Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition

by Adam Gussow

Overview

Winner of the 2004 C. Hugh Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.

Seems Like Murder Here offers a revealing new account of the blues tradition. Far from mere laments about lost loves and hard times, the blues emerge in this provocative study as vital responses to spectacle lynchings and the violent realities of African American life in the Jim Crow South. With brilliant interpretations of both classic songs and literary works, from the autobiographies of W. C. Handy, David Honeyboy Edwards, and B. B. King to the poetry of Langston Hughes and the novels of Zora Neale Hurston, Seems Like Murder Here will transform our understanding of the blues and its enduring power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226310978
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	12/01/2002
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Adam Gussow is an assistant professor of English and southern studies at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of Mister Satan's Apprentice: A Blues Memoir and has been a professional blues harmonica player for many years, touring widely in the 1990s as part of the Harlem-based duo Satan and Adam.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
1. "I'm Tore Down"
Lynching and the Birth of a Blues Tradition
2. "Make My Getaway"
Southern Violence and Blues Entrepreneurship in W. C. Handy's Father of the Blues
3. Dis(Re)memberment Blues
Narratives of Abjection and Redress
4. "Shoot Myself a Cop"
Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues" as Social Text
5. Guns, Knives, and Buckets of Blood
The Predicament of Blues Culture
6. "The Blade Already Crying in My Flesh"
Zora Neale Hurston's Blues Narratives
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index