Tag: history

Celebrating Women’s History Month: Crystal Gayle, Rose Maddox, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Our partnership with our friends at Real Roots Radio in Southwestern Ohio continues as we move from Black History Month to Women’s History Month! This time, we’ll bring you weekly collections of a variety of powerful women in bluegrass, country, Americana, folk, and elsewhere who have been featured on Real Roots Radio’s airwaves each weekday in March, highlighting the outsized impact women have on American roots music. You can listen to Real Roots Radio online 24/7 or via their FREE app for smartphones or tablets. If you’re based in Ohio, tune in via 100.3 (Xenia, Dayton, Springfield), 106.7 (Wilmington), or 105.5 (Eaton).

American roots music, historically and currently, has often been regarded as a male-dominated space. It’s certainly true of the music industry in general and these more down-home musics are no exception. Thankfully, American roots music and its many offshoots, branches, and associated folkways include hundreds and thousands of women who have greatly impacted these art forms, altering the courses of roots music history. Some are relatively unknown – or under-appreciated or undersung – and others are global phenomena or household names.

Over the next couple weeks, we and RRR will do our best to bring you more examples of women in roots music from all levels of notoriety and stature. Radio host Daniel Mullins, who together with BGS and Good Country staff has curated the series, kicked us off last week with Dottie West, Gail Davies, and more. This week, we’re shining a spotlight on Kristin Scott Benson, Crystal Gayle, Big Mama Thornton, Reba McEntire, and Rose Maddox. We’ll return next week and each Friday through the end of the month with even more examples of women who blazed a trail in roots music.

Plus, you can find two playlists below – one centered on bluegrass, the other on country – with dozens of songs from countless women artists, performers, songwriters, and instrumentalists who effortlessly demonstrate how none of these roots genres would exist without women.

Crystal Gayle (b. 1951)

She’s a country music icon with signature floor-length hair and a voice as smooth as silk – Crystal Gayle!

Born Brenda Gail Webb in Paintsville, Kentucky, Crystal Gayle stepped out of the shadow of her legendary sister, Loretta Lynn, to carve her own path in country and pop music. She scored her first Top Ten hit in 1975 with “Wrong Road Again.” However, her major breakthrough came in 1977 with the GRAMMY Award-winning “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue,” a crossover hit that topped the country charts and even made waves on the pop scene. It peaked at Number Two on the overall Hot 100, setting Gayle up to be one of the premiere crossover artists of the era.

With 18 Number One hits, Crystal Gayle has the fourth most chart-topping songs for a female in country music history, even more than her older sister. She became a defining voice of the late ’70s and ’80s, blending country with soft pop for her signature sound. Who could forget those long, flowing locks – almost as famous as her music! A member of the Grand Ole Opry and the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame, she even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in addition to scores of other awards, honors, and accolades. Crystal Gayle is still shining today, proving that true talent – and great hair – never go out of style!

Suggested Listening:
“Wrong Road Again”
“The Sound of Goodbye”

Big Mama Thornton (1926 – 1984)

Before Elvis shook his hips and Janis wailed the blues, there was Big Mama Thornton. Born Willie Mae Thornton in 1926, this powerhouse of a woman changed music forever.

Thornton’s deep, growling voice and raw emotion made her a legend in blues and rock and roll. She recorded “Hound Dog,” which was written specifically for her, in 1952 – years before Elvis made it even more famous. It sold over half a million copies and reached the Top Ten on the Billboard R&B charts. Her recording of “Hound Dog” is regarded as a pivotal recording in the birth of rock and roll, and truthfully, her female perspective makes the song make a lot more sense.

Like many Black artists of her time, she never saw the wealth or credit she deserved. Big Mama wasn’t just a singer – she played drums, harmonica, and wrote music, influencing generations of artists. Janis Joplin’s hit “Ball and Chain” was written by Big Mama.

As a blues icon, she toured the United States and Europe, worked at many prestigious folk, blues, and jazz festivals, and even recorded an album with Muddy Waters. Sadly, her life was cut short after years of alcohol abuse, passing away at the age of 57 in an LA boarding house; Big Mama was buried in a potter’s field.

Big Mama Thornton paved the way for rock and roll, blues, and soul, and was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.

Suggested Listening:
“Ball and Chain”
“Wade in the Water”

Kristin Scott Benson (b. 1976)

A South Carolina native, Kristin Scott Benson is a six-time IBMA Banjo Player of the Year and an absolute force on the five-string. She was a mandolin player as a youngster, but caught the banjo bug at nine years old when she saw Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver in the 1980s with their exciting brand of bluegrass – and a young Scott Vestal on banjo. She joined the all-female bluegrass band Petticoat Junction when she was just a senior in high school, moving to Nashville in 1994 to attend Belmont University.

