Tag: Bessie Smith

Leyla McCalla in Conversation with Singer-Activist Barbara Dane

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: Cellist, composer, and creator Leyla McCalla brings us a conversation as guest contributor with singer and community activist Barbara Dane – in celebration of her 96th birthday on May 12.)

I felt an immediate connection to Barbara Dane when I heard her voice. I first learned of Dane while developing music for a FreshScore – a commissioned piece written to a film in the public domain to be performed at the Freshgrass festival back in 2018. I had just given birth to my twins and I found myself researching songs to use in my score. During that time, I came across a civil rights era song called “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle” that Dane had released with a group called the Chambers Brothers in 1966. I fell in love with the recording – the performance was powerful and poignant; the message was so direct. 

Some songs just make you want to learn them. Freedom is a constant struggle. A perfect and ever true statement. It inspired me to write a song I called “Trying to Be Free” that became one of the songs in my FreshScore. I dug further into Barbara Dane’s catalogue and found a song that she had written called “I Hate the Capitalist System.” This felt very in line with the themes in my (at that time) yet-to-be-released third album, The Capitalist Blues. This is the epitome of the “folk process,” a phrase I jokingly use when talking about songwriting. You think you’ve found a unique idea, only to find that the idea has existed since time immemorial. The road that is paved with gold keeps on getting mined, refilled, and recycled and on and on. 

Years ago, a friend suggested that I check out the song “Dodinin” by Atis Indepandan – a group of Haitian artists living in exile in New York City from the brutal Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. The album is considered a classic within the Haitian diasporic community.  When I was doing research for Breaking the Thermometer – the album I made inspired by Radio Haiti and the legacy of its journalists – I found myself more deeply exploring the songs. I’ve never been more grateful that Smithsonian Folkways has downloadable liner notes on their website! And beyond that, I was grateful that the liner notes were so thorough; it included essays on the political context of the music as well as Kreyol and English Translations of the songs. The songs spoke to the struggles of the times and longing for home of Haitians in exile. It is hands down one of my favorite pieces of art ever made. I knew I had to include Dodinin on the record.  

Fast forward to the release of the album, Barbara Dane’s son, Pablo Menendez, emailed me. He was curious about whether I was aware of his mother’s legacy and if I knew that the album was originally released on Paredon Records, the label that Dane cofounded with her husband, Irwin Silber. Paredon Records was not a typical label; all of their releases highlighted the political struggles of people from all over the world with a mission to uplift movements and voices of opposition to oppression. He also mentioned that I should read her newly released autobiography, This Bell Still Rings, and I immediately ordered it and began to read her fascinating life story. I was even more amazed when I looked at the inner flap of the hardcover and saw that my name was mentioned as one of the inheritors of her legacy! It was a very life affirming surprise. How did I not know?!

I worry that we are living in a time of tragic disconnection. As musicians, we are constantly being pushed towards releasing a steady stream of “content” to get more views and more likes, more money, and more recognition. But, often times that comes at the expense of our health. I mention this because I feel that more people in our musical community should be aware of the music, ideas, and ethos of Barbara Dane. She is someone who has always centered the needs of the community, locally and globally. She doggedly worked to understand the causes behind the stratification of our society and gracefully occupied so many roles to be able to use her creativity for the greatest good for herself, her family, and others. As a mother of three myself, I was very curious about how she did it! Whether you realize it or not, we need Barbara Dane right now – if nothing else, to remind us of our essential power when we center community care.

Reading her memoir and seeing that Dane’s 96th birthday was coming up (it was May 12, 2023), I felt inspired to do something to mark her birthday. I remember thinking to myself, “Let’s celebrate our heroes while they are still here!” I released a cover of her song “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle” alongside a cohort of collaborators from my adopted home of New Orleans. My manager suggested that perhaps we could arrange an email interview and I was ecstatic when Dane graciously replied with a yes. 

I am incredibly pleased to share the interview with you here on BGS and I hope it will inspire you all to think more about the potential we all have to take better care of each other. This bell still rings!

Leyla McCalla: I have been reading your new autobiography, This Bell Still Rings. What does this title mean to you and what do you want readers to understand from it?

Barbara Dane: The title is taken from a lyric by Leonard Cohen which I will quote for you:

Ring the bell that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There’s a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

What I’d like readers to take from that is that the imperfections in things are what offer possibilities for learning and growth.

How did your early experiences of blending music and activism shape your career? Was there any particular moment where you felt that this would be your life’s work?

