I could live with using one of his songs.
Searching on "coon shouts", there was a hit on "The Yaller Rose of Texas". Okay, I remembered a song where that was "Yellow". I had it in a piano songbook with a lot of different songs.
I also remember a series of fashion dolls named after songs, including a "Yellow Rose of Texas" doll. She was fair-skinned and blonde, with a yellow dress and hat and a red rose accent. ("Lady of Spain" was dressed in red with black lace.)
So a song that originated with "black face" performers about a "darkie" going to see the mixed-race woman he loved was literally whitewashed, becoming one of the top 100 country songs of all time and the theme for a soap opera starring Cybill Shepherd and David Soul.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Rose_of_Texas_(song)
That is surprisingly not surprising.
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