Unknowingly, she made history during her sophomore year in college when she was hired by The Larry Stephenson Band. She is viewed by many as having “broke the glass ceiling” in bluegrass, by playing in a male-dominated professional bluegrass band, without being married to, dating, or being related to any of the other members – she was simply a powerful picker. Kristin worked two different stints with The Larry Stephenson Band, in addition to working with Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time. She joined The Grascals in 2008, where she has remained for over fifteen years.

Pointing to Sonny Osborne as her banjo mentor, she has fit The Grascals’ sound like a glove with their heavy Osborne Brothers influence. (It was actually Sonny who recommended her to The Grascals for their banjo job.) In addition to kicking tail on stage and in the studio with The Grascals, in recent years Kristin has formed a recording duo with her husband, mandolin master Wayne Benson of Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out. Together they are simply known as Benson.

Kristin Scott Benson received the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo & Bluegrass in 2018, and was inducted into the American Banjo Hall of Fame in 2024.

Suggested Listening:
“Up This Hill and Down” – The Grascals
“Conway” – Benson

Rose Maddox (1925 – 1998)

She was bold, she was brash, and she helped shape country as we know it! Rose Maddox wasn’t just another singer, she was a trailblazer.

Born in Alabama and raised in Modesto, California, Rose and her brothers – The Maddox Brothers and Rose – became pioneers of the “hillbilly boogie” sound. Performing on radio as teenagers, their career really took off when Rose’s brothers returned from World War II, anchored by her powerhouse vocals. One of the first hillbilly bands to come from California, The Maddox Brothers & Rose cut a wide swathe, touring across the country, performing on the Louisiana Hayride, and making smash records.

With wild outfits, high energy, and Rose’s infectious laugh, they were country music’s first real rock stars, known as America’s most colorful hillbilly band. In the 1950s, The Maddox Brothers & Rose parted ways and Rose pursued a solo career. She broke barriers as a female country star, scoring over a dozen Top 30 hits like “Sing a Little Song of Heartache” and inspiring legends like Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. She also recorded several popular country duets with another legend with ties to southern California – Buck Owens. In 1962, she released the first bluegrass album by a female artist, Rose Maddox Sings Bluegrass, joined by Bill Monroe, Don Reno, Red Smiley, Donna Stoneman, and more.

She would continue to tour and record, even recording an album with Merle Haggard & The Strangers as her backing band. The Hag always pointed to The Maddox Brothers & Rose as one of his influences. Maddox also performed on stage and in studio with California bluegrasser Vern Williams, and even received a bluegrass GRAMMY nomination for her Byron Berline-produced album $35 & A Dream, shortly before her passing in 1998 at the age of 72.

Honky-tonk, bluegrass, rockabilly – Rose did it all and she did it first! So next time you hear a fiery female country singer, tip your hat to Rose Maddox, the original queen of country sass.

Suggested Listening:
“Honky Tonkin’” – The Maddox Brothers & Rose
“Sing A Little Song of Heartache”

Reba McEntire (b. 1955)

From the heart of Oklahoma, one voice has echoed through the decades, captivating fans with her powerhouse vocals and undeniable charm. Reba McEntire, one of the true Queens of Country Music, has been breaking barriers since she first stepped onto the scene in the 1970s.

Her big break came in 1974 when country & western singer Red Steagall saw Reba perform the National Anthem at a rodeo event in Oklahoma. He then helped her land her first record deal. But she was hardly an immediate success, working to find her footing in the music industry and after four years, she scored her first Top Ten hit, “(You Lift Me) Up To Heaven.” After that, she hasn’t looked back!

Reba topped the Billboard country singles chart for the first time in 1983 with “Can’t Even Get The Blues,” the first of her many Number One hits. With over 40 chart toppers and a career spanning more than four decades, she’s done it all. From mega hits to her legendary TV show, Reba, she’s not just a country icon, she’s a cultural force. However, Reba’s most iconic hit only reached #8, from her classic 1990 album, Rumor Has It. A song she learned from Bobbie Gentry, that has been a signature song of Reba’s ever since, it has been certified double-platinum, selling over 2 million copies: everyone loves “Fancy.”

Known for her fierce spirit and down-to-earth personality, Reba’s music continues to inspire generations of fans. Whether she’s singing about love, heartbreak, or resilience, one thing’s for sure – Reba’s voice is timeless. Reba McEntire, a true legend and a voice like no other.

Suggested Listening:
“Fancy”
“Swing All Night Long With You”

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Photo Credit: Rose Maddox courtesy of Discogs.com; Crystal Gayle courtesy of the artist; Big Mama Thornton from Ball N’ Chain.

Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin’s ‘symbiont’ is a Radical Act of Reclamation

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin’s new album symbiont is a dense nest of references across a century of Black and Indigenous music and sound making, worked into the warp and weft of synthesizers and electronic production.