I never thought of myself as having a “career,” I guess my professional work grew out of the need to put food on the table. As far as blending music and activism, early on it became clear that my voice was a valuable tool for my community work. I was lucky enough to be exposed to movements like People’s Songs that allowed me to see the possibilities at a young age. The artists that influenced me the most in this regard during my formative years were Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger.

Who do you cite as some of your earliest teachers and/or influences to your musical approach?

Early on I was exposed to the music of Billie Holiday and Louis Jordon and of course the big bands so popular in the 1940s, like Ellington, Basie, and Glenn Miller. Earl Robinson’s famous “Ballad for Americans” was foundational. And definitely such giants as Paul Robeson, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, and Malvina Reynolds, and later, the blues women of the 1920s and 30s: Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, and Sippie Wallace. And of course there was my beloved Mama Yancey.

Your vocal phrasing is incomparably gorgeous; it feels both so natural and so intentional. When did you realize that you had a natural gift and was your craft something that you worked on intentionally, or something that came naturally, or both?

Listening to Louis and Billie taught me that you don’t have to stick to the bar lines. I was more comfortable with the conversational feel of their phrasing. Once you understood the structure of the piece, you can be free within it. So no, I never worked on it and none of it was intentional. My intention has always been to be completely in the song and let its emotions and meanings lead me.

 You opened a music venue in 1961 called Sugar Hill. It sounds awfully stressful to run a music venue while raising small children! Can you share more about how that came to be and that time in your life?

Actually, on the contrary, the whole idea of opening the club in our hometown, was it that it would allow me to spend more time with my family instead of always being out on tour. Running the club was a joy and gave me the opportunity to introduce some of the old timers who had more to give to a new audience that was just beginning to become interested in the blues.

Who were the Chambers Brothers and how did you come to collaborate with them?

They were four talented brothers, recently migrated from Mississippi to LA, who had formed a gospel group and were looking for ways to broaden their audience. I first met them in 1960 when I invited them up to the stage at the Ash Grove to join me in singing some of the songs that were emerging from the civil rights movement.

You were the first U.S. artist to tour in Cuba after its revolution. What was the impact of that experience on your life?

Going to Cuba in 1966 changed my life. I was energized by the optimism of the Cuban people as they engaged in building a new and more equitable way of life. For the first time I felt identified with the direction society was moving in, whereas at home I was always in the opposition.

Paredon Records is the label you founded with your husband Irwin Silber in 1969. What made you want to start a record label and produce albums?

In 1967, I attended Cuba’s Encuentro de Canción Protesta where I met singers from all over the world who were deeply committed to struggles for peace and justice. When I returned home, I felt the urgent need to expose the U.S. public to the significant and timely music I heard there. First I experimented with translating and singing some of the songs myself, but I soon realized it would make more sense to present the original voices. So I decided to launch a record label. Irwin had skills to bring to the table from his years of experience in publishing, and with his support, I produced and curated over 50 LPs of liberation music from the U.S. and around the world. Eventually, to ensure the collection’s availability in perpetuity, we donated it to Smithsonian Folkways.

You’ve toured internationally, including Franco-era Spain, Marcos’ Philippines under martial law, and North Vietnam under the threat of American bombs. What inspired these tours and why did you feel they were important places to bring your music?

With my international work I carried a message of peace and anti-imperialism, representing the sentiments of peace-loving Americans.

I’m also a mother of three and I find myself in awe of how much you were able to accomplish in your life while also raising your three children. How did you balance your musical life, activism and child rearing? Do you have advice for artist parents on how to navigate it all?

Be sure to include your children in all aspects of your life and help them learn to be independent. Trust and respect them. Make sure your partner is willing and able to actively do their share of the parenting.

Sometimes it seems that peace and justice are impossible to achieve. What would you say to people who feel that they do not have the power to make a difference?

As expressed in Beverly Grant’s moving song, “Together, we can move mountains. Alone, we can’t move at all!”

Photos courtesy of Leyla McCalla (by Laura E. Partain) and Barbara Dane.

On ‘American Quilt,’ Paula Cole Wraps Herself in Music That Reflects Her Life

Posted on by Editor

Paula Cole has long explored the musical territories that inform her work, making it nearly impossible to define her. Singer-songwriter? Yes. Pop star? Yes. Interpreter of jazz standards? Yes. She’s collaborated with country legends, toured with internationally acclaimed artists, and occasionally dropped completely out of sight. Because she’s so hard to pin down creatively, Cole has managed to transcend her commercial zenith of the ’90s, when songs like “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” and “I Don’t Want to Wait” were inescapable.

