Then, in the early 1930s, he had settled in Harlem and became a solo artist, his records influencing a generation of players in the southeastern states (both Blind Boy Fuller and John Jackson covered his songs and guitar arrangements). He had spent his childhood traveling around the South as "lead boy" for blind blues and gospel singers, making his first recordings at age 14 with the streetcorner evangelist Blind Joe Taggart. In 1941, Josh White was 27 and had already lived out two previous musical careers. Some of the other blues artists who became caught up in the folk revival recorded similar pieces (Big Bill Broonzys "Black, Brown and White" and Leadbellys "Bourgeois Blues" are the most successful examples), but only Josh made it the centerpiece of his work. They always pointed, though, to veiled verses like "You dont know my mind/ When you see me laughing, Im laughing just to keep from crying." What Josh was singing was something quite different: a repertoire of blues about current events, written from a strong left-wing perspective. Oddly, he made no claim to uniqueness like Wright, he argued that the blues was by its nature a protest music, and decades of writers on the subject would concur. Southern Exposure was the third album by Josh White, a young singer who was then staking out a unique position in American music: he was the only musician ever to make a name for himself singing political blues. " Southern Exposure contains the blues, the wailing blues, the moaning blues, the laughing-crying blues, the sad-happy blues. "The blues, contrary to popular conception, are not always concerned with love, razors, dice, and death," Richard Wright wrote in 1941, in the liner notes to a new album of 78 rpm records.
Josh White and the Protest Blues, by Elijah Wald Josh White and the Protest Bluesīy Elijah Wald (published in Living Blues magazine)
0 kommentar(er)