The liner notes detail Obomsawin’s trips to Blount’s apartment in Providence, Rhode Island, where the two would work through music, books, and other texts they had collected, compiling sounds and ideas, building up the whole project’s sound. The album bridges the hyperlocal and the global, across time, in a historically-minded, futurist radical gesture, refusing the silence of official archives and restoring voices lost to colonial violence.

The album was released by Smithsonian Folkways, which has a history of preserving a worldwide range of music, but also industrial sounds, the songs of birds, and the noises of frogs and toads. Obomsawin’s previous band Lula Wiles was also on the label. Folkways is an archive that is institutional though, literally funded by the government, and it is often colonial – they gave money to white officials who collected songs on reservations, in prisons, and among communities where saying no was an economic or social impossibility. The official archivists, given imprimatur by the Smithsonian, and the unofficial archive, compiled by these two musicians who are working personally, across time and space, to commemorate the social and political will of marginalized people, is a difficult balance.

In a conversation over Zoom, Blount makes the archival practice explicit saying that the process “became a way for me to co-opt this thing that I have often felt; [that] archives exist to deny dead Black people our agency and cut off our communal traditions from the community.”

The community here is as small as two people in a room, or in a Zoom call, but also collapses historical pasts, the apocalyptic now, and a possible, hopeful Afro/Indigenous future. When asked about how this album was in conversation with the colonial history, Obomsawin makes the political claim as explicit and as communal as Blount, saying that this album is “in conversation and asserting continuance for our colonized ancestors and our future descendants who have overthrown their colonizers.”

How to do that overthrowing is not an abstract or intellectual consideration here. There are calls for direct action. In one of the album’s spoken word sections, an ancient outside of time and space discusses how humanity cannot be either created or destroyed, but it is like a great river (like Langston Hughes’ river) that the energy flows through.

The material throughout this album is part of that great river, and so it includes texts like Slave Songs of the United States (ed. William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison) and Indian Melodies by Thomas Commuck, who is described by Obomsawin as a “Native American author, Commuck (Narragansett/Brothertown), [who] began his life in a community heavily influenced by the Methodist Episcopal Church with the tradition of singing shape note hymns.”

The ancestor work here is nuanced as Obomsawin refuses to view Commuck as a simple victim of settler violence, acknowledging the intellectual work of his hymnal, while also acknowledging that his learning the shape note involved an erasure of more traditional forms. Obamsawin’s inclusion of western plains singing on the recordings of Commuck function like Jeremy Dutcher’s album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, who traveled to the settler capital of Ottawa to access wax cylinders of the almost extinct songs of his people – cylinders stolen from them. Maggie Paul, an elder and song keeper from Dutcher’s community, told him to bring the songs back. symbiont does something similar.

The songs gathered here are a model of how stories from the Atlantic Triangle and from the expulsion of Indigenous people from their native homelands can be made new. These songs are stories, of stars falling out of the skies, but also of the gathering of community or private devotions. The gathering of the community is a successful part of the project.

On this album, Blount and Obomsawin inherit the hymns of colonization, hymns that were remade by Indigenous and Black writers, performers, and thinkers. On “Mother,” there is an interleaving of singing over drums and synths; a gorgeous version of the hymn “In the Garden” is scarred with feedback, synth interruptions, and technological glitches, emphasizing the shift from male to female pronouns. These formal choices interrupt the edenic expectation of the song’s tradition, while still acknowledging where the text originated from. Jazz and electroacoustic performer Mantana Roberts did similar work with the hymn in her work Coin Coin Chapter 5 – there are always riffs, always new ways of working out old songs.

The expulsion from the garden into new sounds can also be seen in the song “Stars Begin to Fall,” with the jazz stalwart Taylor Ho Bynum. Percussion and gourd banjo undergird Obomsawin’s rich harmonies singing, “When you hear the master fall as he topples from his throne…” There is a profound impact, a direct route to the kind of political work of community.

Obomsawin is in conversation with Blount; Blount and Obomsawin are in conversation with Bynum; Bynum, Obomsawin, and Blount are in conversation with Slave Songs and William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison. And, the history of the slave song, which originated American popular music. This is an album about the earth, so when “Stars Begin to Fall” talks about horns, Bynum makes his cornet flutter, speed, appear and disappear. He turns that instrument into a bird, with all of the contradictory metaphors of containment and freedom within it.

The river which carries these stories is one which loops, breaks, and returns – it has not one source, but dozens. This borrowing, this community, the pulling out of narratives, the flow, has been blocked.

There are two songs here by Alan Lomax, the folk song collector, whose relationship to the medium has become incredibly vexed. Blount, when asked about what it means to include Lomax in this canon making, his response is as patient, as angry, and as generous as the rest of the record: “I understand that this may be something he did with the best of intentions. I don’t mean to impugn that in any way. I think we are now at a point where we need to start examining. If there’s a solution to release those copyrights. I don’t know legally if that can be done, but something’s got to change, because at the point where you have Black people sampling recordings of our ancestors on their songs and they have to credit John and Alan Lomax as co-writers on that song… I had to credit a white man for my song that I wrote, because he happened to record some other Black people one time.”