Twenty-five years later, Cole is in the spotlight again with American Quilt, which sets her impressive vocal range to standards like “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” It isn’t quite a jazz album, and although her writing skills are on display in “Steal Away/Hidden in Plain Sight,” it isn’t quite a folk record either. Instead it’s a reflection of the influences that shaped her musical direction early on.

“Even when I explore jazz, I like it to be a little more raggedy and raw and rootsy,” she says. “I just wanted the album to reflect all that I am, and I realized, gosh, all of these songs are different from another. How do I unify it? That’s when I remembered my mom, who is a visual artist and she’s a quilter. And I realized that the quilt is the perfect metaphor for the album, that they’re all patches of an American quilt. That’s how the title was born.”

The metaphor works for the spectrum of songs on the album, yet it’s also appropriate for the warmth and comfort it provides. Some songs are more familiar than others – and her rendition of “Shenandoah” is particularly exquisite – but it’s an album best enjoyed as a whole. By dismissing the expectations of how long a song should be, and by showing reverence without replicating what everybody else has already done, Cole has produced a sweeping and immersive listening experience. She called in to BGS from the music room in her Massachusetts home, with a photo of Dolly Parton smiling over her shoulder.

BGS: Your version of “Wayfaring Stranger” is beautiful. What made you want to record it for this album?

Paula Cole: I learned of it through listening to Emmylou Harris, and loving and adoring her. Her Roses in the Snow album was really important to me developmentally. We were on Lilith Fair together in the ‘90s and would sing on each other’s sets. And I’ve been on a few benefit concerts that she’s asked me to play. I love her so dearly. I think she’s an important American voice and we should all be talking about her much more. She kind of saves music because she brings it back to the traditional aspect of it. She keeps us whole and she keeps us real by bringing integrity back to the music.

The song came to me very intuitively and I thought, “A ha!” I can reveal some of my influences and also bow to someone who was important to me. Also I was so fed up and traumatized by the music business and it was Emmylou who told me, “Don’t quit.” You know, I took a seven-and-a-half year hiatus and thought about leaving the music business, but she was the one who said, “Hang in there.” It just happened too fast. She had this motherly wisdom for me and it made sense, and I’ve thought of her so much over my life. I love her very much.

Roses in the Snow is a familiar bluegrass album for a lot of our readers. Are you a bluegrass fan?

I just love music. So, if you asked me, “Do you like jazz?” I would say, “I love music.” [Laughs] My dad played bass in a polka band on weekends when I was little, then he would go home and play Duke Ellington on the piano or he would play obscure folk songs on banjo in my house growing up. It was always a mixture. I love all music. I love bluegrass. I love acoustic music. I love music where musicians are playing real instruments, so that’s one defining factor to me — real instruments! I’ve been touring with upright bass now for several years and I can’t go back.

Did your dad teach you how to play banjo?

No, darn it! [Laughs] I guess I could have picked it up. I mean, he played everything. He could do hambone and play nose flute and upright bass and guitar and banjo and piano. Just really a renaissance man. He exposed me to all music and there were no classifications. That was something more that non-musicians did. Musicians would fluidly move from music to music and just find the joy in all of it. He taught me that.

When I was listening to “Nobody Knows You (When You’re Down and Out),” I was curious, does that mirror your own experience to some degree? Like, you’re living the good life as a millionaire, then you find that your friends vanish when the circumstances change.

Oh sure, I’ve known that. False friends, false fans, false everybody comes to you when you’re successful. They’re flattering and they’re obsequious. They have ulterior motives, so it’s hard, and of course I’ve experienced that because I’ve been up and down and side to side…. [Laughs] All over the business! And I wanted to come back home and have a personal life and have truth and family and let the trappings fall, and to be honest.

So, I chose to walk away in a sense from that shiny pop world because it wasn’t me. I was introverted and shy. I didn’t feel like this big pop star. I was very much a musician of integrity that wanted to have a long career and a rich catalog. I had to walk away to reset and reinvent myself. So, yes, of course I relate to that song. Also I relate to Bessie Smith, and so many fantastic singers are coming from the river of Bessie Smith. You hear Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin — Bessie Smith was their favorite singer. She combines all of that beautiful roots music. And the songs from the Prohibition era speak to me, those hard times, they speak to me.

Sometimes I will ask musicians about their first guitar, but for you, I’m wondering, do you remember your first piano?

