num_pages: 312
description: Memphis Tennessee is a major crossroads for blues musicians songs and styles. Memphis is where the blues first came to town and established itself as a cosmopolitan performance genre and the city has long been a center of synthesis and evolution in blues recording. This volume tells the story of the blues in Memphis through previously unpublished interviews with nine performers who helped create and sustain the music from the days before its commercial success through the early 1970s. Their attitudes experiences and insights impart a deeper understanding of the blues aesthetic and philosophy.The performers' backgrounds range across the blues genres from classic blues (Lillie Mae Glover) to country blues (Bukka White) from jug band blues (Laura Dukes) to tough postwar electric blues (Joe Willie Wilkins and Houston Stackhouse). Some like Furry Lewis and Bukka White are known around the world. Others like Laura Dukes are locally popular while Boose Taylor is virtually unknown. The range of instruments mastered by the musicians--banjo fiddle guitar fife bass ukulele piano and harmonica--testifies to the many expressive voices of the blues. Some of the interviewees were singing and performing mostly for white blues/folk revivalist audiences by the 1970s; others such as Joe Willie Wilkins and Houston Stackhouse continued to perform mostly for black audiences in Memphis and in the small cafes that dotted the Mississippi Delta.Each interview is illustrated by noted printmaker George D. Davidson and introduced with a biographical sketch by Fred J. Hay. In addition Hay's extensive notes identify many other blues performers--friends and music partners of the interviewees whose names come up in their many asides and allusions. Together these materials document and pay tribute to the remarkable richness of the Memphis blues scene.
language: English
title: Goin' Back to Sweet Memphis: Conversations with the Blues
publisher: University of Georgia Press