Transatlantic Roots Music: Folk, Blues, and National Identities

by Jill Terry (Editor), Neil A. Wynn (Editor)

Overview

This book presents a collection of essays on the debates about origins, authenticity, and identity in folk and blues music. The essays had their origins in an international conference on the Transatlantic routes of American roots music, out of which emerged common themes and questions of origins and authenticity in folk music, black and white, American and British. The central theme is musical influences, but issues of identity—national, local, and racial—are also recurring subjects. The extent to which these identities were invented, imagined, or constructed by the performers, or by those who recorded their work for posterity, is also a prominent concern and questions of racial identity are particularly central. The book features a new essay on the blues by Paul Oliver alongside an essay on Oliver's seminal blues scholarship. There are also several essays on British blues and the links between performers and styles in the United States and Britain and new essays on critical figures such as Alan Lomax and Woody Guthrie.

This volume uniquely offers perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic on the connections and interplay of influences in roots music and the debates about these subjects drawing on the work of eminent established scholars and emerging young academics who are already making a contribution to the field. Throughout, the contributors offer the most recent scholarship available on key issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496834935
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	07/02/2012
Series:	American Made Music Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Jill Terry is principal lecturer and head of the division of English, journalism and media, and cultural studies for the Institute of Humanities and Creative Arts at the University of Worcester in the United Kingdom. Neil A. Wynn is professor of twentieth-century American history at the University of Gloucestershire. He is the author of Historical Dictionary from Great War to Great Depression, From Progressivism to Prosperity: American Society and the First World War, and The Afro-American and the Second World War.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction Jill Terry Neil A. Wynn ix

1 The Historical and Social Background of Transatlantic Roots Music Revivals Jill Terry Neil A. Wynn 3

2 "Early Morning Blues": The Early Years of the Transatlantic Connection Paul Oliver 20

3 Dreaming Up the Blues: Transatlantic Blues Scholarship in the 1950s Christian O'Connell 37

4 American Balladry and the Anxiety of Ancestry Erich Nunn 57

5 Wooday Guthrie at the Crossroads Will Kaufman 77

6 "It's Not British Music, It's American Music": Bob Dylan and Britain John Hughes 94

7 Alan Lomax: An American Ballad Hunter in Great Britain Ronald D. Cohen 119

8 Putting the Blues in British Blues Rock Roberta Freund Schwartz 138

9 That White Man, Burdon: The Animals, Race, and the American South in the British Blues Boom Brian Ward 153

10 Born in Chicago: The Impact of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band on the British Blues "Network," 1964-1970 Andrew Kellett 179

11 "When Somebody Take Your Number and use It": The 1960s, British Blues, and America's Racial Crossroads Robert H. Cataliotti 205

12 Groove Me: Dancing to the Discs of Northern Soul David Sanjek 227

13 Some Reflections on "Celtic" Music Duck Baker 246

Contributors 257

Index 263

Editorial Reviews

"Transatlantic Roots Music is a stimulating collection of thought-provoking essays by fourteen writers on a wide range of topics relating to issues of discovery, reception, and revival of various forms of folk—or 'roots'—music by audiences and performers in the U.S. and Britain. English blues scholar Paul Oliver offers a concise overview of the early years of the development of the British audience for American blues, a history in which he played no small part. Christian O'Donnell then offers, in turn, a clear-headed appraisal of Oliver's multi-faceted role in shaping conceptions of blues by white audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. John Hughes explores the impact that traditional English song had on the early work of Bob Dylan as a result of Dylan's brief visit to London in 1962. Guitarist Duck Baker concludes the volume with some thoughtful—some might say heretical—commentary on the use of the term 'Celtic' to describe the currently popular musical genre based on Irish and Scottish traditional music. Taken as a whole, the authors remind us that the business of musical exchange across the Atlantic is a longstanding—and ongoing—phenomenon, and offer a wealth of new insights on the process and its significance."

—Paul F. Wells, director emeritus, Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University

From the Publisher