Yeah, I remember the first piano, oh my gosh. It was covered in chipped, baby blue paint. I grew up in Rockport, Massachusetts, and my dad was a teacher at a state college, and we did not have much money. I wore hand-me-downs and we got things at Goodwill. In New England — freezing cold New England — we would really skimp on the heat to save money, and they put the piano in what they called the cold room. It was like a mud room. You walk into that room and take off your coat, and the piano was in the back. And it was cold! It was cold-ass cold! And there’s my first piano.

I was quite dedicated to music, to be playing in a freezing cold room in New England. Literally, we had some fish at one point and they froze! That’s how cold our house was. We had a potbelly stove and it was just hard. We were looking for ways to save money. It wasn’t always that hard. My dad ended up changing jobs and doing better, but my childhood was formative for me. I started working at a really young age. I was waitressing at 14 and I’ve always worked. It’s not nice, struggling like that, but that piano is indelibly etched in my mind with the back of the cold room. The chipped blue piano, out of tune! [Laughs]

Did you grow up with a lot of songbooks around?

Yes, and one of my missions while my father is still alive on the planet is to comb through his fake books and real books, especially of his folk standards. He has some really interesting, cryptic and eclectic, folk books that I would love to go through. That’s on one of my do lists of life.

To me, “Good Morning Heartache” sounds like it could be a sad country song, but it was made famous by jazz singers. How did you learn that one?

It’s in the real book of standards. Those books were around, and I have a real book of standards on my piano now. Even when I was touring, or had hits, or didn’t have hits, or mothering and not being in music, I would go back to the real book just for comfort and learning. I’d let my hands go on the piano and the shapes of the chords and learn songs. I first learned “Good Morning Heartache” by reading it out of a book but then I heard Billie Holiday and even modern singers do it. A lot of people have done it. But I love it because it feels to me like one of those songs that crosses genre, just like you said. It feels to me like it could be a jazz ballad, a country ballad, a soul ballad – and often it’s recorded by R&B singers. I love that it’s universal, and I love sad music. I’m not very good at happy music. [Laughs]

You close this album with “What a Wonderful World,” which offers a lovely and optimistic message. Was that an intentional decision for you to wrap up the album with that song?

Sequence is extremely important to me, so I probably spent at least a month listening to heads and tails of the songs, and all the different possibilities and combinations. And yes, it is the perfect punctuation of the journey of an album format. I love albums – I think in albums. I don’t think I’ll ever be a singles releaser. I’ll always be an album writer and album producer. I love the art of sequence.

Again, this is a song that transpires over genre and it appeals to all audiences. It unifies people. And it was written specifically for Louis Armstrong because he unified Black and white audiences. He was a genius if ever there were one. His ability to improvise within chord changes was profound. He was joyful and elevating. I play it in a somber way, and I hear sadness in my voice, and I think it’s melancholic and ironic in a way, but yeah, we must hold on to hope. We must hold on to that thread of hope for our children and our grandchildren to make this world better.

Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz

Canon Fodder: Tracy Chapman, ‘Tracy Chapman’

Posted on by Editor

For the week of August 27, 1988, the number one song in America was George Michael’s “Monkey,” a crackling dance-pop tune off his multi-platinum Faith. Rounding out the top 10: Elton John’s “I Don’t Wanna Go On with You Like That” and Chicago’s “I Don’t Want to Live Without Your Love,” along with “Simply Irresistible” by Robert Palmer and “Sweet Child o’ Mine” by a new band out of L.A. called Guns n Roses. Lodged at number six — as high as the song would climb, but still remarkable — was “Fast Car,” by a young singer/songwriter named Tracy Chapman, who just a year earlier was busking in coffee shops around Boston and Cambridge. She had released her self-titled debut in the spring, and “Fast Car” had become a radio hit. She was a curious presence on the singles chart, as she was not a pop artist nor does she play power ballads: “Fast Car” is an acoustic ballad about poverty, hardship, and the kind of dreams that prove more burdensome than freeing.

She was never going to give George Michael a run for his money, but Chapman’s success in 1988 is remarkable for a newcomer making her debut, especially one who chronicles the lives of people who can’t afford to buy albums or cassingles. In “Fast Car,” a pair of lovers determine to escape their hardships together. “We gotta make a decision,” she sings, “leave tonight or live and die this way.” They move to the city, look for jobs, live in a homeless shelter, have kids, continue to struggle as much as they ever did. The end of the song is ambiguous, as the narrator tells her lover to leave: “I got no plans. I ain’t goin’ nowhere, so take your fast car and keep on driving.” Is she giving the driver their freedom? Or has her lover become extraneous, one more anchor weighing her down? Is it an act of love or of its opposite?