This album is a reclaiming, not of authorship, but a collapsing of time and space. It’s an album of new narratives of creations, against copyright, and against Euro-centric narratives of how we imagine folk music to sound like and about what the audience means. This is an album intended for liberation, one in conversation across time and place. Specific time and place are key to the aesthetic and political work of Blount and Obomsawin – work that refuses to ask permission.

When they sing, “Come down ancients and trouble the waters/ Let the saints come in…” on the perfect, revelatory, and haunting track “Come Down Ancients,” the invocation towards the saints is as small as two people in an apartment, as smart as a grad school seminar, and as expansive as centuries of art making, both heard and unheard, censored because it scared or intimidated those who colonized.

That symbiont has no interest in asking permission anymore makes it a most radical act of reclamation.

Photo Credit: Abby Lank

Aoife O’Donovan & Dawn Landes on Basic Folk

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Aoife O’Donovan and Dawn Landes are long-time friends. Coincidentally, they both have new albums with strong feminist themes, so I wanted to interview them together and talk about WOMEN.

Aoife’s album, All My Friends, is specifically centered around Carrie Chapman Catt, a prominent leader in the suffragist movement. Inspired by speeches and letters, one song of Aoife’s, “War Measure,” is based on a letter of support from Woodrow Wilson to Chapman Catt. This album also marks the biggest project Aoife has worked on with her husband Eric Jacobsen, who conducts the Orlando Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony Orchestras. It’s also the first record she’s released since becoming a mother. Of her song “Daughters,” she says she sings “as a modern woman, not wanting to leave the fight to the daughters of our daughters.”

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Dawn Landes, also a mother, has a broader focus with her new album, The Liberated Woman’s Songbook. It features songs from the 1971 songbook of the same title, intended to inspire second wave feminists’ women’s liberation movement, and modern feminism of the 1970s. The songs span from 1830 (“Hard is the Fortune of All Womankind”) to 1970 (“There Was a Young Woman Who Swallowed a Lie,” “Liberation, Now!“), showcasing how women of the past expressed political activism in the struggle for gender equality.

Both Aoife and Dawn released their albums during Women’s History Month, which led us to a discussion of what that choice means to each of them. We also talk about protest signs, the Taylor Swift movie, gender stereotypes, and of course, all waves of feminism. Chatting about the 19th Amendment, we acknowledge that this only allowed white women to vote, which then leads to talk of how suffragists and feminist protest songwriters – like Meredith Tax – contributed to and gleaned inspiration from the civil rights movement.

Aoife and Dawn are legends! We start with what their internal dialogues were like when first undertaking these ambitious and important projects and end with Aoife putting Barbie on blast. All and all, this one’s a winner.

Photo Credit: Dawn Landes by Heather Evans Smith; Aoife O’Donovan by Sasha Israel.

Basic Folk – No-No Boy

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Julian Saporiti is the brilliant mind behind No-No Boy, a recording project that tells the incredible stories of historical triumphs of Asian Americans making their way in the United States. Julian, an Italian American and Vietnamese American, has always been drawn to both history and music, and has used his two passions to elevate these stories. He was truly inspired by his doctoral research at Brown University on “Asian American and transpacific history focusing on sound, music, immigration, refugees and everyday life.” Julian began to explore his family’s history, pore over archival material, and conduct interviews; and found untold musical stories of Asian American artists like himself.


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Julian got the No-No Boy name from Japanese Americans who were forced to live in internment camps during World War II, soon after the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. They were asked to serve in combat and swear allegiance to the United States. Those who answered “no” to those two demands on the government’s “Loyalty Questionnaire” became “No-No Boys.” And those who refused were sent to concentration camps. It’s also a novel by Asian American author John Okada (also a song by The Spiders). Our conversation covers his own family history, in which he also unabashedly shares his perspective on the concept of “generational trauma” (he’s not super into it). He expands on the influence of Asian musicians who have learned and perfected the music of the oppressor, like the George Igawa Orchestra, which was a jazz band held at an internment camp led by Los Angeles musician George Igawa. When he was forced to relocate to the camp, he could only bring what he could carry, which, to him, meant his instruments. He formed a group in the camp where they would play parties and even outside beyond the confines of the camp’s barbed wire.

Julian’s identity and the identity of No-No Boy is solidly rooted in his Asian American experience, but I decided to start our interview with questions about his dad’s work in the music industry. Julian’s father was a major player in Nashville’s country music industry and he would often take Julian with him to work. This left huge impressions on young Julian, so of course, I had to dig into that first thing!

