Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene, Vol. 1
Before the blues? If you take Webster's first definition--"Low spirits: melancholy"--well, then we're not talking pre-W.C. Handy. We're going back to Eve and the Apple. But, for Yazoo's three-discBefore the Bluesseries, it's safe to assume the anthologists worked off of the second definition: "A song of lamentation characterized by 12-bar phrases [and] 3-line stanzas in which the words of the second stanza repeat those of the first, and continual occurrence of blues hones in melody and harmony." That works. The 23-song first set in the series offers up a vastly entertaining assortment of rags, breakdowns, and shuffles. Some names may ring a bell with noncollectors (Henry Thomas, Mississippi John Hurt), and a few tunes have become a part of America's musical landscape (notably the eerie "Pretty Polly"). Most of what's found here, however, is unfamiliar, and fascinating.--Steven Stolder