Bruce Springsteen is the obvious touchstone, in particular songs from Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River — his grimmest albums with his most desperate characters, many of whom drive fast cars and nurse dashed dreams. In other words, Chapman was not as much of an anomaly on the charts as she might have initially appeared. Just a year before, Suzanne Vega notched a number three hit with “Luka,” about child abuse and our responsibilities to the people around us. And even before that, there was a song that shares a story with “Fast Car,” albeit definitely not a sound: Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” As the Reagan era died down in the late 1980s, pop music was reflecting the woes of the country back to itself, and Tracy Chapman appeared in 1988 as the culmination of pop’s newfound social engagement.

Chapman grew up in working-class Cleveland, raised by her single mother who saved money to buy her daughter musical instruments. She began writing songs as a child and, after winning a scholarship to a progressive private school in Connecticut, Chapman began performing at the school coffeeshop. An anthropology major at Tufts, she developed a reputation, locally, as a protest singer, which brought her to the attention of a fellow student named Brian Koppelman, whose father co-owned a major publishing company. Soon, she had a record contract with Elektra and a new manager (who also managed Bob Dylan and Neil Young). Making her debut, however, was much more difficult, because most producers declined to work on a folk album. Eventually, David Kershenbaum, who had previously helmed hits for Duran Duran and Supertramp, accepted the job and promised to keep the music austere and subtle.

The focus is on Chapman’s expressive singing and surprisingly dexterous acoustic guitar playing, which naturally led fans and critics to connect her with the ‘60s folk revival. They’re not wrong, but the comparison is more limiting than revealing. Yes, Chapman sings about revolution and peace and poverty and the military-industrial complex just like Dylan and Baez, but her musical palette is broad. “She’s Got Her Ticket” rides a percolating reggae beat without sounding like a musical tourist. “Baby Can I Hold You” is a domestic drama staged as chamber pop. “For My Lover” is a thumping blues number, with Chapman boasting about spending “two weeks in a Virginia jail … for my lover, for my lover.” (Given the persistent and unseemly speculation about Chapman’s sexual orientation, it’s tempting to hear that song as a gay blues, which would place the song in the tradition of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.)

Perhaps the most startling moment on Tracy Chapman is “Behind the Wall,” which she sings a cappella. It’s a story about domestic abuse, the narrator describing the violent arguments she hears coming from the apartment next door, and the lack of any accompaniment contrasts the noise that keeps her up and eventually draws the police. Chapman pauses between the lines of the verses, letting that silence scream loudly, yet the song is as much about how society ignores or disregards the dangers faced by women, in particular black women: “It won’t do no good to call the police, always come late, if they come at all.”

Not everything is quite so powerful. Some of Kershenbaum’s flourishes anchor the music to 1988, in particular the sitar on “Baby Can I Hold You.” And, occasionally, Chapman skirts actual outrage for naïveté, especially on “Why?” “Why are the missiles called peacekeepers, when they’re aimed to kill? Why is a woman still not safe, when she’s in her home?” Her desire for safety and community are sound and all sadly relevant today, but the rhetorical structure of the song does them little justice. Answering rather than simply asking those questions would make a more substantial song. Chapman had been working on many of these songs for nearly a decade, back when she was at that private school in Connecticut. There is a youthful idealism animating many of them, which is at odds with the harsh realism that animates others. That tension gives the album an electric jolt, even 30 years later. Tracy Chapman is the sound of a young artist clinging to her optimism, even in the face of so much cynicism.

Tracy Chapman peaked at number one on the album chart and earned three Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year. She lost to George Michael, but did pick up a trophy for Best New Artist. Also in 1988, she appeared on the Amnesty International Human Rights Now! Tour, on which she shared a stage with Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel, and Youssou N’Dour. Was it all too much too soon? Chapman’s follow-up, Crossroads, released a year later, was arguably better than her debut, but sold fewer copies. She enjoyed a massive hit in 1995 with a 12-bar blues called “Give Me One Reason,” but it seemed like a fluke. Gradually, Chapman’s musical protests grew more general: Songs like “The Rape of the World” and “America” are as broad as their titles, less rooted in story and character, no longer enlivened by the well-observed detail or the thorny insights. As of this writing, it’s been a full decade since she released an album of new material, and yet, Tracy Chapman sounds as sadly relevant as ever.