Photo Credit: Diego Luis

The Ebony Hillbillies: Becoming a Part of the Music

Posted on by Editor

For most listeners of bluegrass, the history of the music begins (and often ends) in December of 1945, when Bill Monroe brought his Blue Grass Boys — Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt, included — on stage at the Grand Ole Opry. Bluegrass was created by the men on that historic stage, straight from their brains through their fingertips. Right?

For roots musicians whose identities don’t fit the proverbial mold, this telling of history is not nearly so convenient. Henrique Prince and Gloria Thomas Gassaway, of the New York-based Black string band the Ebony Hillbillies, tell a much different story. When the Hillbillies headline our Shout & Shine showcase at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s World of Bluegrass conference, there will almost undoubtedly be attendees questioning the band’s place beneath the umbrella of “bluegrass.” But omitting or excluding any pieces of the music — and its history — deprives us all of some of its best parts … like the music, tradition, and dances of the Ebony Hillbillies.

How did roots music and string band music come into your lives?

Gloria Thomas Gassaway: I grew up with parents from the South who played this music and knew the history and roots of it. My dad played banjo and he knew all this music; he knew where it came from and how it evolved. I did move into other music genres, but I always had those roots from South Carolina.

Henrique Prince: My parents were Caribbean. My father’s parents were a bunch of musicians. They had bands and they played old folk music from their culture. I wanted to learn how to play violin pretty young, but nobody could afford lessons and nobody knew what to do. I was really precocious about it. Little folk tunes were what I could do and play. I started to learn everything I could about that music. That’s how I sort of learned to play — learning those old folk melodies. I learned a lot of the history. I tried to find out everything I could. There’s a whole connection to Caribbean music, as well, in the mainstream of American folk music.

Why do you think a bluegrass fan or roots music fan might look at the Ebony Hillbillies and think that you’re a novelty or that you don’t have equal claim to string band music as a traditional, Appalachian bluegrass band does?

HP: It’s because people have been fed a convenient story that makes it seem like it’s all about themselves. The history is told so people won’t have a lot of strange feelings about the past. The truth is that the banjo is an instrument that is generations removed from the original instruments that came out of Africa. The most likely history of the word “fiddle” is an erosion of a Latin word for “string,” which came about because the Romans got bowed stringed instruments out of Ethiopia 2,000 years ago. All of this stuff, this music, has been in the Black community, in the Moor and Arab community, since the 11th century. This stuff goes back, back, back, back beyond Appalachia. But it’s never been convenient here in America, for various reasons, to explain all of that.

The interesting thing for us, when we play for our own audiences, Black people are delighted that there’s a Black band that plays this because, some of this music, they’ve actually liked, but they’ve never been able to be involved in these kind of things. We’ve done these big dances, big hoedowns in Harlem where our arms want to fall off playing a reel long enough that all of the dancers can go through the arches and do all the steps, because there are so many people involved. They’re having so much fun.

If you want to teach the story so it only involves one group of people, then you’re going to leave out most of the history. If you tell more or less the truth, then the story might become more complicated or have more parts — some of which may even be uncomfortable — but it will be a much more interesting story.

GTG: And it is much more interesting. I come from a long line of musicians in my family out of South Carolina. I’ve been able to go back through the history of my dad’s family — my family is native — to trace the interaction of (my ancestors) playing this music all the way back to the 1800s. They taught people how to play the instruments and this music.

It seems like the Ebony Hillbillies found each other pretty serendipitously. How did you all come together to form the band?

HP: That would take a couple of beers! [Laughs] It all started with an idea of specializing in dance music, because I really liked the idea of the violin as a dance instrument. I thought it’s the greatest dance instrument in the world, outside of the drum. I tried to learn all different kinds of dance music to play and then began doing it as a duo with different bass players. Then, when I finally found a banjo player, it was the real deal. Banjos and bowed stringed instruments go way back. This is African. This goes back to some place in the 12th century. People would hear the music, I’d explain to them the history, and musicians would respond by coming on board. Then, suddenly, we were a band. That’s basically — to make a long story short — how it happened.

What does it mean to you to be coming back to IBMA’s World of Bluegrass conference and festival this year with the whole band, representing Black string band music at Shout & Shine: A Celebration of Diversity in Bluegrass?

HP: That’s a wonderful thing, a very wonderful thing. Sometimes you’d wish that musicians’ welcome would be more like a welcome back because, in a sense, we’re bringing back something that really hasn’t been associated on this level since the 1920s, very early on in the music, even before the recording industry started. We just hope to bring what we do, which is hopefully a joyful sound, and relate it to what other people do so they can understand it. We play the same instruments and even play some of the same songs. We play for audiences that usually never get a chance to enjoy this music with people they can connect with emotionally or culturally. So it’s interesting to be with people of different cultures because, again, the connection will be the music. We all know this music. It will be a lot of fun.

