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Great stuff. An uninformed question: how is what Charters did compare to the Lomaxes? Apples and oranges? On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 7:14 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism < [email protected]> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > NY Times, Mar. 19 2015 > Samuel Charters, Foundational Scholar of the Blues, Dies at 85 > By LARRY ROHTER > > Samuel Charters, whose books and field research helped detonate the blues > and folk music revival of the 1960s and ‘70s, died on Wednesday at his home > in Arsta, Sweden. He was 85. > > The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of bone marrow cancer, his > daughter Mallay Occhiogrosso said. > > When Mr. Charters’s first book, “The Country Blues,” was published at the > tail end of the 1950s, the rural Southern blues of the pre-World War II > period was a largely ignored genre. But the book caused a sensation among > college students and aspiring folk performers, like Bob Dylan, and it > created a tradition of blues scholarship to which Mr. Charters would > continue to contribute with books like “The Roots of the Blues” and “The > Legacy of the Blues.” > > “We can mark the publication of ‘The Country Blues’ in the fall of 1959 as > a signal event in the history of the music,” the music historian Ted Gioia > wrote in his book “The Delta Blues” (2008). As “the first extended history > of traditional blues music,” he said, it was “a moment of recognition and > legitimation, but even more of proselytization, introducing a whole > generation to the neglected riches of an art form.” > > Released in tandem with “The Country Blues,” which remains in print, was > an album of the same name containing 14 songs, little known and almost > impossible to find at the time, recorded in the 1920s and ‘30s by artists > like Robert Johnson, Sleepy John Estes, Blind Willie McTell and Bukka White. > > Mr. Dylan’s first album, recorded in 1961, included a version of Mr. > White’s “Fixin’ to Die,” and within a decade other songs by the singers and > guitarists whom Mr. Charters had highlighted were staples in the > repertoires of blues and rock bands like the Allman Brothers, Canned Heat, > Cream and the Rolling Stones. > > Equally important, the aura of mystery Mr. Charters created around his > subjects — where had they disappeared to? were they even alive? — > encouraged readers to go out into the field themselves. John Fahey, Alan > Wilson, Henry Vestine, Dick Waterman and other disciples tracked down > vanished performers like Mr. White, Mr. Estes, Skip James and Son House, > and their careers were revived. Their song catalogs were soon injected into > folk and pop music. > > “I always had the feeling that there were so few of us, and the work so > vast,” Mr. Charters told Matthew Ismail, the author of the 2011 book “Blues > Discovery.” “That’s why I wrote the books as I did, to romanticize the > glamour of looking for old blues singers. I was saying: ‘Help! This job is > really big, and I really need lots of help!’ I really exaggerated this, but > it worked. My God, I came back from a year in Europe and I found kids doing > research in the South.” > > Photo > "The Country Blues," edited by Samuel B. Charters. Credit RBF Records > Mr. Charters had himself succumbed to the lure of field work. In 1958 he > went to the Bahamas to record the guitarist Joseph Spence (who would > influence the Grateful Dead, Taj Mahal and others), and a year later he > helped revive the career of the Texas guitarist Lightnin’ Hopkins. He > pursued overlooked music and artists on four continents for the next 50 > years. > > Throughout the 1960s, as the audience for the blues expanded > exponentially, Mr. Charters continued to write about the music and to > produce blues-based records for Folkways, Prestige, Vanguard and other > labels. “The Poetry of the Blues,” with photographs by his wife, Ann > Charters, was published in 1963, and “The Bluesmen” appeared in 1967; > during that period he also wrote “Jazz New Orleans” and, with Leonard > Kunstadt, “Jazz: A History of the New York Scene.” > > By the mid-1960s, Mr. Charters had broadened his focus to include > contemporary electric blues, producing a three-record anthology of new > recordings called “Chicago: The Blues Today!” Songs from that collection, > as well as from albums Mr. Charters produced for Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, > James Cotton and Charlie Musselwhite, were covered by rock groups like Led > Zeppelin and Steppenwolf and remained rock standards. > > Samuel Barclay Charters IV was born in Pittsburgh on Aug. 1, 1929, to > Samuel Barclay Charters III and the former Lillian Kelley. When he was a > teenager the family moved to Sacramento, Calif., where his father worked as > a railroad switch engineer. In writings and interviews, he recalled a > childhood immersed in jazz and classical music. He dated his interest in > the blues to hearing Bessie Smith’s recording of “Nobody Knows You When > You’re Down and Out” when he was about 8 years old. > > After serving in the Army during the Korean War, he spent time in New > Orleans, where he played clarinet, banjo and washboard in bands and studied > with the jazz clarinetist George Lewis while also researching that city’s > rich musical history. He earned a degree in economics from the University > of California, Berkeley, before returning to the field. > > After the initial impact of “The Country Blues,” which would be inducted > into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1991, Mr. Charters resumed performing music, > more for the sheer fun of it than as a livelihood. He played with Dave Van > Ronk in the Ragtime Jug Stompers and then formed a duo called the New > Strangers with the guitarist Danny Kalb, later of the Blues Project. > > Mr. Charters was also drawn to the psychedelic music emerging in the San > Francisco area in the mid-’60s. He produced the first four albums by > Country Joe & the Fish, including the satirical > “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” one of the best-known protest songs of > the Vietnam War era. > > Mr. Charters had long been involved in the civil rights movement and > left-wing causes, and the Vietnam War infuriated him. He moved to Sweden > with his family in 1970 and acquired Swedish citizenship. For many years he > shuttled between Arsta, a suburb of Stockholm, and Storrs, where his wife, > who survives him, taught American literature at the University of > Connecticut. > > Mr. Charters published poetry collections, including “Things to Do Around > Piccadilly” and “What Paths, What Journeys,” and novels, among them > “Louisiana Black” and “Elvis Presley Calls His Mother After the Ed Sullivan > Show.” He also translated works by Swedish authors, including the poet > Tomas Transtromer, who in 2011 won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and wrote > a book in Swedish, “Spelmannen,” about Swedish fiddlers. > > In addition, Mr. Charters wrote two books with his wife, an expert on the > literature of the Beat Generation as well as a pianist and photographer: a > biography of the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and “Brother Souls: John > Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation.” > > Mr. Charters wrote about jazz and blues until the end of his life. His > book “A Language of Song: Journeys in the Musical World of the African > Diaspora,” a series of essays on the evolution of music in places like the > Caribbean, Brazil and the Georgia Sea Islands, was published in 2009. Two > other books, “Songs of Sorrow,” a biography of Lucy McKim Garrison, who in > the mid-19th century compiled the first book of American slave songs, and > “The Harry Bright Dances,” a novel about roots music set in Oklahoma, are > scheduled for publication next month. > > Besides his wife and his daughter Mallay, a psychiatrist, Mr. Charters is > survived by another daughter, Nora Charters, a photographer, and a son, > Samuel V, a naval architect, from his marriage to Mary Louise Lange, which > ended in divorce. Mr. and Mrs. Charters donated much of their vast > collection of recordings, sheet music, books, photographs and other > documents to the University of Connecticut. > > “For me, the writing about black music was my way of fighting racism,” Mr. > Charters said in his interview with Mr. Ismail. “That’s why my work is not > academic, that is why it is absolutely nothing but popularization: I wanted > people to hear black music.” > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/ > options/marxism/acpollack2%40gmail.com _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