Black Vaudeville: Tracing the Origins of the Blues

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Scholars Doug Seroff and Lynn Abbott have worked together for nearly 40 years researching the history of African-American music. Tracing the origins of jubilee, quartet, vaudeville, ragtime, and early blues music, they’ve co-authored four books — Out of Sight: The Rise of African-American Popular Music (2009); Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, “Coon Songs,” and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz (2012); To Do This You Must Know How: Music Pedagogy in the Black Gospel Quartet Tradition (2015); and their latest, The Original Blues: The Emergence of the Blues in African-American Vaudeville, published in February.

Abbott, a researcher at the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University in New Orleans, and Seroff, an independent scholar, met serendipitously through music. “I buy and sell old phonograph records. It’s something I’ve been doing since 1975 and that was how I first got in touch with Lynn,” Seroff recalls. “He was buying records from me, and the records he was buying were things that were also of interest to me, so we kind of precipitated a correspondence.”

When Seroff made a field trip to the Tidewater region to interview a group of singers, he made a pit stop in Richmond, Virginia, where Abbott was living at the time. “I visited him and hit it off, and he got interested in pursuing the same sort of research and we started collaborating, or at least exchanging and sharing the information that we had gathered,” says Seroff.

Seroff and Abbott then began researching Black gospel quartet singing in the late 1970s. They collected oral histories and dug up concert recordings and programs. Seroff’s access to historical recordings by proxy of buying and selling records helped the process. They also combed through African-American community newspapers on microfilm in special collections and university libraries. Although it wasn’t related to the subject matter they were studying, a pattern emerged that Seroff says was hard to ignore.

“Lynn and I had already been working together for 10 years … he was looking through some of the notes and Xerox’s that I had [of the Indianapolis Freeman] and he noticed that there were some years of the Freeman that he’d reviewed that I didn’t have,” Seroff explains. “So he sent them to me, and they were a period in the early teens and, in reading through them, I saw repeated references to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith — they’re well-known blues artists — and, to the best of my knowledge, none of that information had appeared in any other scholarship before.”

When minstrelsy gave way to vaudeville as the popular form of American entertainment in the late 1800s, African-American vaudeville theaters for exclusively African-American audiences arose due to segregation. What Seroff and Abbott found indicated that the original blues came to fruition on these stages in theaters across the Southeast in the 1910s. While ragtime “coon songs” were standards in vaudeville clubs, they were given new life with the development of blues songs in African-American Southern theaters.

“[We] shed light on phenomena that generations haven’t wanted to contemplate or have proven impossible to comprehend from a modern perspective,” Seroff explains. “But when you get more details of the context and the historical context, it makes some of these very difficult issues like ‘coon songs’ and Black performers entertaining Black audiences in blackface makeup … it clarifies these things.”

Detail from cover of The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia Minstrels, arranged by Th. Comer, Boston, 1843. Scanned from Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy by Hans Nathan.

Seroff and Abbott set to work putting together a manuscript based on the information they found in the Indianapolis Freeman.

“First, we wanted to tell the story of the performers, of course, and it also became clear that we needed to tell the story behind the theaters and the booking agencies and such,” Seroff says. “And then there was the matter of Butler “String Beans” May, who turned out to be such an important character that he skewed the narrative of all the other people because we couldn’t really talk about the movement of performers from the Southern vaudeville into the northern theaters without first explaining how String Beans had blazed the trail.”

Butler May was a blackface comedian from Montgomery, Alabama, who was referred to as the “blues master piano player of the world.” Seroff and Abbott credit String Beans with perpetuating the rise of blues in Black vaudeville.

“[String Beans] was like some sort of a forgotten phantom and a central, seminal figure who had been just written out of the history entirely and the newspaper was full of good information about him,” Seroff says. “There are runs in the newspaper covering years where almost every issue has something of interest about him. And so, you know, to bring String Beans back to life is the most satisfying and pleasurable experience in writing this book.”

While sifting through the muddy waters of vaudeville and the blues, Seroff and Abbott unearthed several other performers who have otherwise been left out of history — singers like Ora Criswell and Trixie Smith who, along with well-known performers like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, ushered in the era of the “blues queen.” Seroff and Abbott had difficulty organizing all the different facets that emerged from their research and ended up setting the manuscript aside. They came back to it on and off throughout the years, all the while publishing other works. Thus, the release of The Original Blues marks the completion of decades of research.