GTG: And, a lots of times, people don’t realize that they can actually get up and really dance to this music!

HP: That’s true. In so many experiences we’ve had playing nationally and outside of New York, one of the things we’ve noticed is that a lot of bluegrass audiences tend to be sit-down audiences. I don’t know how much that’s changed in the time since we started doing this. We’ve been in situations where people who never get up got up for our band and danced. Which is okay with us, because we just love to get people dancing!

Why is it that you actively, overtly work to spread dance with your music?

HP: This is one of the celebrations of diversity that you’re going to have (at Shout & Shine.) Black music has very much to do with dance.

GTG: They go hand-in-hand.

HP: It’s like a form of communication. It’s a cultural form of language. It’s always been part and parcel of the music. Movement and physical participation with the music means you dance. Slaves, displaced Africans here in America, working for this economy, they developed this music in order to give them relief from the incredible hard work and the psychologically demeaning situation they found themselves in. The only things they had were making their banjos, making their fiddles, stomping their feet, and clapping their hands. The power of music was transporting them, making them dance, giving them joy, taking them away. That’s one of the things that’s appealing about this music. It is chock-full of joy, this ancient joy from people that was put in there because it had to be. When someone played the banjo, you just had to move your feet.

That’s the way we play the music. We play the same tunes as anybody else. Ours aren’t any better than anyone else, but we have a certain attitude that makes it affect that part of you that makes you move. You could just sit down and listen, but this music has always been designed to make you react, become a part of it, and enjoy yourself. Part of the way to express and enjoy yourself is to dance and clap your hands.

If you read that poem “The Party,” where [Paul Laurence Dunbar] talks about going to a slaves’ party and, when a fiddler comes in and starts to play, nobody can stand still anymore. That’s talking about a Black fiddler. Dance is the required and sought-for reaction. [Laughs] When that’s missing, something bigger is missing. A downside of reorganizing the history is that you end up leaving some parts out that are really good for you.

I think about the “transportive” quality of this music a lot, and I try to unpack this with people in roots music communities because, to me, being gay, it makes sense that this music — which was designed and created to take people away from the hardship of their lives — would have something to offer all marginalized people, from women to LGBTQ+ individuals to people of color to immigrants and on and on. Do you feel this potential as well?

HP: You definitely hit on something there. The mainstream culture, the narrative that’s spoken, “This is what the history is. It is what we say it is,” is the dominant culture that’s interested in being one certain way. That way excludes people who don’t fit, people who are expected by the mainstream to have certain behaviors. We don’t know which musicians were gay 200 years ago. You don’t know who people were or what they were thinking. Just because you suppress something doesn’t mean it goes away. All the evidence proves it doesn’t. You might have some hero in the past and, if you got in a time machine and found out, you would be shocked. [Laughs] These are ideas that are not only outdated, they are just wrong. You can’t leave out people — we need all hands on deck — because you don’t particularly, supposedly approve of their behavior or something about them. These people are very, very valuable people and have valuable ideas.

We’re trying. It seems like the whole community is trying. We’ve raise a real pimple recently in this whole society that’s about to bust. But it’s always been here. It’s been sitting by, unaddressed, getting bigger and bigger and uglier and uglier for years. Everybody feels like they have to tiptoe around the truth with people, or they threaten death, destruction, and mayhem if you dare say certain things. It’s always been that way, but finally, in the end, the only thing that could save us — the only thing that could organize us enough to save our own lives, our own houses, our own anything — is the truth.

GTG: It’s sad that, in this day and age, people cannot understand that all people are different and just let them be who they are. It’s sad. It sickens me. It sickens me in race, in people’s gender, and who they choose to be and love in their lives. I’m not a young chicky, but years before it became fashionable, someone came to me and asked me if I’d sign a petition for LGBT rights. I was in an upscale area of Queens, New York, and I looked at him and said, “Is water wet? Is James Brown funky? Is King Kong a great big monkey?” [Laughs] I said, “Can I sign more than once?” I was sick and tired because I know how it is to be treated a certain way. I said, “Give me another sheet of paper cause I’m going to take it around and get it signed.”

You guys will be at IBMA for the Shout & Shine showcase, but you’re also playing Bluegrass in the Schools throughout the week, and you’re playing a couple of sets at the Wide Open StreetFest, so what are your hopes for your time in Raleigh?

HP: We hope people will just love it so much they’ll be dancing around and that people like it so much that they won’t want it to stop and the cops will have to come and clear the place. [Laughs] It’s going to be a big ol’ wang-dang-doodle of a time.

GTG: Oh yeah, we’re gonna have a ball. We just hope people enjoy the party.

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.

