One of my research interests is the largely forgotten history of transgendered performers in American popular music. I thank Ray Astbury for bringing Petite Swanson to my attention, a blues singer in Chicago who recorded four sides for the Sunbeam record company in 1947 (Billboard reported her signing by Sunbeam in March 1947). At the time, Swanson [...]
Sissy Bounce — an anomaly or just another transgendered musical tradition
Unexpectedly, when I was doing research on the history of a former blues nightclub district in North Richmond, California, I stumbled upon a facet of that history I had not anticipated: the participant of cross-gendered performers and club-goers. And, in mainstream venues. It flew in the face of all my presumptions of the role of [...]
Long overdue attention to Appalachian blues
Classic Appalachian Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Various Artists SFW40198 The “mountain cousin” of the Delta blues, Appalachian blues bears the stamp of a distinctive regional blend of European and African styles and sounds born at the cultural crossroads of railroad camps, mines, and rural settlements. Drawn from deep within the Folkways collection and from historic live [...]
How the blues became folk music (@PopMatters)
Karl Hagstrom Miller’s new book Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow (Duke University Press, March 2010) examines the effect of Jim Crow on the perception of American musical styles. PopMatters excerpted a section on W.C. Handy’s role in redefining blues as a folk music. [9 April 2010] Excerpt [...]
Unsung blues innovators (@Jazz and Culture)
History is created by a process of selection and exclusion, and the narratives of the past that emerge say as much about the time they are written as about the past they portray. No where is this truism more relevant than in histories of American popular music. I have written earlier about the writing out [...]
Queering Pop Music Studies
I had a female impersonator for years named Jean LaRue. I didn’t tell you about that. She was out of Oakland. I don’t know if she is living or dead. She was with me for years. Name was Jean LaRue. (August 14, 1998 Interview of Clarence ‘Little Red’ Tenpenny). “Little Red” was one of my [...]