“Reading the newspaper on microfilm is a very different process than Googling something. A lot of Black community weekly newspapers have now been digitized, but when we started our project, none of them had been digitized, and I’m glad of it,” Seroff says. “As much time has gone into it, I suppose it was very difficult at the time, but it was also very rewarding. It’s amazing to find this stuff. You’re sitting in front of a microfilm reader and you find out about Bessie Smith’s partnership with Buzzin’ Burton? No one had known anything about that before and it’s very important historical background.”

While the origin of the blues sparks discussions amongst historians when it comes to region, Seroff and Abbott’s work is a pioneering contribution to scholarship. By unpacking a complicated time in history, they ensure that the emergence of these musical traditions and the figures who made them are ushered into the modern era.

Images of Butler May, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith courtesy of public domain.

Playing to Her Own Beat: A Conversation with Valerie June

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It’s impossible to unhear the sound that issues forth once Valerie June opens her mouth to sing. It’s a voice at once ancient — arisen from some sepia-toned past — and startling modern. From its color to its timbre to its texture, there exists something powerfully original about her primary instrument. But if June were just another singer with a distinct set of pipes, this wouldn’t be an article worth reading, and she wouldn’t be an artist worth covering. It’s how she employs her voice, and the fun she has blending and blurring genres that showcases her pioneering talent.

The multi-instrumentalist and Tennessee native returns this month with her sophomore major label release, The Order of Time. Arriving four years after her debut, Pushin’ Against a Stone, saw her perform at the White House, make countless television appearances, and become a festival staple, the album indeed took some time. June didn’t let her success dictate her writing schedule and rush her back into the studio. Instead, she read poetry, danced, cooked, and languished, allowing the music to unfold on its own schedule rather than hemming and hawing about hers. Thanks to that patience, she’s pushed her own boundaries even further.

The Order of Time spans blues, bluegrass, soul, folk, rock, and more, gathering pieces from each to build a kaleidoscope, of sorts, that showcases the long undercurrent of history running through each. Banjo appears in greater measure throughout the album, calling to its African heritage on “Man Done Wrong” and showing off its rhythmic pacing on “Got Soul,” while “Shake Down” borrows a few branches from June’s family tree. She gathered her brothers and father — who passed away in November — in Tennessee to record the raucous and gritty jam. And then there’s the viscerally thrilling “If And,” which layers an array of heavy tones, including bass saxophone, bass clarinet, and harmonium, to create an almost unholy riff. Have fun not getting chills.

So much of this album deals with time and abiding by its rhythms. How do you cultivate patience?

I don’t have any at all.

That’s fair.

It’s pure torture, honestly. I just want it to happen. It’s like getting a new plant: You’ve been to the nursery, you bought this gardenia, but it’s not flowering yet. You put it in the perfect sun and give it the perfect water and all of that, but it’s still not flowering weeks later, and you’re just like, “Oh my God, I really want the gardenia to flower, because it’s the best smell in the world and I love it. That’s why I bought it — for the flower — not for this green plant.” A lot of patience has to happen, but you don’t have it. You’re forced into it. And then, one day, it does flower and you’re really excited about it. That’s what it’s like.

I love that analogy. Building off it, how much of patience is, perhaps, about distraction?

It has to happen that way.

So what do you distract yourself with?

So many things. Life happens, people call and want me to do something, or it’ll be time to eat. [Laughs] I dance a lot. I have routines for distracting myself, and dancing is a big part of it. You have to have systems set up, you know, to keep you from dwelling in frustration. So whatever your things are that you love to do, you have to do those things. It’s almost like you have to be like, “I’m frustrated! Stop everything. Okay, now it’s time to dance. Nothing matters but dancing right now.”

It’s the physicality of it. It seems that when creatives get too caught up in their mental state, it helps to do something physical to calm that animal side of their brain down.

So true and, once every part of the body is moving, your mind is the last thing. You don’t even think about that part. It does take a minute, though, once the dancing starts. First, you’re still thinking, so your body — you’re moving it — you’re thinking, you’re thinking, and then, by the time you work the neck and the legs and the head and get the whole body going, you’re like, “Whoa!’ You’re gone man!” And it just takes one little moment of being gone to shift some ol’ thing.

So are we ever going to get a Valerie June workout video?

I don’t know. That would be really ’80s and fun. I’d have to get some leg warmers, for sure.

And neon.

I love legwarmers. That seems like a good excuse.

What do you dance to?