Bob Dylan’s Greenwich Village: A Self-Guided Walking Tour

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New York is not a sentimental town. It takes pride in its ever-evolving skyline. It doesn’t have a museum commemorating the Harlem Renaissance. The only jazz memorials are Woodhull Cemetery and the Louis Armstrong House. There is nothing celebrating the folk revival. It’s up to you and your two feet to seek out its history. A good starting point is Bob Dylan and Greenwich Village, a historical neighborhood that maintains much of its original architecture. On a cold Winter day in January of 1961, Dylan arrived in New York City. In the next three years, he left an indelible mark. Forever after, the two would be forever connected.

Start at 1 West 4th Street.

It’s a big brown building. Peek in a window and you are likely to see an art exhibit. It’s not much now — another bland NYU building — but it was formerly Gerde’s Folk City, a hotbed of folk talent in the 1960s. It was a bit off the beaten path, but it still attracted large touring acts. Dylan’s first professional show was at Gerde’s Folk City. He opened for the great John Lee Hooker. “A bright new face in folk music is appearing at Gerde’s Folk City. Although only 20 years old, Bob Dylan is one of the most distinctive stylists to play a Manhattan cabaret in months,” wrote New York Times critic Robert Shelton. “But if not for every taste, his music-making has the mark of originality and inspiration, all the more noteworthy for his youth. Mr. Dylan is vague about his antecedents and birthplace, but it matters less where he has been than where he is going, and that would seem to be straight up.”

On this same block is the former site of the Bottom Line. Dylan never performed at the Bottom Line, though he did live nearby in the 1970s, during the club’s hey day. It opened on February 12, 1974 and played a prominent part in preserving Greenwich Village's legacy as a cultural hotspot. Bruce Springsteen played some legendary showcases. Lou Reed recorded the album Live: Take No Prisoners here. A middle-aged Dylan spent some lonely nights here.

Continue two blocks on West 4th to Washington Square. Go to the fountain and look at the arches … there might even be some folk singers performing.

Washington Square Park

Folk musicians began performing at Washington Square in 1945. It was rough and tumble music. Then, in 1958, the Kingston Trio had their first hit — a pop-folk version of the traditional song “Tom Dooley.” Folk music boomed and, suddenly, Washington Square Park was flooded with musicians. By 1960, Sundays in Washington Square were the big day when the folkies would descend on the park. It was so popular with both tourists and players that the police put up barricades. When Dylan arrived in January 1961, he quickly began playing at the Square.

Three months after his arrival — in April of 1961 — the police cracked down on public performances in the park, insisting that all performers have a permit. When the folk musicians applied, they were denied. The following Sunday, Izzy Young from the Folklore Center and 500 musicians gathered and sang songs in the park. They then marched down 5th Avenue to the Judson Memorial Church where the riot squad was waiting. They attacked the singers with billy clubs, arresting 10 people in what is now known as the Beatnik Riot, much to the folkies' disdain.

Continue West on West 4th toward 6th Avenue. Cross 6th Avenue and continue on West 4th. Dylan’s first apartment is at 161 West 4th Street.

Bob Dylan was homeless for his first year in New York. When he fell in love with Suze Rotolo, they rented this apartment. She is on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which was photographed right down the street.

Continue on West 4th Street to 1 Sheridan Square, home of the infamous Café Society.

In the 1940s, this was one of the first nightclubs to feature folk music. The great protest and folk singer Josh White held court at Café Society for five years. Billie Holiday and Lester Young were regular performers in what was one of the first clubs to truly break color barriers. When Dylan lived here in 1962, it was the Haven — one of New York’s largest openly gay nightclubs.

Now turn around and head back toward Dylan’s first apartment. Stop and buy a record at Bleecker Street Records. Maybe something by Bob Dylan?

Keep heading toward Dylan’s apartment and then turn right on Jones Street.

This is the street from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album cover. Take some photos and continue down the street — at the end is Caffe Vivaldi. Pop in for a beer. It’s a great place to hear some burgeoning New York musicians, as it is still home to songwriters and one of the only clubs with a piano. It’s a great old room.

Turn left at the end of block and cross 6th Avenue. Take a slight left up Minetta Street. Panchito’s is at 13-11 Minetta Street.

This room has a rich history. It was first the Commons. Opened in 1958, the Commons was originally a small theater and café that was tres bohemian. It was also one of the first basket houses — a coffee shop that had live music — in Greenwich Village. The performers were paid in tips, which were collected in a passed basket. The Commons expanded in 1960 and changed its name to the Fat Black Pussycat. This is where Dylan wrote "Blowin' in the Wind."

Take a right on Minetta Lane. On the corner of Minetta Lane and MacDougal Street is Café Wha?

Dylan performed at Café Wha? on his first day in New York. It was an open mic hosted by Fred Neil. Fred Neil is best remembered as the songwriter behind “Everybody’s Talking” from the film Midnight Cowboy. In 1961, he managed the café’s day bookings and MC’d the open mic. Dylan did a set of Woody Guthrie songs and Neil hired him on the spot as his harmonica player.