So many things. I like dancing to Davie Bowie, and Spoon is a really fun band to dance to — it’s so upbeat and insane. And Fever Ray and Fela Kuti, Cass McCombs … so many things. Sometimes I dance to blues music. It just depends on what I need to shake out.

I can see how these all dancing moments influence your music.

It’s all there.

Turning to the album, “Man Done Wrong” brought to mind the personal lamentations you’d hear in Ma Rainey’s and Bessie Smith’s blues. Can you take me through writing that particular song?

It started on the banjo. I was just playing that riff, again and again, for a few days, and then I heard the chanting, and when I first started to hear the chanting, I thought, “Well, this is very tribal to me.” It’s a different way for the banjo to be, for me. In my own mind, I had certain parameters that the banjo was allowed to go — for it to lean toward old time or bluegrass — and the fact that it was getting outside of its lane and it was doing something that seemed African or tribal to me was like, “What the fuck is this?” [Laughs] When I started to receive that, I was like, “Wow, I can’t fight that.” I can’t fight what comes to me in a song; I have to accept it all because, once I start to fight it, I close the door and I shut off these voices. I have to make them all feel welcome in order to receive the entire song, so I just went with it and got into it, and started to hear the actual singing, and I was like, “Well, okay.”

All these ideas I had about the banjo and the way it was supposed to be played and the way it was supposed to be fit into this box, they had to go out the window. It was like, “I guess it is an African instrument.” I learned a lot trying to play that song, about the banjo being as innocent an instrument as any other instrument and it having a voice that can fit with any style of music. It wants to be free; it doesn’t want to fit within any parameter. It just wants to be an instrument and play around in the playground of music and sound. It opened my mind and it opened my thoughts about what it should do in the world, and how I should feel about it when I see somebody get up in front of me with one. Just because you see a trumpet, do you think, “They’re going to play jazz. They’re going to be Miles Davis”? No. When you see a trumpet, it could be marching band, it could be jazz, it could be anything. A banjo is the same.

It has this strong association with bluegrass, but there is that tradition of Black banjo players who were never recorded and so, in many ways, that history has been erased.

It’s true. It’s such a historical instrument. It keeps getting deeper and deeper, as much as you try to see where it’s going. It’s been a vibrant instrument in the past and going into the future.

Do you think these voices in any way are trying to communicate that lost history with you?

They are communicating so many things. I can’t even get my head wrapped around it because, as soon as I get one thing that they were saying, then it starts to change, like a good poem. You read this poem and when you’re younger — and I read Robert Frost’s “Two Roads” when I was younger — it meant one thing, but as I get older, it means something different. The songs are like that. They change like they are living; they live with you and they change the meaning.

What other poets are you currently quite taken with?

I like Wendell Berry a lot. I could read that all day long, and T.S. Eliot and e.e. cummings, but Wendell Berry is really huge. I don’t even know how to describe what he does to me, but by the time I get to the end of one of his poems, I can be in complete tears and gratitude for all of life, for the earth, for everything. And the short stories are the same way.

He’s one of my favorites, too. I’m always so grateful for Wendell or, really, any poet who articulates the experience of living, especially when you haven’t found the words yourself yet.

That’s the shocking part. The ability to articulate it is like, “Wow!” I felt it, but I just couldn’t put it into words. You did it! You did it! [Laughs]

But you’re tasked with that same hurdle as a songwriter.

I don’t really feel like I have any kind of control over these things. I mean, I wish I could. I wish I wrote that way, where I could have a theme in my head and write something that fits the purpose, but the times I try, it doesn’t hit me as much as when I hear the voice and I just follow it. But I do try sometimes. I’d like to learn to write that way. I feel somebody like Toni Morrison or Zora Neale Hurston, they would have these thoughts going on in their minds about the world, about being a Black woman growing up, or things like that that they wanted to put into their writing, and they were able to articulate them through their craft. But, for me, I can’t do that. I don’t write that way.

There are so many different ways to approach it. Every writer has a different way.

I love writing with other writers because, when I do that, then I steal some of their style. I’m like, “Oh, that’s how you tapped into that.” They’re my teachers.

What a great way to learn. Well, lastly, I was curious about the song “Shake Down” and recording it with your family.

My brothers’ and my dad’s vocals were tracked in Tennessee. It was great because my dad’s not really a singer, but he was in the room and I was like, “You gotta sing.” And now he’s gone and so all I have is him singing that part. I have pictures, but I don’t have his voice anymore and I never will again. That really matters to have somebody’s voice after they’re gone. That really is something, so I really feel fortunate for that song.

Photo credit: Danny Clinch