Take a right down MacDougal Street. Caffe Reggio is at 119 MacDougal Street.

This café is virtually unchanged from the day it opened. Without a doubt, Dylan spent time here. You might also recognize it from the film Inside Llewyn Davis. Caffe Reggio also claims to be the birthplace of the cappuccino.

Keep heading down MacDougal Street, away from the park. At 116 MacDougal Street is the former Gaslight Café.

The Gaslight was the place to play in the 1960s. It was the Carnegie Hall of folk music, where Dave Van Ronk hosted the weekly hootenanny every Monday and Dylan was one of the regular performers within a year of moving to town. There were typically five performers each night and they would rotate every four songs. It is a tiny spot, and there would be lines stretched down the block. Before being converted to the Gaslight, this was the coal room for the building. The walls were stained black from years of storage, but the room embraced it and left it dark. It’s also been rumored that this is where the beatniks began snapping instead of clapping, so as not to disturb the upstair tenants.

Immediately to the right is 114 MacDougal Street.

This is the former Kettle of Fish. When not performing, the musicians would eat and play cards up here.

Two doors down, at 110 MacDougal, is where the Folklore Center used to reside.

Izzy Young from the Beatnik Riots was the proprietor. Dylan referred to the Folklore Center as “The Citadel of American Folk Music.” Izzy was a notoriously bad businessman, but his folklore center was the hub of the New York folk revival. Van Ronk, and countless other musicians, were technically homeless — although they always had a place to crash. This was where their mail was sent. It was also where Dylan came to absorb records and learn new songs.

At the end of the block, turn left on Bleecker Street.

Bleecker Street was a mecca of basket houses. In the '50s and '60s, this street was crawling with amateur musicians toting guitars and hoping to be next big star. Café Figaro was located at 184 Bleecker Street. Today it is a Bank of America.

The Village Gate was at 158 Bleecker Street. Dylan wrote "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" in September of 1962 in the basement apartment. The Village Gate was a notable folk hangout for 36 years. It’s now Les Poisson Rouge and still hosts some of the best events and concerts in Manhattan. If you look at the corner, the original Village Gate sign is still posted.

Continue to 152 Bleecker Street where the old Café Au Go Go is now a Capital One Bank. Café Au Go Go was a cultural hotbed in the 1960s hosting folk, jazz, comedy, blues, and rock. The Grateful Dead played their first New York show at Café Au Go Go. A young Joni Mitchell had a weekly gig. Blues legends Lightnin' Hopkins, Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, and Big Joe Williams performed at the club after being "rediscovered" in the '60s. Young Bob Dylan spent many nights listening to his peers and forefathers.

Across the street at 147 Bleecker is the Bitter End.

This is where Dylan came up with the Rolling Thunder Review. When he moved back to Greenwich Village in the '70s, he spent many nights at the Bitter End. There were many late-night jam sessions and, one night, he decided to take this loose collective on the road. He recruited some of his famous friends, hired a film crew, and embarked on one of the most ambitious tours of the 1970s. The Bootleg Series put out an amazing double album, and Heavy Rain was recorded on this tour. If you’ve ever seen Dylan in white face with a pimp hat, it was from the Rolling Thunder Review.

A Trip Through Alan Lomax’s Online Archives

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Alan Lomax was one of the world's foremost historians of American folk music in the 20th century. Son of folklorist John Lomax, he spent his life collecting field recordings, researching folklore in various cultures, producing concerts and events, and promoting the idea of cultural equity within the folklore community. In 2004, all of Lomax's archives were acquired by the Library of Congress. The massive archives include 6,400 sound recordings, 5,500 still images, and 6,000 moving images, as well as 25,000 pages from Lomax's office files. His work spans multiple continents and decades, and is one of the most comprehensive resources for folk culture available. 

With that level of research available to the public, many historians and hobbyists have put together their own Lomax-centric projects, including Joshua Clegg Caffery's John and Alan Lomax in Louisiana, 1934 — an in-depth journey into the father/son duo's studies of lower Louisiana housed at Lomax1934.com.

There are also the Library of Congress Alan Lomax Collection, which is available online for free; the Alan Lomax YouTube archives; and the Association for Cultural Equity's archives of Lomax's sound recordings to dig into. Not sure where to start? We've picked out some highlights to help you get started on your journey through the archives. 

Lead Belly Memorial Concert Poster, 1950

Sheet Music from the Carribean Folk Song Project, 1965

Performers in Louisiana, 1934, via Lomax1934.com

Transcript, Woody Guthrie CBS Performance, 1940-41

Belton Sutherland, Blues #1

1982 Holly Springs Sacred Harp Convention

Photos coutesy of The U.S. Library of Congress